John Wicker creates videos on his YouTube channel “Ya’ll be looking,” featuring meals with cicadas as the main course. (FOX News Edge)
A stay-at-home dad concocts meals using the most unusual ingredients lurking in his yard.
John Wicker creates videos on his YouTube channel "Ya’ll be looking," featuring meals with cicadas as the main course.
The South Carolina man’s meals range from cicada pralines to pigs in a blanket. His life-long passion for nature influenced him to create a video on cicadas and their lifecycles, WHNS-TV in South Carolina reported.
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Wicker says the concept of cooking the insects was inspired by a viewer commenting on one of his videos about this year’s cicadas and that he should try eating one. He told WHNS-TV that he enjoys cooking most of the time and wanted to try it out.
Once he cooked the cicadas, Wicker invited a few friends over to his home for a dinner party, and the dishes included cicadas in a blanket, bacon-wrapped cicadas, fish-fried cicadas, and praline-coated cicadas.
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After trying the meals, Wicker said he received positive reviews from his dinner guests, telling WHNS that he hopes to inspire people to take a moment to discover what’s in their backyards.
Where will cicadas emerge in 2024?
The nation will soon witness the reemergence of cicadas, creatures celebrated for their prolonged subterranean existence from underground. The two broods that will emerge simultaneously this year are Brood XIX (the 13-year cicadas) and Brood XIII (the 17-year cicadas).
Brood XIX, according to Cicada Mania, is expected to emerge in the spring of 2024 in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The last time Brood XIX came above ground was in 2011.
This story was reported from Washington, D.C.