Cacao may be Mexico’s greatest gift to the world—forever earning the favor of the human palate with its derivative delicacy, chocolate.

This picky plant prefers a narrow band of just 20 latitude degrees to the north or south of equator. The Maya commercialized the crop more than 2,000 years ago, rising above their ancestors who merely sucked the fatty, white coating off cacao nuts and discarded the inner seed. Rather, the Maya began to dry and toast the seeds for food and to be held as valuable currency. When the Spanish arrived, they knew a good thing when they tasted it. Soon, sugar and milk transformed the traditional products to the chocolate known today around the world. Yet, Mexico’s indigenous cultures still enjoy traditional cacao drinks such as tejate and sauces like mole negro and mole poblano.

Generally, you see chapulin translated as grasshopper in Mexico but in truth, the Nahuatl word chapoli, can apply to all matter of jumpy snacks including grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts. I am not an entomologist, but the little buggers we most often encounter in restaurants look a like crickets and offer a manageably bite-sized crunch.

In pre-Hispanic times most Mexican’s ate a fairly vegetarian diet making insects a valuable source of protein. Although chapulin are now commercially raised and prepared for sale, in the good ole days, children darted about the fields snatching the bouncy bugs from the air. At home, the crickets were left to defecate in a container for a day to remove any trace of pesty poo before they were boiled to a bright red and spread out in the sun to dry. The dried carapaces were then roasted to impart flavors from tasty ingredients like lime, garlic, and chile. Alternately, the shells could be oven baked in a clay pan, known as a corral, with seasonings such as salt and epazote. With great crunch and addictive seasonings, it is possible to believe that chapulines were the earliest bar snack offered up with frothy pulque and mezcal. Today, chapulines are a common accompaniment to guacamole in Southern and Central Mexican restaurants, both in taco stands and fine dining establishments.

What is it like to eat crickets? First, there are no gooey substances within the crispy insect husks. The only catch is that the little barbed legs continue to offer a posthumous hold on the throat if not chewed well. So, while you may be tempted, I advise that you not employ the swallow-them-whole maneuver your first time out.

Idiazabal is a traditional, farmhouse, hard cheese made from raw sheep’s milk in the Basque and Navarra regions of northern Spain. The cheese is named after the small village of Idiazabal. The first Idiazabal makers were nomadic shepherds who pastured their flocks in the high mountain pastures of the region. During the summer, the sheep would move up the mountain to graze on the lush, new grass. Their abundant milk was used to make the cheese in mountain huts where the rounds matured in the rafters. The home fires imparted a faint smoky flavor. In the Fall, the shepherds, sheep, and cheeses would all return to the valley villages, in time for the yellow-brown wheels to go to market. Today, the producers of Idiazabal cheese imitate these traditional methods, aging the wheels for at least two months and providing a light smoking with beech or alder wood.

You will see me reference this term often as it is the essence of all things I consider delicious. Remember the little diagrams of the regions of our tongues mapping out sweet, sour, salty, and bitter detection zones? Umami, a late entrant to the flavor order, appearing about a century ago, covers the entire tongue and corresponds to the flavor of glutamates, the substances that imparts savory or meaty notes to our food—think seared beef, soy sauce, ripe tomato, Parmesan cheese, anchovies, and sautéed mushrooms. An example from Mexican cuisine of an umami-rich food is Chintextle, a smoked chili paste from Oaxaca made with dried shrimp, nuts and black beans. The mouthwatering spreadable paste is thick and nourishing. In a word, umami is yum.