Apocalyptic Pasta: crickets invade Italian cuisine; Italy prays for deliverance

In a shocking turn of events, the Italian government is in a state of high alert as the country faces its most significant culinary crisis since the great tomato shortage of 1786. The culprit? A new trend of adding insects to pasta, a move that has Italians hopping mad and politicians buzzing with indignation.

The Italian Cricket Factory, a hotbed of culinary rebellion, is churning millions of chirpy critters into pasta. The mastermind of this revolutionary enterprise, Ivan Albano, has been conjuring a whirlwind of biblical scale by metamorphosing these six-legged freaks into edibles, all while boasting that his radical product will be the hero “saving the world.”

The EU, in a move that has many Italians questioning whether the end times are near, approved the sale of insects for human consumption earlier this year. But the Italians, known for their love of traditional pasta and their aversion to plagues of locusts, are not taking this lying down.

“We will oppose, by any means and in any place, this madness that would impoverish our agriculture and our culture,” the Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini declared while clutching a rosary and a plate of cricket-free spaghetti.

Italian cuisine has triumphed over countless foes throughout the centuries, from the notorious Atkins diet to gluten-free fanatics. But cricket pasta? That’s an entirely new critter to contend with.

Despite the uproar, not all are repelled. A daring chef near Turin has been tinkering with his age-old pasta formula, adding a ‘distinctive’ touch: a dash of cricket powder that that gives a whole new meaning to “waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!”

Meanwhile, cheerleaders of the Insect Industrial Syndicate are practically buzzing with glee. They argue that breeding bugs takes a sliver of the land required for livestock farming and could be our secret weapon against climate change and a host of other global problems. Conveniently, they dance around the fact that this transition also fills their coffers with a bountiful harvest of surging profits.

While some adventurous diners are sampling this insect-infused fare out of curiosity, others are holding fast to their conventional, cricket-free pasta, claiming that the chirping in their linguini is a culinary distraction they didn’t sign up for, and that these ‘cricket pasta pushers’ may have let their antennae get a bit too close to a bug zapper.

With the global populace now exceeding eight billion, prosperous magnates and business titans (who have no intention of altering their own eating habits) assert that the transition to environmentally conscious protein options, such as insects, might be unavoidable for the common folk and less fortunate.

Yet, it raises the question whether we’re on the verge of fulfilling “end of times” prophecies as we welcome locust legions onto Italian dinner tables.

As the cricket pasta saga continues, one thing is clear: the Italians are not ready to let go of their traditional pasta. Not today, not tomorrow, and certainly not for a bunch of crickets. So, as the cricket invasion continues, Italians are left praying for deliverance from this plague, and hoping that the next revelation doesn’t come with a side of frogs in their risotto.