We are such a spoiled society. We complain about the high cost of food and the disasters that would happen if the grocery stores’ shelves turned up empty. But Dr. Dare knows that people didn’t always have it so easy. There wasn’t always a Piggly Wiggly or Super K-Mart a block away ready to fill our minivans with bag after bag of nutritious foodstuffs.

Nope. Used to be that people ate bugs. That’s right. Bugs. Crops not so good this year? Pizza drivers on strike? They’d just start digging and come up with some six-legged protein. Or—would you believe—sixty-legged? Every missionary knows that worms are the Big Macs of the field. And it used to be the best eating-worms had legs. The legged variety were so tasty, in fact, they became extinct.

But now, with Dr. Dare’s help, you can recreate a big one and serve it to your friends. Unfortunately, you’ll still have to go to the Piggly Wiggly (or whatever they call the grocery store in your town) to get the ingredients since we’re all a bunch of sissies now.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 20-oz. package of refrigerated sugar cookie dough

2 16-oz. containers of chocolate frosting

1 coconut covered snack cake for the head

several skinny black licorice strings cut into three-inch pieces

two or three gumdrops for the face

Start by making the cookies. Cut the roll of dough into 30 1/2-inch slices, and bake according to the directions on the package. (If you want to cheat, just buy pre-baked, plain-looking sugar cookies at the store.)

When cookies are done and cool, frost one side of a cookie with the chocolate frosting. Make it thick. Then gently press another cookie onto the frosting. Then frost the back side of that cookie and press another cookie onto it. Continue to do this until you have a stack of six or seven cookies. Set these down on a plate on their sides.

Continue doing this until you have the full body of the sixty-legged worm. You may want to curve it a little to give it more of a worm-like shape. Next, insert a leg (the three-inch licorice pieces) into the frosting between each cookie. Angle it down to the plate to make it look like the worm’s leg.

Finally, use some frosting to attach the head (the snack cake) to one end of the worm’s body. Use a little more frosting to attach the gumdrops as a nose and two eyes. If you’ve got a couple of legs left over, stick them on top of the head as antennae.

There you go—a big, yummy sixty-legged worm, just like they used to eat in the dark ages (more or less).

You know, the Bible talks about a time when food wasn’t hard to get at all. In the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve sinned, all their food was just sitting there waiting to be eaten. All they had to do was pick and eat. They would have never thought of digging for worms or even paying for food. It was just another gift from God.

But once they sinned and were forced to leave the Garden, Genesis 3:17-19 tells us that God said the ground would be cursed. They’d have to work for their food until the day they died. Just like we do. But a day will come when Christians won’t have to live on this cursed planet any more. And that eternity will start with the gift of food again—a feast in heaven (Rev. 19).

So enjoy your worm. Thank God for your food. And remember to thank Him for the feast that’s coming.

I dare you.

Recipe Idea from "Cookie Dough Fun," Publications International, 1997