Posted on 07/24/2014 7:16:39 PM PDT by jespasinthru
Has this ever happened to you? You go to a clean, modern American supermarket and buy some boxes of pasta. You store some of them in you cupboard. And when you cook it, little black bugs are floating in the water. They look like fleas, except that they have snouts. Very gross. And by putting boxes of them in your cupboard, you have now infested your kitchen with them. I was so mad that I e-mailed the company, a popular national brand, and gave them a piece of my mind. I even e-mailed them a close-up photo of the bug in question. I received an apologetic letter from the company. They informed me that these things are called grain weevils, and they are very prevalent in the commercial farms of Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho and Iowa. The company is reluctant to overuse pesticides, and they reject GMO crops because of public outcry. So some of these bugs make it into the processing plants and past quality control, and consumers find them in their boxes of pasta. I've been married for five months, and when I discussed it with my husband he was very pragmatic about it: "Just rinse the pasta before you cook it. If any bugs get past the rinsing, just cook 'em. The heat will kill any bacteria, and bugs do have a bit of protein in them. It's a sin to throw away good food." He's into lateral thinking, which is one of the reasons why I love him. A week later I got a fat envelope in the mail. The pasta company sent me coupons for twenty free boxes of the same buggy crap. Like I'd ever put their product in my kitchen again. I went to a huge Lutheran church in my town that gives out lots of free food to the poor and homeless, and explained the situation to them. To my surprise, the pastor and his administrators were familiar with the pasta bug problem. They were happy to accept those 20 free coupons that I got in the mail. Has this ever happened to you?
Until I got to the tail it was good rat.
lol
Grew up always checking the pasta and rice for the little critters. No big deal - it was just something that was done.
I had in infestation of those very nasty and very hard to get rid of creatures in my kitchen cabinets some years ago. Ug!
It started by seeing those grey adult moths flying around my kitchen but not immediately knowing where they were coming from. When I finally figured out that everything; any type of grain, rice, flour, cereal, crackers, even boxes of pudding mix, etc., in my kitchen cabinets was infested – every box or bag had tiny holes drilled in them and the contents were full of squirming larvae, I found the larvae in just about everything save the canned goods or sealed jars, all else had tiny little the holes they made and because of the holes, all the contents of the boxes and bags leak out all over the cabinet bottoms, little piles of half eaten moth larvae food everywhere. I ended up having to throw everything out and then cleaning out, vacuuming and when wiping down and bleaching all my kitchen cabinets and even then, I still kept seeing those damned moths for months until I figured out they had also infested a bag of dog food in the pantry in the garage and even after I got rid of that, I still kept seeing those G-D moths for months.
Then one day after my kitchen zombie moth apocalypse and the nuclear purge that followed, I was shopping at the grocery store I used to regularly shop at and while walking down the baking aisle, a couple of those nasty grey moths flew right in front of me and I figured out that this was where my infestation had come from. I went to the front of the store and asked to talk to the manger, let him know that his store had an infestation of Indian Meal Moths, and he completely blew me off, wouldn’t even talk to me. As I was leaving the store after abandoning my half full grocery cart, I spied several mice happily running down the bread aisle. Needless to say, I never shopped there again.
Believe me it works just as I said. Just don’t stick around. It’s great for clearing the hunting cabin of pests
as well as smells.
Big Church Spaghetti Dinner?
I store that stuff in the freezer now.
I've used the ribbon trap too. They work well.
I had exactly the same experience...even down to the store.
You have 16 minutes to make corn meal muffins.
The mix says to bake for 15 minutes, after mixing in an egg and water for lumpy batter, then to pour in a muffin pan.
You see two weevils in the batter!
Both are ‘lively’, you know you will only have time to evict one and that will be close ...
So, you go after the lesser of the two weevils.
I have always assumed bugs will sometimes be found in rice, beans and pastas.
I sort and check them before rinsing. Only thing that bugs me is sheer number.
That said I don’t find bugs often but, no biggie.
They are great sauteed in lemon butter...
Ha! My mother used to say something along the same line: "You eat a peck of dirt before you die," and I think she was quoting her mother. Nobody I've heard uses peck (1/4 bushel) as a measurement anymore.
Yep.
We ziplock to keep the stupid at ants at bay.
Kitchen and pantry are pristine clean but, all it takes is a little food stuff and the ants are everywhere.
IIRC, the federal government knows there are bugs in much of the grain and that there is a standard at which the manufacturers may not exceed but they are fine with a low level of insects in the grain. The grain is stored in outdoor silos where infestation would be relatively easy.
The bugs are generally harmless but will exist in everything made from wheat, corn, oats or rice grown in the U.S. So, you would probably have to stop eating breads and cereals if you want to be sure no bugs ever pass through your lips.
What are the chances that the problem is the reverse?
How old is the house, and where is it located?
Have the bugs been identified?
You didn’t know there was an “allowable” amount of insects in our food?
No. This has never happened to me. I keep stuff covered and separated.
No no no!
It's not insects.
It's insect parts.
This is why one should never vote for the lesser of two weevils...
A flour sifter will help eliminate the bugs—and I believe that is what they were for in the first place—separating weevils from the flour.
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