For the record, I know that the title is culturally insensitive. Apologies.
But it almost perfectly describes my "almost meal" the other night... minus the "shrimp fried" part. And instead of lice it was flour beetles (which kinda look like lice). I've been having a dilemma with flour beetles for the past few months. It's a wonderful thing---opening up your airtight (I need bugtight, people) canister of flour only to find it contaminated with little red beetles. And then to find that the corn starch, bread crumbs, oatmeal, and any other grainy food have been infected too. I cleaned out and sprayed the pantry and let it sit empty for a while just to be sure they were all dead. No sign of them for weeks, until last night.
I was boiling rice and as I was stirring it, I noticed these dark specs rotating around. They ended up being bits of discolored rice...phew. And then I noticed some stringy white things. What was first thought to be some grainy residue from the rice ended up being flour beetle maggots (which were still alive, mind you). I quickly retrieved the bag of rice from the pantry and sure enough, there they were: many, many flour beetles wiggling between grains of uncooked rice. Fabulous.
So now I'm at a loss over a few things...
1. My rice had to be thrown away.
2. I don't know how to prevent or keep flour beetles from infesting my food.
3. Maggots are indestructible. Boiling water doesn't do the trick. Neither does muriatic acid, bleach, or other household chemicals. (I know the acid and bleach don't work because my mom and I had a bout with maggots years ago upon cleaning out a trash can in the garage)
I'm open to suggestions. I've been told that if the plant where the grain products were processed was infested, then the eggs/maggots/beetles are already present in the food when you purchase it. But I find it hard to believe that several of the grain products I have bought and or replaced over the past few months are all infested.
Yum.
8 comments:
I don't have any useful advice for you, except to say, "Ew."
Hearing this story over the phone was much worse than the post. So thank you for sparing others. I think I was almost as disgusted as you and I'm not even there! I don't know what to tell you either - they are indestructible! As I always say, they'll be here with the flies and cockroaches once we're all gone.
xoxo
YUM- can I have some rice?
I rem. growing up I was making chocolate chip bars in mom and dads kitchen..poured the flour in the kitchen aid mixer, dumped the batter in the pan, and noticed something moving...flour beetles...nasty! I rem. throwing the batter away, then we looked in the flour bag, and had to toss it too. Dont know how to get rid of them-sorry,but I've been there.
I only have two remarks: 1) Don't eat pasta at my house. If I dump the pasta in the boiling water and find bugs floating in it then I skim off the non-pasta-looking stuff and serve it up anyway. I don't have time to come up with an alternative starch. 2) When Dad was in WWII he was in the navy and spent weeks at sea. When they started serving raisin bread he knew that the flour had become inhabited by beetles. I asked him what he did... he said he ate it anyway. The military has been living with "Don't ask, don't tell." for a long time.
kitkat-thanks :)
lb-so true. speaking of cockroaches, I think they are all hatched at my school and then go out into the rest of the world. I swear, they are livin in the walls. Ever seen a roach egg sack? I have.
ramsey days-I appreciate your empathy.
Paul-No. 1 explains a lot about you. No. 2 explains a lot about grampa :)
Can eating flour beetles cause Parkinson's? Speaking of roaches ever have one crawl into your ear canal while you were sleeping? That's right. Off to the ER!
Paul - you are weird. Then again you are wearing THAT hat!
Stevie..I've heard of that happpening with a cockroach...did that happen to you@!???
Yes, Paul is wearing THAT HAT!
If you store your rice, pasta, flour, etc. in the freezer, it keeps the bugs away.
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