Lately, I've been able to go to Whole Foods and Central Market; I enjoy going to high end grocery stores. It's fun to bring home interesting and exotic ingredients.
Most of you know, we moved last year. We are adjusting to 'the new house'. I kept seeing little beetles, and I thought "Crap, where are they coming from?"
Friday was our anniversary, so I decided to make an extra-special, takeshourstomakeit carrot cake for DH today. I pureed pineapple, grated carrots, got out the cornstarch my recipe called for and tossed it in the pineapple. Hey, what is THAT? And that? And I peeked in the cornstarch box. EWWWWWW! There were black bugs scattered across the snowy cornstarch. I pitched the cake makins in the sink.
I had to investigate....a few in the flour canister, but none in the sugar. Hmmmm, so cellulose, not sugar. I peered into the spice cupboard, saw a few bugs (I thought they hated bay, why are they in there?). I dragged the stepstool over.
I pulled all the spices off of the cornstarch shelf. A few bugs, and a curious patch of greyish dust...it looked like pepper. The pepper lives on the shelf below, what's going on here? I wiped it up and it looked almost mauve. (See the little bughostage on the tape?) None in the tapioca, none in the baking soda.
When I got to the top shelf, it all became clear. The bag of purple sticky rice I got from the gourmet grocery was a virtual bug disco. And the purple rice dust....THAT's what I found on the shelves below.
Weevils from the fancy grocery. I'm staying out of the bulk bins from now on.
ETA: Marta asked if I baked the cake afterwards. Nah, I was out of pineapple and carrots.
5 comments:
That is totally disgusting, Bets! Uggh. I'm sure I eat bugs and don't even know it but there's nothing worse than seeing it in flour or rice. My friend found some in a bag of jasmine rice from Trader Joe's--made my skin crawl. Bleckth.
Oh, that's not fun at all! And it brought back memories. Years ago I started seeing funny-looking cream-colored worms crawling in the kitchen, a few every day for several days in a row. After turning the entire kitchen inside out several times, I finally found that they were coming from a still-unopened big box of [that cereal that looks like little rings]! I could not look at Ch..os for a long time. And then, one of the kids had this science project assignment - feeding oatmeal to mealybugs in a jar until they turned into beetles - I couldn't believe my "luck" - we were meeting again!
Marta
P.S.: After all that, did you still bake a cake?
No offense, but that's beyond gross. I hate bugs in the kitchen. We have problems with tiny little beetle-bugs, and ants which will not die. Our neighbor used to have a service come out to spray monthly. That explains that unsightly facial twitch their entire family had.
"...I was out of pineapple and carrots."
Bets, I would be all out of steam...
Marta
That's disgusting. We have pantry moths is our new house, can't seem to get rid of them.
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