hummingwolf | Bleah.

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Bleah.

Though my cabinet space is limited here, I've been keeping a decent store of food in my room, what with canned veggies & dried beans & rice & such. Well, my food store is a bit diminished now, since I just threw out three bags full (and I do mean full) of rice, barley, beans, and peas because there were little bugs crawling around in there. Because of the way those particular bags are made, all the bags have holes in them through which the bugs could pass on to new food; so while I didn't actually see bugs in every bag, I'm pretty sure they're there.

Yes, I believe the bugs are harmless. Yes, I'd bet I've already eaten a few of them. I don't care. I do not want to eat more of these nameless insects than I have to. As much as I hate throwing out food I could still be eating (somebody's still eating it, after all!) and which I spent perfectly good food stamp money on, I've gotta get this infestation out of here.

Argh. Must clean bugs out of boxes now. And I was hoping for some bean & barley soup, too.

Gyah.

Edit: Does anyone have advice on how to keep this from happening in the future? Some of the bags of beans & grains had been in my room for nearly a year, yet these bugs are a very recent thing. Obviously if I didn't have a problem till this week, the insect invasion is not an inevitability--so how do I avoid this in the future?

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It's a catch-22. . . the only way to get rid of the bugs would be to spray, but then you would be eating dead, poisoned bugs. It's too late to put the food in another container-- the only recourse would be to pick the bugs out by hand. Probably not feasible. . .

Well, in the case of beans, you should be rinsing and sorting them to begin with before eating. But since we're talking about quite a few pounds of dried beans I had, the bugs would have plenty of time to feast, excrete, breed, and die before I got around to every bag in the lot. There was a bag of barley I had transferred to a zipper bag in the counter downstairs a few days ago which was full of bugs and what I presume was digested barley today.

I'm really disappointed that I have to get rid of so much food here. Especially since I'm hungry right now.

oh yuck. i once bought a pretty little bag of cornmeal in a small grocery up on the mountain my inlaws live on. within a couple of weeks, my cabinets were full of the little wigglies that hatched out of the bag. it took a long time to get rid of them in the rice and pasta and so on, but i never really completely cleaned (slapdash till the end, me). i will not use sprays. :(

I say again, Bleah. I'm going to have to completely clean, methinks, simply because I'll be paranoid about any other food I buy if I don't. Not quite sure how I'm going to approach all these boxes, though. Also not sure if I've got beans in one of the newer bags or not, and if so, are there bugs in those beans too?

Argh. I want to know how to keep my food as bug-free as possible. Since the bags do get little holes in them from any kind of handling, I suppose there'll always be a chance that any bag I buy at the store will already be infested. But I would like to come up with a good way to keep new bags from infesting older bags.

And I want bean & barley soup I can't have. :-(

Well, there are those jars that have airtight seals....

True. Those cost money, though. Then again, if it keeps this sort of thing from happening again, it'd save me money in the long run. In the meantime, since I already have zipper bags around, I might try to put any future bags of things into Ziplocs immediately after getting them home.

It's all so frustrating, though. Going from having lots of food with no problem to having to throw out a bunch of food... and then not being able to clean everything up because of household appliance problems... argh.

I was actually having a good day before suppertime, though. Here's hoping tomorrow's a good day all day long.

So, how are you doing?

you can also use washed out
and *thoroughly* dried mayonaisse jars . . .

insects need moisture to live . . .

get rid of any paper bags you may have been keeping . . .

bugs like dark places . . .

Good luck!

~Bear

I have all dry food like that in glass jars or metal boxes. :)

Tupperware!

Want me to send you some tupperware? I have plenty. Also leftover plastic containers. You eat a lot of yogurt, right? Yogurt, tubs of butter/margarine, cottage cheese, ricotta... if anyone in your household eats any of this stuff, procure the containers when you're done.

We were container-saving fanatics in my family when I was a kid! I've stopped doing it as much because I received a ton of tupperware as shower/wedding gifts.

If you want to send me some tupperware, I would be very grateful!

You eat a lot of yogurt, right?

Until recently, I was eating yogurt from a company whose lids ripped apart as soon as you tried to get them off the container, so that's not much help. I used to save lots of containers too! The old single-serving yogurt containers I had had to be thrown out eventually, though, and the newer containers were useless. But lately I've been buying big containers of plain yogurt, which are much sturdier. Most of the food I eat is fresh or comes from a can, box, or bag, none of which is reusable. Though the peanut butter I get is finally being packaged in nice glass jars rather than in impossible to clean plastic ones, so that's a help.

All of which is to say I'd appreciate any spare containers very much. :-)

Must say I'm not liking the idea of having to seal up packages of food I haven't even opened yet. But I guess I'll have to if I want to keep this food wastage from happening again.

If only I had glass jars or metal boxes!

It just never occurred to me that bags of food I hadn't even opened yet might have to be stored that way. :-(

Unfortunately, I don't eat mayonnaise! There are only a couple of empty containers I've got here, and those are more fragile than I would like. I'll take your advice on the cleaning, though.

Thanks, Bear!

GLAD makes "dispoable" containers
in various sizes that are fairly sturdy
and last for quite a long time . . .

we have a fairly serious "mouse problem"--
even with eleven cats--
and the mice don't chew through the GLAD containers . . .

they are also great for the microwave
if you ever find one cheap on ebay . . .

microwaving is fairly easy to learn
and is *great* for when you are too depressed to cook
on the stove or bake in the oven . . .

*huggles*

I do it. I've always done it.

I guess it sucks. Never really thought of it that way before. It is an annoyance, but there are many household tasks I find much more bothersome. Scrubbing cat pee out of the bedroom carpet ranks pretty high at the moment.

I shall send you some things.

I think the tupperware is your best bet. I'd probably panic and wrap everything in foil and freeze it, but to be reasonable- go with the tupperware. Here in Ohio we have Marc's. They are like a Big Lots. Dollar Store is another place you might find CHEAP tupperware containers. That might just be your best bet.

True. Those cost money, though.

Not if you happen to like pickles, or spaghetti sauce. :)

Here's hoping tomorrow's a good day all day long.

Me too, for both our sakes.

So, how are you doing?

I'm alright. Life is good. The calm before the (academic) storm -- this year will be Thesis year, and there's a lot to juggle. Just doing what I can to prepare for it....

Well, it looks like a friend might be sending me some containers. I certainly hope so! I share a freezer & can't really freeze every bag of beans I buy. ;-)

Not if you happen to like pickles, or spaghetti sauce.

My food preferences work against me here, do they? The only jarred food I really eat very often is peanut butter. Fortunately, my cheap natural brand of peanut butter has finally switched back to glass jars instead of virtually uncleanable plastic ones. :-)

Life is good.

Hooray!

The calm before the (academic) storm

Thesis year! Aiiiieee! Seriously, good luck. I've seen some housemates go through that. It can be... interesting.

Come to think of it, the reason I don't remember ever sealing up unopened bags of beans before may be that my parents simply didn't cook with dry beans much. I remember seeing cans of kidney beans or garbanzos around, but can't recall any bagged beans in the cabinets when I was a kid. Huh.

I remember cans of cannelloni beans and chi-chis and... hmm, that's it! We have a can of kidney beans in the pantry here and I'll be damned if I know what to do with them. Chi-chis are good in soup. I know that.

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Bleah.

Catch-22

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GLAD makes

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