After writing about our milk situation here, it made me think about another food related issue we have in our new city - bugs!
Back in Anapolis, we had our occasional problem with ants in the kitchen. The houses in Brazil are not nearly as sealed shut as they are in the States, so an occasional army of ants attaching your sugar bowl wasn't a huge surprise. It was easy enough to clean up the sugar, wipe out the cabinets, and find and do away with the trail of ants. But what we have here is WAY sneakier and more common.
The first problem we have is that ants don't appear in easily defined trails, they just simply appear out of nowhere, and FAST too! It's like they're waiting to ambush! If you accidentally leave a cookie or a smear of jelly or a piece of tortilla out on the table, there will be a swarm of ants around it in just a matter of an hour or less. And it's not a trail that can get rid of, but just an every ant for themselves type of group that you can never really get rid of. I mean you can kill THOSE ants, but they don't seem to be part of a coalition that you can ever find and rid yourself of. We don't have an ant problem to deal with, but an ongoing ant reality to get used to. Needless to say, we have to be very careful to not leave things out.
The other problem is that little tiny black bugs get into food in our pantry. I'm not even just talking about previously opened bags of food, but closed bags as well. They seem to like grains best - oatmeal, cornmeal, flour, and pasta. They chew their way right into the bags! And when I go to use a cup of flour or pour pasta into water, I always have to do a double check that there are no black specks in the back. I find them in something about once a week! I've even stored my stock of these grains in a closed cooler, but i have no idea how, but even that didn't stop them! Maybe bugs were already in one of the bags when I bought it and they just spread around to the other bags. I was so sad the other day to have to throw out about 10 lbs of flour, oatmeal, etc. A lot of people I know store their grains in the freezer. This seems like a great idea, but I'll have to investigate to see how much space I realistically have.
For now, it's just a situation that bugs me :)
2 comments:
Well, you ARE in the Amazon, after al! No real surprize, huh?
Some of the best hints that I have gleaned from others and found that worked...freeze all grains for 24hrs after bringing them from the store (noodles, rice, flour, etc) then put them in clean, dry 2 ltr bottles (they hermeutically seal). This kills bugs that were in and keeps new ones out... BTW-Ryan said I have issues where ants are concerned :-)I said it was just prevention!
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