Bugs in the grain

[Robbespiere]

Where do the little varmints which infest grain products like flour stored a long time come from?

The worm thingies are the larvae of a tiny black beetle called a flour beetle.

As to where they came from, either they evolved over 2 billion years, or God created them on the sixth day. Take your pick.

Gen 1:24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.
Gen 1:25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Gen 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Gen 1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
Gen 1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
Gen 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.

God gave the bugs "every green plant for food", which includes the Malt-O-Meal in the open box in your kitchen cabinet. If you have a problem with flour beetles, keep everything in Tupperware.



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"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" - the White Queen

[Drain Bead]

This happened to me once. I had just started a big pot of matzoh ball soup, and had to make the balls. I had a box with two packets of ball mix in it, and I'd used one of the two packets a few months before. They were similar to packets of Lipton soup--paper, with foil on the inside. I opened it and poured it into a bowl that already contained oil and eggs, and mothy-looking things flew out of it. There were also green maggoty looking things in it too. This, out of a completely sealed packet. I checked it afterward to see if there were any holes that a moth might have managed to chew through, and found nothing.

For months now, I've been wondering how they got in there. Now I know that they were there to begin with. I'm never eating again.

[Manda JO]

My mother always put flour/grain products in the freezer for a week or so after buying them to nip this problem in the bud, so to speak. Seemed to work--we never had any problems with these when I lived at home. Then again, like many folk recipes we may have just been lucky.

[Lissa]

If you're wondering how they got into your grain before you got it, they could have infested it while it was still in the silo being dried. They can infest flour at the mill, or even at the store, burrowing into the bags. Nasty little buggers.

My grandmother grinds her own wheat before baking bread, and she always shakes it in a collander beforehand, and afterward sifts the flour carefully just to make sure there are no unpleasant surprises in store.