-The innocent-looking koala shaped cookies I was enjoying one day. Get down to the last few. One I pull out has mysterious cobwebby stuff on it. I peer into the box to find a web full of mealymoth larvae squirming at the bottom.
-The “KD Coocoon”. I was preparing some Kraft Dinner once. Water started boiling. I opened the box and tipped it over the pot. Instead of a cascade of noodles a big, chunky coocoon made of webbing and noodles slides out and plops into the water. Breaks open instantly to reveal a large number of maggots. Boiling.To.Death.
I’m pretty sure these have something to do with why I hate maggoty things.
Picked some fresh broccoli from the garden. Looked it over very carefully for bugs and cabbage worms. Ate a piece, felt something funny, missed a worm. Didn’t actually bite it but I’ll never grow broccoli again.
Both at the same Burger King in Kalamazoo MI (which later gained some small measur of fame for an Elvis sighting): I got an order of fries once with a deep-fried cigarette butt in it. I stopped going there for a long time. The very next time I went back I got an order of fries with a retainer in it.
What ARE those little white wormy-type bugs that get in your flour and cereal and stuff?
One time I ate an entire bowl of cereal, all the while I was watching a TV show very intently. I get to the last bite and finally look down and there were a couple of those worm things floating in the milk.
WHO KNOWS how many I ate?? :smack:
That reminds me of the time I was eating a bran muffin, set it down for a minute and left the room. I completely forgot about it until I saw it upon my return. MMMMMM more muffin. Popped it in my mouth. It had a weird chemically taste and a funny texture. It was covered in those teeny ants that like sweet things. The room was kind of dark and so was the muffin so they blended right in.
I think those bugs in grain products are from bug eggs left in the grain. Flour and pasta and things are not cooked during processing so any bug eggs remain in the product to hatch at a later date. Once they hatch they are surrounded by food. I’ve heard them being called flour beetles and flour moths. I had flour moths last year, what a mess.
When I was 15 my family went to Perkins. I got a burger and fries. The very first bite included an industrial box staple. It went through my tongue and into my gums. I made quite the scene as I screamed like a little girl and spit blood all over the table. My dads eyes got as big as dinner plates when I opened my mouth. He reached in and plucked it out. :eek: Holy f— did that hurt. No wonder I don’t eat much meat anymore.
In HS preparing our float for Homecoming, we ordered in a pizza. I took a bite out of my piece and screamed and dropped the pizza. The eyes staring back at me from the pizza unnerved me. It was a wasp, baked into the pizza.
I found a bottle of Coke with a cigarette in it about 20 years ago. I still have the bottle intact with the cigarette; I occasionally pull it out to gross out people.
The maggoty little guys? Probably moth larvae. We’ve had the Indian variety a couple of times. The most infamous incident was the time my sister found one in her chicken soup - they’d gotten into the rice, which was uncommonly good camouflage and my mother didn’t notice when she added it. The kicker was, sister didn’t find the bug until we were eating the leftovers.
This thread has made me gag repeatedly. Thanks for the wakeup call!
The nastiest thing that ever happened (in regards to food) to me was at a Kettle restaurant one day at lunch. Usually the food was really awesome, and that day was no exception.
My friend and I were eating, and I took a big mouthful of mashed potatoes. I felt something…crunchy in my mouth. Carefully spitting it into a napkin, I found a half of a huge black cockroach. Legs and all.
It took every ounce of my strength to not vomit all over the table right that minute. I laid my fork down and told my friend we had to leave. For some strange reason, she didn’t question me, nor ask what the hell was wrong. She said okay and we left.
I couldn’t eat for about two days afterwards. Every time I thought about it my gorge would rise. Typing it out right now made me sick all over again.
Can’t stand those mealy moth things - to the point that I won’t buy any processed grain type groceries that I won’t be using within the week. Too many mishaps with flour (in a sealed container!! They were there to begin with?!), cake mixes, and one horrible incident with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese - they were in the cheese packet, and not the pasta. So now, no processed grains in MY cupboards, thank you very much. I’m really rather unreasonably paranoid about it now.
Had one incident with a packet of Ramen noodle soups. I love that stuff. Had bought a case of them. Made a bowl the day I brought it home, halfway through I found one larvae. That I didn’t lose my lunch on the spot can only be attributed to the fact that I’m more terrified by the prospect of vomiting than I am grossed out by seeing a larvae in my soup. For years afterwards I didn’t eat the stuff, until one day, shortly after moving back home, it was all there was to eat - Ramen noodle soup. I was broker than broke. It was stay extremely hungry, or fight off the irrational fear. Really, I told myself, I’ve eaten enough of these things to feed a small nation, and only had one problem. Honestly, grow up, I thought, and eat the friggin stuff. After an hour and a half of internal debate, I finally gave in. I opened the package, broke the noodles apart, carefully inspected them, waited another hour to make sure nothing moved, and finally ate the damn things. I must say, it was the cure to my irrational fear. I can eat them again with little problem, although I do confess to checking “just to be sure!” every time.
Thanks, thanks for sharing that. Thanks for warning me that **lieu’s ** contributions to that thread would warp my face into contortions I’d have otherwise thought impossible. May your side of the state be plagued by cicadas for the afternoon.
Many flour and grain based products have larvae or eggs for Indian meal moths or flour bugs. They don’t crawl into the packaging, but rather are already present in the product before it’s boxed up. The easiest solution is this:
Whenever you buy anything like this, especially something that will be in your closet for an extended time, like flour, put the container in the freezer for a day or two. That will kill any eggs before they can hatch. Yes, you’ll still be eating them, but you eat that stuff anyway with anything that is grain-based.
What, you think they de-bug this stuff in the field before it’s harvested? It just gets ground up with the grain. Protein is protein. You’re still alive, right?
If you’ve found larvae or moths, you’ll need to go through everything in the closet/pantry, toss the infested items, and clean the shelves or else you’ll never get rid of the problem. I used to find bugs and stuff fairly regulary until I started killing the little bastards off in the freezer.
