Ugh!

[redbird]

I was baking apple cakelings. I haven't done this in a while, because it involves beating one egg into butter and sugar with a hand whisk; the way my shoulder felt, I won't be doing it often.

I'd mixed everything up, including some candied ginger and the apple. I measured out the flour, and poured it through the sieve into the rest of the ingredients.

There were insects of some kind left in the sieve. Wriggling. So clearly alive, no possibility that I was misidentifying them.

And I'd already put the flour into the other ingredients.

I'd have had to start over, with a fresh bag of flour. Except we don't trust the store downstairs for flour--canned goods, yes. Milk, which comes from the dairy in sealed bottles, yes. Not flour. Which would have involved a longish walk on a windy night, and starting over from the beginning.

Half the point of cakelings is that they're easy. Normally.

cattitude is getting his birthday candle in a brownie we picked up at the Greenmarket this morning.

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Oh, yech. We're having problems with moths in the pantry, so I am with you on the grossness of finding bugs in your food.

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Flour weevils.
Harmless but not very appeitizing, I'm afraid.

FF

[redbird]

That's reassuring, but I wouldn't have wanted to eat the cakelings after that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction when I got weavilly flour a few years ago. Out it all went, and I had a barely controllable, irrational indignation: I live in the future! Surely we have triumphed over weavilly wheat in the future!

Apparently this is a far-future accomplishment, while I live in the near-future.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Apparently this is a far-future accomplishment, while I live in the near-future.

Yes, that does explain a lot, e.g. the continuing absence of flying cars.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, yuck. How disgusting. What a shame.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, that /sucks/. I'm so sorry you went through all that - your poor shoulder - and then couldn't even have the incredibly appealing....apple-ing....sorry 'bout that...results. Especially when you haven't had them for a long time and wanted them for an occasion. Bleah.

(I wouldn't have been able to use the flour, either.)

I hope it's a really *good* brownie.

Re: Ugh!

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

that must have been disappointing.

though i admit that a few weevils have yet to discourage me from baking something; a little extra protein has never bothered me (once it stops moving; it's the wriggling that i don't like). no, i don't usually share such baked goods with guests, and it's also been a long time since i had weevils in my flour.

meal moths, now, they're annoying, because their webby stuff gets all over, and pretty much ruins the flour.

putting your flour into the freezer for a few days after buying it should do the critters in. yo can also heat it in the oven at 130F for 30 min. if i were you, i'd now investigate all packages in the cubboard, since most of the bugs don't just go for flour, but also for cereal, rice, grains, pasta. none of them are harmful to humans, so the food will be safe to eat after you've sifted them out, if you can overcome the grossness factor.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

That happened to me once with a bag of chocolate chips, of all things. I dumped some onto a bowl of ice cream and started eating it only to notice something wrong with the texture. :-(

[rosefox]

Could be worse. My father used to frequent a health food store where you scooped your own grains out of big bins (presumably into your reusable bags or other containers). One day he brought home a bag of brown rice that turned out to be about 30% moth chrysali, which promptly hatched. He ended up with little tiny moths everywhere in his office. I'm sure there were still some wandering around when he vacated the place years later.

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Huh, and I used to like those open containers. A cautionary tale you tell, to be sure.

And more directly for our LJ host - many sympathies! I regularly take time to appreciate what having a well-stocked kitchen means, to make up for the chores of having to actually do the restocking. (That's only tangental - lack-of-item being my usual thing, if I start on a baking project and have to abort.) It's been years since we've had bugs in the food, though I have had my own little traumas over the years. I'll have to remember what another of your posters says, about freezing staples overnight right when I bring them home, for future reference.

Crazy(and stuff like this is partly why - so more sympathies to you, once again)Soph

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Okay, I want to know. Did you use to say "cakelings" before associating with papersky?

[redbird]

No. I got the word, and the recipe, from her.

(If I were planning to put icing on them, they'd probably still be cupcakes, but I never do.)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

:-( I thought about baking apple cake yesterday, but ran out of time...

[angelsk.livejournal.com]

My mum had those - creepy!

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Oy! I hate when that happens. Most of my flour is tightly canistered, but a couple of the rarely-used flours I don't bother. I always have to check them, and toss frequently. So dissappointing, to be thwarted in baking.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Doncha just hate that bug thing? [shudder]

I know they're harmless, and I don't get squicked knowing that I've probably eaten flour-products-with-weevils many times in my life. But if I see them ahead of time? No way does the baking continue.

[intelligentrix.livejournal.com]

I just had to throw out everything in my cupboards that might be eaten by creepy crawlies. There were little piles of what looked like sawdust under various bags (even under my cutting board!) and we are still plagued with tiny flies. They are either drain flies or fruit flies or somethng similar. Their little corpses keep appearing in the freezer, so I suspect they laid their eggs in the damp mess the fridge had become after the power went out, and now they are hatching merely to die of the cold. We are leaving lots of soapy water in the sink, as we've heard this attracts them to their deaths.

Many moons ago, Joe was making chili at my house and after he had measured out the red pepper flakes and dumped them into the pot I noticed they were moving. He hadn't stirred them in yet, so we were able to scrape them off the top and go buy fresh. No one else ate it but us, so I feel justified in not wasting the entire pot.

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/writing/2003/10/flour-is-bad-when-it-wiggles.html

Yes, you could have just baked them dead and it wouldn't have hurt you. But weevily flour tastes *off* and besides, ugh.

-nalo