EEEEKKKK!

August 24,2010

Today I had a truly tropical, disgusting experience! I started mixing bread but had to open the new sack of flour I bought yesterday since I didn’t have enough white flour to finish the batch. I measured out a cup and dumped it onto the partially mixed dough. EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK! Little black bugs were crawling everywhere in the flour! I scooped off all the flour that I could and carefully examined the little bit I couldn’t get off to make sure there were no black creepie-crawlies in it. I recalled hearing Nelda Duke tell about their mission in Ghana; she said they got so used to having bugs in their flour, they just sifted them out. African bugs must be bigger than Filipino ones. I shook one cup of flour though a fine wire sieve and there were still black bugs—A HANDFUL OF THEM. What’s more, I then noticed there were all sorts of squirmy pale yellow worms in the sifted flour that I hadn’t noticed previously! “That bag has got to go”, I exclaimed. “I don’t want it in our house!” Larry agreed and dutifully carried it out to the big garbage cans outside. It would have been bad enough to discover a cooked bug in the bread as I was eating it, but I would have been mortified if a guest had discovered it! We have had no problem with flour before this. Maybe I will resort to buying smaller bags of flour to see if they are uninfected. (This was about a 10 pound bag--$10 worth.) No, I am not ready to come home yet; maybe if I find a snake in my closet I will consider it. I will for sure check the flour before adding it to the rest of the ingredients in a recipe, however. WE do keep all flour, sugar, etc. in tightly covered plastic containers once we open the bags, but that’s no guarantee there aren’t eggs in the flour. I did keep one container of flour in the freezer to begin with, but the freezer is so small that I don’t have room right now. Larry went immediately to the closest grocery store and bought me more flour; I guess he wants me to still bake bread.

We are anxiously awaiting news of the new baby.

Love, Mom, Mary, Grandma