Weevils in the Kitchen

The most disgusting thing in the kitchen is to see bugs rising to the top of a pot of cooking pasta.  Turns out we have weevils in our kitchen.  I have no idea how we got them, but they were in the pasta, barley, bread, kidney beans, and black eyed peas. So we had to go through all of the dried goods and throw out anything that had the weevils in them.  Every thing else got put into ziplock bags and put into the upper cabinets.  According to the internet, it could take up to a month before weevils appear from eggs, so our lentils, popcorn, and orzo are in quarantine until the end of April.

Probably the worst part about weevils (besides just being gross) is that we have no way of knowing where they came from.  It could be that they came in from outside, or that they were already in one of the packaged foods.  A lot of our dried foods do come from manufacturers in the Middle East, so I'm not sure what the general cleanliness of their facilities is like.

From now on, we'll store open dried goods in zip lock bags or maybe glass storage containers if the weevils can get into plastic.  This is a gross inconvenience, but hopefully we'll get rid of them all quickly.  Or they'll eat us out of house and home by the time we get back from Italy!  Bay leaves and cloves are apparently natural deterrents for weevils, so we might try putting some leaves in the cabinets as a bit of extra protection.