aaaaaaaaaa

[silverflight8]

So I was putting rice into the rice cooker today for dinner. I looked down and I saw something brown amongst the white rice.

It was a mealworm, maybe half a centimeter long.

Now picture the scene: I'm squatting on the floor, just staring at this bowl of rice. (I keep rice in the bottom cupboards because it's heavy.) I was frozen.

On one hand, sometimes people pick weevils out of their flour and use it anyway. I had probably a quarter or a fifth of the bag left. I looked fearfully back into the bag; with some shaking I spotted another tiny one and abruptly stopped. The one in my bowl was mostly not moving, except when I shook it and it started walking. But that would be such a waste. I could pick them out. I could.

On the other hand, I was completely revolted.

I must have sat there for a minute or so, watching the little mealworm, but then the central question arose in my mind: can you bring yourself to eat this?

HAHA NO.

So that was my evening.

Lessons learned: do not buy so much rice when you don't eat that often. (I think the last time I ate rice from there was a couple weeks, so I'm going to assume there weren't any in there then, for my own sanity. I bought the rice a good year ago.) Don't keep rice there for so long and assume nothing's going to try to eat it. And for god's sake, look before you do anything!

The irony is that I knew it was a mealworm because in grade two, we had raised them on oats. I was quite happy to play with them at that age, but I suppose even seven-year-old me would have balked at eating those oats. (EWWWW.) I suppose it's a mercy that they were still in worm-stage instead of the beetle stage. That would have been infinitely worse.

I'm sorry to anyone on my flist who I recently friended. I swear my entries are usually much more palatable but I have to tell someone. The whole world.

Comments

[cordialcount]

... I mix brown rice and white rice at home. The brown rice grains rather resemble worms when cooked amidst the white rice grains, so I try not to look at my bowl too much to begin with, and now I'm terrified of what I may have already eaten.

Sorry your dinner went so! Shuddering in sympathy.

[silverflight8]

Haha oh god. Ignorance is bliss. I'm pretty sure the reason mine developed GROSS UGLY BUGS was because it was rarely eaten and had been sitting there for an actual year + months. I don't eat rice that often (a childhood of it has kind of...left me apathetic, and also I often don't put on the cooker before I start frying.) So as long as you don't have it for eveeeer you probably wouldn't have problems. My family regularly bought gigantic bags of rice, I've eaten rice for decades and honestly this is the first time. Which is also why I'm so grossed out.

Thanks. It's kind of funny in retrospect...sorta. Someday it will be really funny.

[ar]

OH DEAR GOD. This is awful to say, but I'm glad it happened to you and not me--I'm not sure my roommate would ever eat my cooking again! You have all my sympathies, poor thing. I hope you found something else edible for the evening.

FWIW, if you get an airtight container to put your rice in, you can still reap the benefits of buying it in bulk. I always transfer mine immediately after I buy it--same with flour and sugar.

[silverflight8]

Haha I'm glad it's not happening to you! I may be motivated to share my pain with the entire internets, but I definitely don't want anyone else finding them in their rice. Especially since that would make global populations of mealworms bigger D:

Hm, good idea! I do that with flour, but I'd bought a lot of rice (ten pounds, I think?) I should do that with sugar, you're right. I've got it wrapped up in a plastic bag, but now I'm kind of afraid to look inside (I keep sugar in a small tin for easy access, and refill periodically.)