apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I used to buy this great imported pasta from Italy and it would sometimes have bits of plaster in it... always made me think of ancient sculptures having wars over the pasta and the evidence ended up in my bag.

once when i was little my mom opened up a package of ground beef to cook for lunch... and there was a bug in it. as in, a complete head-thorax-six-legs beetle. ugh. my mom cooked the beef anyway. double ugh.

I worked in a grocery store through high school and college, and a customer once returned a bag of salad because it had a grasshopper in it. I tried to tell her it was full of protein, but she wasn't buying it. No pun intended.

LitNerd -- she returned it? She couldn't just pick it out and wash the greens? Where did she think the salad came from in the first place?

Sigh. It makes me sad how some people don't realise that their food comes from nature and nature sometimes has bugs.

A friend of mine once found a curly black hair in a packaged cookie. Our visions of how it got there were much less sweet and romantic than inter-pasta love.

Sara Moulton tells a story of looking through corn husks for bugs and the farmer telling her "If you find a bug, you should be happy, because it means I don't use pesticides." Seems like a fair point.

My mom, an excellent gardener, says the same thing @allisen! When I bring veggies home she always tells me to be sure I wash them well, and soak the greens. Once I was driving home with 30 pounds of fresh produce in the back seat and a huge bug got out of one of the bags, wreaking havoc inside the vehicle at 60MPH. Thank goodness for automatic windows. And on more than one occasion I've found inchworms on my salad plate. I don't mind... But I don't eat 'em either. :) It's just a healthy reminder of where my food comes from.

I must admit, it's a long road moving from fear of bugs to acceptance of them in your produce. The rationale that produce is from nature and bugs are often around it while it's growing makes total sense, and I'm working to be ok with that, but when you grow up your whole life with bug fears, your first instinct is always to recoil and freak out. :-)

Nearly 7 years ago I bought a package of chocolate wafers. I loved those wafers' taste so I ate them practically without breathing. Unfortunately I had to breathe as a tiny piece of glass found its way from the package into my mouth. Very unpleasant.

The lone ziti in there is sort of poignant and sweet. Much better than that broom handle piece my parents once found baked into a loaf of bread.

When I was about 12 I went to the corner store with a friend of mine and we bought candy. Her peanut butter cups had maggots in them. As in, completely infested. She didn't eat it. I think we took it back to the store.

I also remember helping my Mom make Chili Con Carne once. The chili powder we had was bug infested, so my Mom sifted it and used it anyway. She made me promise not to tell anyone.

Gross, childhood stories aside, a few bugs here or there on produce doesn't bother me. I just wash them off. I think our society is a little too squeamish about things like that.

we found a little inchworm/caterpillar thing in an ear of corn a few weeks ago (this was after we'd cooked it in its husk). while i did feel good that at least it was clearly fresh and organic...i'm pretty sure we ended up throwing that ear of corn away.

once when i was little i found a staple in a pre-packaged rice krispy treat. much less pleasant!

Someone at my knitting group was just warning me about maggots in peanut butter cups - apparently this happened to one of her friends in college. Seems like that's a better thing to check the kids' candy for than razor blades (since they're pretty much urban-mythological). Also, ew.

I once found a live ladybug in a container of spring mix.

I found a pinto bean in a can of chickpeas.

This isn't a packaged food story, but my mom found two giant box staples in her chicken dish at an Indian restaurant.

while eating a potluck lunch at my job (catered by students as well as fellow teachers) i started mixing up my rice and beans around and found a roach. we promptly but discreetly hid the beans from everyone else.

I found a caterpillar in my cabbage last week. Unfortunately, it was squashed when I put the cabbage on the counter.

We once bought a bag of cat food that was infested with maggots but it wasn't the cats that clued us in, they ate it anyways till we took it back.

My mother has found tiny fish inside larger fish and eggs that have been fertilized and are partly chicken (ugh).

The worst thing I've ever found was pantry moth larvae in some granola. Not only was it gross, but they infested all the dry food, even things like red pepper.

Sadly, on several occassions we've opened our rice bucket (air tight!) to find a full on infestation of tiny bugs. I once heard it's impossible to keep the eggs out of the rice so left in the heat and dark for too long most rice becomes infested. Don't know if this is true....

Not an ugh, but definitely an interloper:

Our last batch from the CSA had a bunch of lady bugs in it... I washed bok choy, kale, napa cabbage, and they ALL had at least one lady bug each! It was cute. All of the lady bugs survived their brief bath and we let them go out the back door.

I found a bug head skeleton in my cooked lentils. Then a few weeks later I chewed on a big juicy bug in my cooked kale. It had a definite 'meaty' flavor; I picked out the remains from my mouth and felt sick to my stomach for days. I'm trying to shake it - I love kale so much...

Back in the 1970s my mom was cooking dinner for her and my dad (it was taco night) and she found part of a mouse in a can of refried beans. It took her a long time before she could buy canned beans again.

Other than the occasional worm in a fresh ear of corn or the random "who's hair is this" in something, I've never had something icky in my food.

Oh except when sometimes a tater tot likes to stow away in my French fries...that's always a delight :o)

I like the tater tots and fries mix up, I think that's happened to me as well. :) Or vice-versa. You know, I've never found anything truly nasty in my food. I guess I'm lucky that way. Although, we do have "dog hair garnish" around here. Lots of it.

i have also experienced a tater tot/french fry mix up AND a pasta mix up. i don't mind those. they were kinda cute!

but i can't even think about handling a bug situation. uh-uh no friggin way.

if you've read michael pollan's the omnivore's dilemma, then you know there are "acceptable" amounts of bugs that get into canned foods. :)

I've found a catepillar in my salad, it's had survived my mum making the salad and lasted the day in the container, I've had a moth squashed into my Nutri Grain, and when I was younger I cracked an egg to make a cake and my hands got covered in blood- a fertilised egg. It took me awhile before I took the job of cracking eggs for mum's cakes again. And when I was in high school a friend found what looked like a furry tail in a premade sausage roll.

I found a jellied lizard in a jar of fig jam. I wondered what the "stick" on my toast was and it turned out to be a lizard tail. The people at the store were very unkind and insisted on giving me credit instead of a refund (something I would fight these days).

My father used to drink V8 on a daily basis. After emptying a large 62oz can one day we heard a sloshing sound whenever we moved the can around. My mother used a can opener to get the V8 can open and inside we found what we assumed to be the remains of a fish. Turns out the V8 processing factory used a diverted local river to cool part of the factory, and a break in the overhead water line lead to 'several' fish jumping into cooking kettles....My father in the end just shrugged his shoulders and the nice people at V8 sent us a free month supply of V8 Fruit bottles.

I usually always find a strand of spaghetti in my ravioli when I eat at an Italian restaurant, or fetuccini in my linguine... I made up an urban legend in my mind that the cooks in the kitchen always put a different pasta shape in with your pasta dish for good luck. :)

MegP, that's a very cute explanation.

My mom found a white ceramic cup with lipstick on the rim in a bag of sugar when I was a kid. We still have that coffee cup (clean, now!) hanging around their house!

I bit through a worm that was in my apple in 4th grade. I don't think I ate another fresh apple until 6th grade.

And Broccoli worms are the most vile creatures.

And a moth in my instant oatmeal packet.

Found maggots in my cereal once. How's that for Halloween?

I've also cracked an egg that had two yokes in it. In Japan, that's good luck. :)