Pantry Moths

I am utterly disgusted. Let me start in the beginning...
When Jason and I first moved in together, oh, a zillion years ago, we went on our first grocery shopping trip together. He wanted to buy all this food for cooking. I was against it; we were never home. I worked and went to school full time, Jason worked full time and our social schedule was full. I didn’t want to be a nag, so I let it go and we bought WAY too many groceries. Months later, we had a fruit fly problem in the kitchen, you know, those annoying little flies. I took advice from my mom and grandma and kept a spray bottle full of diluted dish soap and I was constantly spraying the bugs. I think the bugs became immune to the soap because after a while they wouldn't die! The problem continued to get worse as my spray bottle turned into a full bleach solution. Finally, one morning I was so disgusted I told Jason that he can either help me find out what the problem was, end it once and for all, or take the baby out for the day while I “bombed” the house. To his credit, he stayed and helped. So, we put all of the dishes on our bed, we cleaned out the cupboards, threw away all of the food, and finally, when I got to the bottom cupboard full of baking pans that were never used, I found the source. The fruit flies made a home WAY in the back of the cupboard in a bag of Vidalia onions that Jason just “had” to buy during our very first shopping excursion. He swore that day in the store that he LOVED Vidalia’s and could “eat them like an apple.” I threw the onions at him. The flies were mad. There had to be THOUSANDS of them! For months I thought the onion-y smell was coming from the garbage disposal! We covered all doors and windows in plastic and bombed the kitchen. We came home 4 hours later and cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. The fruit fly problem was gone and Jason is never allowed to buy a bag of onions again!

2 years ago, in a different house, we had a problem with little white moths flying out of the kitchen cabinets every time we opened them. I looked it up online and found that they were Pantry Moths. They come into the house from the store in the boxes of rice, potatoes, etc. The website said I had to throw all of the dry food away and clean the cabinets. So, that’s what I did. They said that all of the food that doesn’t come in a completely sealed bag has to be stored in the freezer for a few days after purchase then stored in a Ziploc. That’s what I did. No more Pantry Moths and a giant grocery bill ensured I never make THIS mistake again!

Tonight, I wanted to make rice with dinner. I have a collection of different kitchen jars where I keep coffee grounds, rice, popcorn seeds, etc. It’s a nice, multi-functional decoration for the kitchen. I reached up to my vacuum-sealed glass jar containing the rice. Inside the jar were thin black flies and a ton of maggots. More Pantry Moths… The rice is fairly new and I froze it after I bought it, then I put it in the jar… But to no avail. What’s nice is that the flies were contained to the rice and I don’t have to do the whole throw away, bomb, clean, shop, freeze, and Ziploc thing again, but I am still discouraged and disgusted. I’ll never buy rice again! Imagine how many bugs we eat when we don't check the dry foods before we cook them! UGH! I am so disgusted! I SWEAR I will NEVER buy rice again!!!!!!