Help! I've been invaded!

If you eat meat, why not just eat them? They will be dead if you cook them. Insects are the upcoming food of the future, we hear. Can An Expert tell us if they exude any nasty substances?

I don't eat meat but I wouldn't throw away good food that had a few bugs in. Yes if it's heaving...

I have to keep all my food in plastic boxes because mice, but haven't thought before about being attacked from within. Will check.

We can't go on throwing out 1/3 of all the food that's produced. This is in the same category as wonky carrots.
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I keep all flours, sugars, salt in the fridge to keep them dry.
If you let weevils complete their life cycle would you get meal-worms? Birds love these and they're expensive so perhaps we could grow our own.

Is that what weevils turn into? I never knew that apricot

According to my friend Google weevils are beetles (and I'd always thought they were larva/grubs of some sort..too much Patrick O'Brian, methinks)

We had a biscuit beetle infestation a few years ago, which sounds very similar. We threw away everything that was infested, emptied the cupboards for a few days and hoovered up every single beetle we found. That seemed to do the trick. And I invested in some airtight containers.

Evidently weevils don't turn into mealworms, if they're beetles. If mealworms are larvae they must change into whopping big beetles.
I like beetles and silverfish are interesting as they're the same as they were millions of years ago. Maybe not millions but lots.
I have a little book called Why Not Eat Insects? No thanks but they wouldn't do you any harm.

I always soak pudding rice before cooking. Recently I saw masses of little dead bodies lying in the water. Yuk. When I looked in the rice jar it was moving.

I became fed up with our spices. They were usually out of date and worse still, my curries tasted like those from the 1950s

We bought a pestle and mortar and fresh seeds from an Asian shop. What a difference

I keep( the little jars of herbs and spices from Swartz), to store the seeds and a jam jar for cardamom. I like 2-3 cardamom in fresh tomato soup.

I enjoy pounding the seeds into a fragrant powder. May buy a curry leaf plant for the bottom of the garden.

adamh do you make your own spicy dishes?

magnifying glass in hand now before I go into the cupboard.

NanKate I guess it's extra protein.....

I keep flour etc in airtight containers, mostly from habit (we had mice in the farmhouse that were seemingly impervious to cats, traps and poison) so haven't come across this (yet!) keeps fingers crossed

So far no problems

When we lived in Jamaica we had weevils in flour and just sieved them out.