Ohio lunch workers know the values of choosing the lesser of two weevils. They found boll weevil beetles in dry noodles, removed those they could see, and then served the noodles. They did, however, remove the big ones that they could find.
While the Reagan Administration may have counted ketchup as a vegetable, I assume the Ohio schools are not counting weevil beetles as protein.
Parents are not happy, but school officials have noted that the noodles were boiled.
The school fessed up in a letter and the district’s food services director, Phyllis Holsinger, resigned and two other cooks were given five-day, unpaid suspensions.
This will not help dispel many of our memories of “the lunch lady” from our public elementary school cafeterias. However, the clip below shows the superintendent preparing to answer questions from parents:
Source: Washington Post
L K
Well, her ankle healed, but she’s gone now. Both she and my dad would be over 100 by now, were they still living. Thanks, though.
Buckeye, that is a true horror story. I have a stand mixer but use a hand mixer for small jobs and did not know about the flour getting in it from the vents. Now that you mention it, it is pretty logical. You can bet I’ll vacuum mine the next time I get it out. Thanks for the tip. I hope your mom’s ankle healed up and she’s OK.
“I’ve watched my mom pick weevils (probably cereal, not boll, weevils, sometimes called Indian Moths) from rice, spaghetti, macaroni, etc. and I lived through it.”
“weevils wobbil but they won’t boil out”
well that’s not true….weevils float when you boil them and can then be easily skimmed off the top…weevils claim to fame seems to be as crop destroyers but I haven’t been able to find any notation on just what diseases they may innately carry and pass on. They are however, one of the initial inspirations to introducing chemical control(arsenics and DDT) of crop pests.
Like Rachel Carson, I prefer to boil the lil buggars and hazard the occasional crunch…..
‘Every southern state soon learned about the benefits of cotton crops that matured early (before weevil populations
exploded) and the virtues of removing the stalks where weevils “over-wintered.” But once again politics brought the plan to naught.’ ~http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/colloqpapers/09mcwilliams.pdf
L K
My mom broke her ankle and came to stay with us (from an air conditioned apartment in Michigan) and I foolishly brought all her cereal along since we didn’t eat the same type.
It took over 2 years to get rid of the eggs/larvae/moths since they lay the eggs in crevices and eventually you see the larvae crawling about. Not just the kitchen but the bedroom ceiling!
I’ve been very vigilant ever since.
Also, flour can get in the ventilation holes of your mixer and you will find unexpected lumps in your cake batter if you don’t vacuum them occasionally.
Buckeye: “… watched my mom pick weevils (probably cereal, not boll, weevils, sometimes called Indian Moths) from rice, spaghetti, macaroni, etc. and I lived through it.”
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I recall that to some extent especially when visiting my grandmother in the south. No air conditioning or de-humidifying in the summer and it got humid! There was bread (biscuits) baked twice a day and cornbread was pretty regularly on the table also. The flour and cornmeal was always sifted. Not sifted in the customary sense, just scooped into the sifter and then the sifter was tapped so that the flour would fall through leaving any weevils in the sifter. It was just common knowledge that in the summer any insect eggs in any grain would hatch. I saw a quick hand dip into the sifter and remove something for examination more than once 🙂
As my mother got older and her sight deteriorated, I would be visiting (in the summer) and she would ask me to check her cornmeal and/or flour for bugs. She had carried the inevitably of bugs in the flour in summer to the north and into an air conditioned house.
weevils wobbil but they won’t boil out
anon nurse
Thanks for that vid.
Nobody could quite say things (albeit with understandable vulgarity) like George Carlin.
Why didn’t he start a religion???
DAMN!
Oh yeah, it would have been believable.
Having finally looked up New Boston, will I never learn, it’s in the Appalachian Valley. I’m not sure how old these lunch workers are, but being a child in the depression era, I was taught to never throw ANYTHING away unless it was spoiled or dangerous.
I’ve watched my mom pick weevils (probably cereal, not boll, weevils, sometimes called Indian Moths) from rice, spaghetti, macaroni, etc. and I lived through it.
We always kept rice in the freezer and when my son asked why, I told him so the bugs wouldn’t hatch. He didn’t care for rice anyway.
Now I would throw anything like that away, but now I can afford to. I still keep rice in the freezer.
I can remember my mom crying because all the canned tomatos spoiled one year.
James has the answer.
Remember all those salmonella contaminated eggs? Those that were returned went into products that were cooked, like cookies and fast food egg breakfasts.
Many cultures around the world consider tarantulas, scorpions and beetle grubs a delicacy. I turned down a candied grasshopper at a sushi bar once.