Insects in Spices in Cyprus

It was a normal Saturday, late in September.  I usually change the sheets and clean the house on Saturday mornings, in a fairly leisurely way.  Before that on this particular morning I planned to prepare our favourite pinto bean curry for the evening, and put it to simmer in the slow-cooker.  I had also bought a small crate of tomatoes, and was going to make apple and tomato chutney, as we had run out.

I had forgotten to soak the beans overnight, but put them in cold water before going for my early morning walk with my friend Sheila. So when I had finished breakfast (and turned on the air conditioning) I decided to make the chutney first. I chopped onions and apples and tomatoes, and crushed garlic... and realised I didn't have enough malt vinegar.

So I popped out, despite the heat, to the supermarket just around the corner, and bought another bottle of vinegar.

Next I wanted to add the spices.  I opened the jar of cayenne, to add a quarter teaspoonful.... and something moved inside it.  I closed it quickly, and tipped it on its side, and held it up to the light.  To my horror, there were several tiny insects crawling around.  I shuddered, and decided not to use cayenne.  I picked up the chili flakes... and they were crawling too.  Both jars were only about a quarter full, and I could see that the tops weren't fully closed - although we have never had insects in them before.

So I checked every other spice jar carefully. Most were fine, but I also found insects in the ginger and the paprika.  (When I googled later, curious as to what insects could possibly live on hot spices, I learned that they are not unusual.  They were most likely either cigarette beetles or drugstore beetles. I did not research too deeply so have no idea which one it might have been. I don't really want to know).

I have to confess that I temporarily abandoned both my humanitarian and ecological principles.  I did not empty the jars somewhere outside to let the insects escape, and to allow me to put the jars for recycling. No, I sealed the lids as tightly as I could, and put the infested jars, in a sealed plastic produced bag, in the dustbin.

Then I went to the supermarket again, despite it being even hotter, and bought new jars of the four relevant spices.

By this time the beans were ready to be boiled, so I finished making the chutney and put that to simmer. Then I thoroughly cleaned the spice rack, and sprayed it with biokill, before replacing the jars.

It was past eleven o'clock by the time I put the curry in the slow-cooker, but it's a fairly forgiving recipe and was fine.  It was later still when I finished the chutney.  The kitchen surfaces were chaotic so I sorted them... and I still hadn't started cleaning the house.  So much for a relaxed afternoon reading and possibly writing....

The dusting and mopping was rather cursory that day. But at least the spice shelf was considerably cleaner than it had been, and I had - hopefully - a year's supply of apple and tomato chutney in the cupboard.

Spicy confusion... and a happy resolution

One of the things we loved about this house, when we first saw it almost exactly seven years ago, was the kitchen. It was well organised, with a lot of attractive wooden cupboards. It had a dishwasher - a big plus point for me - and an electric oven with a gas hob, my ideal combination.

It also had a rather neat little shelf arrangement above the oven, intended - we assumed - for holding little jars of herbs and spices. Whether or not that was the intent, that's what I put there when we moved in. Except that it took me ages to find anything, and sometimes we had too many to fit.  So after a year or two,  I organised them alphabetically, which helped somewhat. But there were still too many... and so random jars were put on a different shelf, and the alphabetical system fell down almost completely.

Then, in about the middle of last year, I realised, in a stroke of sheer brilliance, that the easiest thing would be to put the spices - which I use quite a lot - in the convenient shelf:

While keeping herbs (and replacement spices, on occasion) in the other little shelf next to the oven: 

I'm not renowned for good organisation, and it took me long enough to come up with this idea... but it seems to work very well. Everything fits nicely, and the alphabetical system makes it easy to find everything.

Except for one little detail...

I had two spice jars of the same brand, containing powders of the same colour, and they came next to each other in the alphabet: 

Not really a problem, as they are clearly labelled. And while I normally use real garlic, crushed, in curries or carrot-ginger soup, it wouldn't matter if I accidentally sprinkled in some extra garlic rather than ginger. Particularly if I noticed what I was doing so that I then added the ginger anyway.

It would, however, be a big problem if I put garlic powder in gingerbread. And very strange if I sprinkled ginger rather than garlic powder on roasted tomatoes, or potato wedges. So I was careful, and tried to remember to check the label every time. Once or twice I did get very close to adding the wrong item... it's so easy just to pull a jar off the shelf in auto-pilot without bothering to look at the label. When suffering from a long cold, as has been the case recently, my sense of smell isn't been too great.

What concerned me the most was that I like to sprinkle half a teaspoon or so of ginger powder onto my breakfast each morning. There are times when I have breakfast fairly early, somewhat in a zombie-like fashion because I'm not yet fully awake. Or, by contrast, I sometimes feel shattered after going for a 4km walk, buying fruit, and cleaning the house before breakfast.

So although - thankfully - I never did make the mistake of sprinkling garlic on my granola and yogurt, I felt faintly anxious about it every time. In a low-key sort of way, which I didn't quite realise until, running out of ginger recently, I spotted this jar in a local shop:

A different brand! 

It doesn't look like the garlic powder!

There is no way I would accidentally pick up the wrong one....just so long as the garlic doesn't start coming in this kind of container too. 

They - whoever 'they' might be - say that small things please small minds. So when I say that this quite made my day, I wonder if this means that I am just a Bear of Very Little Brain.