Bugs in the cupboards :-(

Insects, as I've mentioned before, are one of the less pleasant aspects of living in Cyprus. I've managed to avoid most ants this year, by cleaning out all the food cupboards in the spring and spraying with Biokill. I generally keep all opened packets of food in plastic containers, too.

But tonight I opened a new packet of basmati rice, only to find rather a number of tiny black insects in it. I wasn't going to throw the whole packet away - for one thing I needed to use some, for another it's quite expensive, for another I hated the thought of wasting 500g rice! I don't know where the insects came from or how they got in, since it was a plastic bag. Perhaps they were there at Metro when I bought it, or perhaps they crawled in from our kitchen. But I emptied it out into a sieve, then measured the rice I need and washed it repeatedly until all the bugs were gone.

With the remaining rice, I squashed dozens of the insects as they crawled out, then gradually put rice back in an old coffee-jar with a screwtop lid. I don't think any bugs could get in that! I didn't worry too much about it, since rice gets washed and then cooked thoroughly anyway. But it wasn't very pleasant.

After that I checked the cupboard. Foolishly I had left a half-opened pack of spaghetti sitting on top of some jars, rather than putting it in the usual tall container. It had some bugs in it too, but they were just crawling about so easy enough to shake off when I did put the spaghetti in the container! Then I found a cardboard pack of lasagne which was about six months old and unopened, and FULL of bugs, burrowing into it. There was no way to save that so I threw it all in the bin. Then I wiped out the cupboard and sprayed again with Biokill before putting everything back.

Thankfully the cereal and flour cupboards do not appear to have any insects. I'm even more thankful that I didn't discover these insects on Saturday, and that the pasta I used then was in an airtight container, so unaffected.