Food Storage

[sheepdog 10]

Has anybody got any good tricks for keeping weevils out of flour that you keep in storage? It seems the only thing that works here is keeping it stored in the freezer, but most of the time we are really short on freezer space, so that isn't a practical solution. The nasty little bugs seem to get into every sack of flour or corn meal or pancake mix we get. I do like to keep a far amount of the basics on hand, stocked up in case of hard times if you will. I've even tried storing it in glass jars with tight lids and sometimes they still get into it. I swear sometimes I have to throw out more flour than we use. The also invade any cake or brownie mixes we buy, and they are hell on Ramen Noodles too. About the only thing they don't invade is sugar and salt. (Humm, think bugs may be more health concious than us people?) I remember my mom putting bay leaves in her flour jars, but not sure if that was for bugs or what she did it for. Don't know if it worked or not. My mom did a lot more cooking than I do, I suspect she would use up flour faster than the bugs could get to it, so I really don't know if the bay leaves did any good or not. If that was even what they were for.

[velma 6]

Man, I hate those bugs.. Here in India, we have a lot of dishes that require different kinds of flour and we often find the flour attacked by bugs & bugs and some more bugs!!!! So annoying, its even worse as it gets hotter here. Your mom was right in adding bay leaves, we add those in the rice & flour.Though there are other remedies too, like salt, garlic, cloves & I think baking soda. I know for certain that mother adds chunks of baking soda in the rice along with the bay leaves to keep the bugs at bay. Since the rice is washed thoroughly, we don't really worry about the taste being hampered but the leaves add a really fine aroma :)I usually spray vinegar around the jar and on the jar itself since, this is really useful but terribly useless against bugs already present in the flour itself (90% of the flour bought usually is already infested with larvae & so on). For small bags of flour, dump it in the freezer and use the amount you need... Maybe I'll ask dear old mother for the exact methods of weevil annihilation... This might sound gross but the flour is pretty salvageable if you pass it through a sieve since you can toss away all the nasties and keep the flour.

[sheepdog 10]

Yes, do ask your mom about this one! Aren't parents wonderful, at least when you yourself get old enough to appreciate them? Ok, I'll admit it, I have on occasion sifted out some weevily flour, so no, I don't find that overly gross. When your making something and already have most of the ingredients in the bowl, you really don't have a lot of other options except letting it all go to waste, so what else can you do? You have confirmed my suspicions however, that a lot of the flower and stuff we buy is already contaminated when we buy it. Hummm...I just had a thought. I wonder if microwaving would kill eggs or the bugs if they were already in the flour when you bought it? Of course, I also wonder if a sack of flour would explode if you microwaved it? Boy wouldn't that make a mess! Anyone brave enough to pop a bag of flour in the microwave for this experiment? I'm not. I hate house cleaning.

[nanna 0]

I have only ever experienced bugs in four once.Years ago we had two young kids work was scarce in mrdees line of work and we were claiming benefits.Now and again we recieved food packages on top of our benefits.Well this one time we had quite a few bags of flour given to us which contained these bug things in it but we still used the flour.They were 1kg bags of flour and used to store it in its own bag in the food cupboard.Since we came to England to live i have never experienced these bugs in any flour and i always have three types of flour in my cupboards Self raising flour Plain flour and Corn flour.How i store these flours the corn flour i keep it in the box it comes in the self raising flour and plain flour i keep in two jars i fill them up and the rest of the bag of flour i keep in the bag it comes in and refill the jars when they are empty.The two jars i use are glass storage jars with screw on lids.