All the grains, lovely organic grains from my favorite grocery store in San Antonio, dried fruit, herbs and spices off the shelves were destined for the garbage can because I know from sad experience that insects don’t have as refined taste as I do. When I see them in one bag, they’re bound to be in others as well.
Just as I was about to drop every Zip-loc bag from the cupboard into the trash can, I remembered Ada.
One day, after I had lived with her family for three months in Kazan and returned to Russia for another extended visit, Ada let me help her with the real work in the kitchen. One bag after another, we spread on the kitchen table the rice, flour and other grain products that the young man of the house had just brought in from the market. I thought Ada was just suspicious of these particular commodities, but she said no. “We have to check every bag for 'someone,'” she said with a sad look on her face.
With bags of barley, sesame seeds, and even Valhrona cocoa powder, hanging over the open maw of the kitchen garbage can, I felt as spoiled today as I did when Ada’s expression told me how privileged I was that I did not even think to check my grains for bugs when I was stocking my own kitchen.
I tore off a big piece of parchment paper, spread it on the dining room table and dumped the barley on it. Grains formed patterns of light and dark, straight lines and arcs, but nothing moved. Parchment paper was too plush for the larvae; I needed a less inviting surface to disengage them from their comfy couches, so I climbed up to reach the baking sheets in the highest cupboard near my 1915-era high, high, high kitchen ceiling.
I started to sift. Shaking the baking sheets pissed the larvae off, and they began to squirm visibly. I am still sifting to save the organic produce that was spawning insects in the relentless heat of Texas spring. So far, not so many larvae or newly emerged flies after all, although I did have to toss the currants.
Lots of Americans think their environment is more sanitary than the rest of the world, but that’s a misguided illusion. Even the food of the wealthy appeals to insects. Why wouldn’t it?
These insect eggs came in the grains I buy at the swanky supermarket in San Antonio, not at the Seguin store that screams on its plate glass window that it accepts WIC coupons or the unregulated Russian farm market.
Our food is just as much a part of the food chain as food is anywhere else. Yes, we have USDA regulations and quality control mechanisms, but they are not impregnable, nor could we expect them to be. Texas summer heat is bound to encourage the eggs that slipped through the cracks to hatch in their cushy, barley bed.
Careful cooks all over the world sift their grains, and I will be sifting with them from time to time. My ingredients are ultimately my responsibility. Good laws are only the beginning. Responsible stewardship is everyone’s responsibility.
If Ada hadn’t slipped up in her effort to show me only the world as she assumed I knew it, I would have thrown away more food today than a family of refugees in Darfur gets to eat in a week. And it would have been 98 percent waste of perfectly sound food.
What do people eat who are squeamish about food insect feet have trod?
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1 comment:
Very pretty design! Keep up the good work. Thanks.
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