Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Weevils Wobble....

A friend of ours recently shared her horror at finding weevils in the weetabix (yes, you can get Weetabix here - lovely when mushed up with hot milk and sugar!) and since hearing that news, I've frequently found weevils in our jars of rice. If you've never come across a weevil, here's one, looking particularly menacing close-up. Upon googling 'weevil' they are apparently quite harmless. Or they spread e-coli. All depends which site you look at. Good news is that they don't live in the cupboard, they are actually already in the grain of rice, growing, before you even get it home from the supermarket. In fact, I picked up a bag of rice in our local supermarket the other day and it already had large weevils crawling in it! Free weevils with every purchase. Bargain. Bad news is that as it takes a while for them to come out of the grain, you and I probably cannot, or don't want to, count how many weevil pupae we've eaten over the years in their formative state. Marvelous. In Eastern folk medicine, weevils are believed to be capable of curing or relieving cancer, diabetes and AIDS amongst other diseases, by eating them. Surprisingly, there is no scientific background to back up this claim, but given that I have none of the preceding diseases, maybe it's preventative! Apparently, there is also an Indietronic (?!) band from Yorkshire, God's own county, going by the name of The Weevils too. Who knew? So, as tonight's weevil discovery are languishing in a trash bag well outside the apartment, I am adapting dinner from chilli con carne with rice to a spicy pasta dish. Last I heard weevils don't live in pasta, but I may just have to google and find out... after dinner!