Sift your flour

Tanzania has a lot of bugs. From ants of multiple colors and shapes to huge centipedes to spiders to mosquitoes to a whole host of other flying/creeping/crawling pests that I don’t know the names of. You can probably see where this story is going…

So bugs are just kind of a way of life here. You learn to check the kettle for ants before boiling water (or your water glass for any that slipped by you), to check around the house for any uninvited guests that might have taken up residence if you’ve been gone awhile and how to transform your flip-flop into a deft weapon in the war to keep the bugs at bay.

But in many ways you also learn to just live with the bugs. I’ve started just taking spiders outside, rather than killing them, when I see them because I figure, what’s the point…it’s not like there’s not more around here anyway. Plus, it’s just as much their environment as it is mine.

Still, there are limits.

A few weeks back I thought I was getting very smart and proactive when I got a 5kilo bag of flour, along with some other groceries-in-bulk. Between the trek to town, weaving through the hordes of sweaty people in the market and the sweltering ride back on the dala dala, heavy duty grocery shopping is something you want to do as infrequently as possible. So, I thought with a stash of staples, like flour, rice, sugar and beans I’d never officially go hungry.

This morning I wanted to make some cookies for my neighbors as a small Christmas gift. So, I got out the requisite ingredients, including some butter that I had in the freezer (real butter is pretty rare here, so having the butter on hand was the whole reason I decided to make the cookies) and of course the flour.

Now, I’m not gonna lie…I’d noticed a few bugs in this flour before. But not being sure exactly what they were or how prolific they were I did the only sensible thing: I ignored them. But this morning I thought, this is gross and so I tried to fish them out until I thought I’d gotten them all and made the cookies (saving a couple for myself). The cookies turned out amazing…I had no idea how much real butter added to cookies! But as I was cleaning up I noticed a couple more bugs in the flour!! This was getting seriously gross.

Not sure what to do, I went up to the Madoffe’s house to ask for some advice. After a fairly hilarious conversation, in which I clarified that I had bugs in my FLOUR, not my FLOWER, I was told to put the flour on a tray in the sun for a few hours and then sift it. This I did, and taking the opportunity to peruse my other food for bugs, also decided to set out some dry beans in the sun. I had quite a production going on the ledge outside my house.

A few hours later I started sifting the flour back into its container. There were of course some of the little bugs I’d seen. Gross, but I was willing to overlook it since they were now going to be gone. However…and this is really pretty gnarly…there were also these OTHER bugs in there too…smaller, lighter colored, harder to spot. I made it through about half the 5 kilos of flower before I decided this was too disgusting and chucked the rest of it. Theoretically the flour I did keep is now sifted and bug free. We’ll see…I’m gonna check it in a few days and if I see bugs, it’s going!!

But now, the question is: do I eat the cookies I made and kept for myself?

I mean they have REAL butter. Don’t judge me.