No worms

The first time I bought flour here, I posted a photo of the bag on facebook, adding “good to know”.

On the bag was the recommendation: “sifted, no worms”

I thought it was hilarious. Although I also learned from my friends to keep flour in the fridge. Just to make sure.

But this week I got a peak of our future, by going back decennia.

It was the little bag of pistachios in the back of our kitchen cupboard. I just kept forgetting it was there.

We would keep on buying new pistachios to nibble on right away. Even our terrible two loves pistachios so we made sure to never be short on them.

The location of that ol’ bag was unpractical. Tucked away behind the peanut butter and the Tahina. When looking for snacks I just always skipped that shelf.

Until last week. I needed to create more space on this particular shelf and found the long forgotten bag. Deciding to throw the now stale batch away, I took one last look at the contents of the bag.

Let me first explain something. I have elaborated on our apartment before. On how I learnt this country is a far cry from the organized Western World as I know it. Things break. Things get shabby. Things leak. And amidst it all, one tends not to notice when things get a little shabby here and there.

Dirty floors? Sure thing with all the kids around. Dusty surfaces? The desert is not far away, and paired with the air pollution in Jerusalem things get grimy pretty fast. And apart from that, with helicopters roaring over our heads, shots in the not so far distance, who cares about the upkeep of the house.

In short, I hadn’t really noticed a lot of extra dirt in that cupboard.

With the colder weather and thanks to Ze’ev’s poison I haven’t seen a roach in ages. I am slowly relaxing about the whole tiny animals situation here.

Until I lifted the bag of long forgotten pistachios. The first thing I noticed was that the contents had turned in to pistachio shells and… something that looked like saw dust.

And then it became clear: the insides of the bag moved. My pistachios had become alive.

Quite literary, actually. The bag was swarming with maggots. Tiny cream colored new friends with darker heads, or tails for that matter. Never having enjoyed fishing I haven’t seen that many maggots before.

A closer look learned the whole cupboard was infested. Lots of pets for my animal loving middle child who radically changed her mind about becoming a vet.

My reaction was an interesting combination of disgust and some sort of “homeschooling teaching opportunity interest”. Not to mention a bout of obsessive compulsive cleaning afterwards.

The day passed. A last lone little one crawled up the tiles in the kitchen. My disgust had now almost vanished. It was ironic, really.

Here I was in my vegetarian kitchen, killing living creatures. But also in touch with tomorrow. Maggots are wonderful sources of protein. Possibly one of the more important sources of protein of the future.

I am regretting not having been courageous enough to fry our home grown livestock. They might have been quite a treat: Pistachio fed Maggots.

They had also snacked on various other foods they had found in that cupboard. And as grossed out as the kids were, they couldn’t part from their beloved sprinkles.  So now we check the sandwich for movement before eating.

Not long before moving back home again, we start feeling like seasoned Middle East travellers.

Pistachios, anyone?