so here's the situation: you're making boil-in-bag brown rice for lunch (oh so yummy with butter and parmesan cheese). you go in the kitchen to check and discover that a small moth, drawn by the heat, has fallen in the pot and is resting (well, dead) on top of the bag of rice. you know that the rice is now suffused, however minutely, with mothness. you scoop out said moth, and debate what to do. on the one hand, it's just a bag of rice. on the other, you're hungry, and it's ready.
assume for this exercise that you are manically bug-avoidant, especially moths with their flutteriness and that ... that powedery stuff on them. eww.
what do you do?
i ate the rice. i reminded myself of how i know that there are actually federal guidelines for acceptable levels of bug parts and mouse poo in packaged foods, so i put this out of my mind in the same way i put that other stuff out.
At home, it takes quite a bit for me to throw food away. I would've eaten the rice without hesitation. Outside of my house, I'm very particular.
I would have eaten it. I bet the moth's decayed parts would add some exotic flavor, no?
sure! i bet some cultures use moth-powder like a spice, right? :)
If you are hungry, you will eat just about anything. The rice was in a bag anyway, so hope you enjoyed your moth (um lunch!):-)
Once upon a time, I was bugaphobic.
I squealed and hopped and threw shoes at crawling things.
Then I got this job that took me away from all that.
Now I live an exciting life with just about every form of bug imaginable. (Except scorpions, but I lived with those in Alabama.)
However, if a spider hops out at me I still curse and hop around a bit.
Wasps and bees I'm fine with, spiders still freak me.
And yeah, I'd have sighed, cursed all bugdom, and then scooped out the moth and eaten it. Er, the rice not the moth. I've not gotten so calm that I actually eat the bugs yet.
ah heack, just eat it. if you ever worked in the food industry, there are much worse things that you could have eaten . trust me. i was a cook in a former life and i know what you ate. ;)
please, please, please, don't ever tell me.
it's so much better not to know. but i am always, always extremely polite and tip handsomely, just in case that helps, you know.
I'd take a xanax, pick out the moth, and eat the bug....
I mean THE RICE!
Mmm, protein-y goodness!
I would have had great pause, too. But probably would have eaten it. Esp. if I were at work and that was all there was.
see, that was the thing. i was at home, there was more rice, i could have thrown it out. but i hate to waste food, especially knowing that ... bugs and things in food are so not unusual.
better the bug you know, than the bug you don't?
I couldn't do it. Even though I know that I've eaten worse, with every bite I'd think about the bug.
Nope. Makes my throat twitch just thinking about it.
I'd toss out the rice and eat the bug. Mmmmm... yummy ;-)
benway, you should go on fear factor. you sound like you'd do really well with that.
Fascinating dilemma. Reminds me of that line in the movie Speed when the Keanu Reeves character is asked what he'd do if faced with a gunman holding a hostage heading for a plane. "Shoot the hostage, " he says.
Anyway, what I'd do in this situation is try to carefully scoop out the rice immediately affected by the mothness - oh, about a one inch radius of rice around the insect carcass - then eat the rest.
You know, I've had to eat bugs as a matter of proper protocal when dealing with dignitaries who offer such, um, delicacies (I swear they bring bugs with them just to fuck with us, but that's just my own conspiracy theory) and I would have thought twice about eating the moth-powder encrusted rice. However, hunger (and, in my case, sheer laziness) would have won and I would have dumped the moth and eaten the rice.
This may be why I'm not the cook in the family, eh?
Um, gathered more moths, added peppers, onions, eggs and peas, and made moth-fried rice?
Maybe not.
oh eww. just eww.
and yes, Skarlet, i would tend to agree with the dignitary conspiracy theory. i totally think they do that on purpose.
oh, and Zuchris? not an option. the rice was in a bag, so the mothness would seep in evenly, and no general area could be identified after dumping.
and i should mention that the moth was there, boiling on top of the ricebag, for an indeterminate amount of time up to five minutes. so, it was mothy. he was teeny, but he was still a bug.
Forget the rice! I want the moth!
I'd be adventurous and pepper it with ants.
THIRTY-SIX COMMENTS??????????? LOL. Maybe you need to breed moths and put them in your rice every day! ;)
yeah, go with the ants. add a bit of hot sauce and you could be eating a dung beetle and it would taste like chicken.
now where the hell's that post button.....?
Depends on the big. In this case, I'd have no problem eating the rice. I think of it the same way you did, kd ... god only knows how many bug parts we injest every day. Ah well.
Toss the moth up in theair as it flutters to the ground say to yourself "See it's still alive.....it was just getting a drink of water....it didn't leave anything behind." Then don't waste any of that precious parmesan cheese :-)
God, I wish people exchanged political views as freely as this!
Emperor, i think that this was perhaps a welcome respite from all that. and, it was definitely meant in that spirit.
I'd have tossed it. I'm THAT bug phobic. *shudder*
i'd totally eat it. i've worked in food service- i have no doubts what is in my food half the time.... as long as i don't see it, i don't care!
I say toss it.
Then again, I have thrown out clothes because a palmetto bug had gotten into the washer. I should have just rewashed them or something. But I couldn't....THAT is how bug phobic I am!!
You never know how much of that powdery stuff got loose. Bleh
The butter and parmesan cheese made the decision easy: I'd have scarfed it down savoring every bite.
Powdery? Must be the cheese...
I'm with Dan. Butter and parmesan cheese? I'd eat it in a minute! Actually, I'd eat it even if it was just plain rice, after fishing the bug out. There can't be that many bug bits left, and what I don't think about, in the way of bug bits, can't hurt me.
If you've ever eaten a hotdog, you've eaten much worse than you ate with moth guts on it. :)
Plus, the actual boiling of the rice would have obliterated any mothy germiness, if there is such a thing. And ya know, parmesan cheese and butter? Yep, I would have eaten 'em!
If it had been a beetle or a yucky bug, I'd have tossed 'em. But a moth? No biggie. :o)
the nice thing about boil-in-bag rice is that you can rinse it a little before you open the bag. and yeah, what dan said. powdery? must be the cheese. too scary? add salsa.
Parmesan? Yech! Do you know how unhealthy that stuff is for you? ;)
A little extra protein never hurt anyone NOT on a renal diet.
"If you've ever eaten a hotdog, you've eaten much worse than you ate with moth guts on it."
Yuck. That's why I eat tofu pups!! :D
Tough call. When it comes right down to it this is a tough question to answer. Common sense says eat the rice, but with every spoonful a little voice in one's head will be wondering what moth tastes like...
Way to go! Just pull the moth off, rinse and eat it! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I read an article once that said the reason so many kids have allergies now is that they're never exposed to dust and dander and regular ol' germs because everything is hypercleaned. I wish I'd saved it! Same principle.
this was just the bare rice -- the parmesan and butter come later.
i didn't rinse it, 'cause it has to be hot for the butter and cheese to be melty. i kinda bounced it around in the water, so the mothness would be in very low concentration.
by the time i had it covered in the buttery cheesy stuff, i hardly even thought about the bugginess.
it was in the back of my mind, though.
oh, and Skatemom? so true. sanitize the environment and you make for weak immune systems.
i remember an old germ-phobic boss of mine, i mean, severly phobic, saw me drop a potato chip on the floor, casually pick it up and eat it, and the expression of terror on his face -- i was all, look, i'm 30-whatever, and i'm not dead yet, been doing this all my life. see? i'm fine.
he about hurt himself rushing out of the room.
I'm a bugphobe, too. It would have gone the way of the trash. Actually, it's happened to me before. (moth in the taco salad--and it all got tossed) But I also can't finish my food if I find a hair in it. I have food issues. LOL
for some reason, ever since i learned about the federally acceptable levels of ick in food, i've adjusted to it. besides, don't we eat like, a pound of spiders accidentally in our sleep, in a lifetime? or something like that?
Synchronicity? ;P
it was quite dead. it had been boiling for some time. it was very small, though.
don't think i'll be visiting those insect recipe links anytime soon though.
I bet you cringe at the thought of sushi bars, too!
i'm not afraid of sushi. just, not very intrigued by the idea of raw fish. it might even be good! it's just one of those things i've always disliked just on the idea of it. like brussel sprouts (which i finally discovered aren't all that heinous).
in other news, i believe we have now officially set a comment record here. who knew?
Extra bugs please. The ones in the hard shells with the weird pulpy insides that make gross noises when you step on them.
Just nothing that has the slightest chance of having mold on it. I've tossed the entire contents of the fridge because of one green fuzzy strawberry.
i used to be so fussy about mold. now, i just scrape it off. something about the price of groceries, i think.
I would eat the bug. It would be tasty and add protein to my die...
Whaaaaaaaaat?
Was it dead when you scooped it out?
Such a waste of protein - where was your cat?
"Wow, this rice tastes really different. It's just got that extra taste of, I dunno... mothiness! Mmmmm!"
I've worked in food service, too, to agree with the others who've said it. You never know where your food's been. I ignore it as best I can. I've never had food poisoning to date, and I'm a hardy enough girl.
Mothy goodness can't be that bad.
it was fine, really. strangely enough, i was off commenting on your site when this email came in. synergy? or zyzzygy? that planet thingy?
Here are some gleanings from a Google Search for "insect recipes":
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html
http://www.eatbug.com/recipes.htm
http://www.naturenode.com/recipes/recipes_insects.html
http://www.pedagonet.com/other/cuis.html
Oh, and ask Ratty for the link to Recipes for Rats that I sent her a few days ago.
I would have eaten it too. ;-)