bugging between the lines

While I wait for the grocery store to open to stock me with my traditional lunch items for the flight north, I dug through the pile of potential topics for this morning's essay.

Mexico is a writer's treasure trove. And I do not always get around to writing about some events on the day they occur. That is fine because a lot of them are timeless.

Cooking pasta, for example. In the last few years, we pasta lovers have been offered some interesting choices of top-quality pasta here in Mexico. Most of it imported from Italy.

Twice now, I have poured the contents of the pasta packet into a pot of boiling water only to discover that durum wheat was not the only inhabitant of my kitchen jacuzzi. Little black specks were floating on top of the water. Lots of them.

I am not an insect virgin. Even in Oregon, flour goods attracted weevils or other beetles that reveled in the carbohydrate grist.

The first time it happened here, I tried to carefully fish out the floaters with minimal effect. But, beetle bodies do the same as the human variety. Some float. Some sink. It was the sinkers that undid me.

I had hoped when I drained the water from the pasta in a colander that the bodies would wash away. No such luck. Their peppery corpses stuck to the pasta. It is no accident that "pasta" and "paste" share he same root.

So, into the trash went the lot. I was cooking for my family and I thought better of serving them up pasta con burro with assorted insects. Even though the pasta cost almost $5 (US), it was not going to pass the family test.

I have had beetle infestations in my dry goods before. As a prophylactic (taking advice from fellow bloggers), I put all flour-based product in the freezer for two days to kill any eggs. I then store it in the refrigerator until I am ready to use it.

Somewhere between the Italian packing house and the shelves of La Comer, beetles hatched inside the package I bought. I do check for bodies when I buy pasta -- and beans. Beans often have the worst infestations. But, somehow, the beasties were in my soup.

I know several cooks for Mexican restaurants in this area. I asked two of them how they avoid the beetle problem. They looked at me as if I was a bit obsessive -- which I am.

Both gave me the same answer. Yes, they do get beetles in their flour and pasta. But it is too expensive to throw it out. So, the invaders get cooked into whatever is being prepared. One told me he just adds additional ground pepper to his pasta if he cannot get the bodies removed.

So, when I had my second out-with-the-bodies experience, I dredged what I could and just forged forward. I added a lot of black mustard seed to my sauce that day, and I never noticed the difference. After all, one source of protein is as good as another. Well, with the exception of tofu.

I will leave you with that thought as I head off to Los Angeles this afternoon, and to Hong Kong and Saturday very early Sunday morning.

If my computer with the broken screen holds up, we will be in touch.