We like to buy and cook in bulk, during my time here i have made quite a few posts about this and the processes that we use to save time , effort , money , etc. But things can sometimes go wrong from time to time... this is one of those times.
The long and short is that we would have bought something which was contaminated and introduced some little critters into our pantry. They were discovered when trying to cook dinner one night and there were what looked like"little black balls (kinda pill shaped)" on a bag of flour... checking the pantry them little guys were somewhat small in numbers but definitely establishing our pantry their home.
You can see some of the little guys in the image above, on top of the tins mid shot. They had made their way into any food which was not very well sealed, the only things that were really safe were the tins. Cardboard boxes had been eaten through and plastics penetrated in some cases... they are tough little guys.
The concern is that they would munch through the food we bulk buy and have invested quite a bit of money in attaining/maintaining , thus having to start from scratch again. So we had to take some hard core action to get rid of these guys before they took over the house. Fortunately, its not too hard to get them gone, although it is a bit of a pain in the ass... we had dealt with a similar issue years ago with pantry moths, again from poor decision to buy big bags of rice from what we now know is not a reputable place.
First things first, we evacuated the area of all food products and gave it a good dose of insect killer and sealed em in with it for a good hour or so. While the little guys had their aroma therapy party, we sifted through the food products and tossed out anything which even had the slightest possibility of being contaminated.
If food items were opened it was tossed out, if it was in a box then we opened the box and checked inside, we tossed all the boxes and kept the satchels inside. We then gave all the items a vinegar bath, if the vinegar made it inside the bag they got tossed. if the passed the test they made it into a clean quarantine zone for packing later.
There was about 4 garbage bags worth, or so, of food that was thrown out due to being contaminated or possibly contaminated (for fear of re-contamination)... better safe than sorry right?
Then we cleaned and scrubbed out the pantry with bleach and water mix (bout 50/50) and let that dry out for a good few hours with the a fan on it. After that we cleaned again with a detergent cleaning agent and finally another pass with a water wipe down, and left to dry again with a fan facing the pantry.
With all that said and done, we were ready to start the restocking of the shelves in the pantry with our vinegar scented tins and sealed foods. The next day we replaced some of the staple items such as herbs and spices, cereals, rice etc. and we were back on track to the cooking lifestyle we love... while we were there we cleaned out the fridge for the hella it as well.
The lovely smell of vinegar filling the kitchen area, and smackin you in the face every time you open the pantry, let us know we did a good job, while it may be making the eyes water, it is a reminder of the incredible battle we fought to save our food from the invasion of the little critters.... we will also be sure to use caution when attaining products from particular places in the future.