I throw the bag of flour (or cornmeal, or masa) in the freezer for 24 hours, which kills any critters, nits, or eggs.

@sandyf wrote:

I've got to get out there and find some flour. I had 2 bags of it only to find the pesky moths had gotten into both sealed bags, one of them was sealed inside of a plastic container with a tight lid. I do not know how the moths manage. I thought I had conquered them but they keep disappearing and then a few months later a new but much smaller crop appears out of my food closet. I have pheromone ? traps that actually caught close to 35 of them within an hour of my putting them out about 6 months ago. It was like a magnet, amazing.
But I too just eat the whole loaf within a few hours when ever I make bread.

My moth invasion is from outside. Amazingly about five years ago my friend gave me some boxes of flavored oatmeal from Whole Foods. I did not open them right away but that was where my moth invasion started. I do put grains in the freezer

I bought some fresh produce frome the dollar store and got a bad case of fruit flies. It took weeks to get rid of them.

@sandyf wrote:

One of my dog's favorite treats is what I call Pasta Water. I have no idea if it is unhealthy for a dog but just save the water by putting a bowl or pot under your colander to catch it and let it cool down before serving. I have to ration out the portions as my dog would lap up an entire gallon of this stuff if I put it in her bowl. I found this especially useful after her surgery a few months back when she would not drink. Gave her pasta water and all was well.

Love this. Curious; do you salt your pasta water or no?

No, I never add salt or oil and have never had an issue making pasta. Too much salt is bad for dogs so if you add extra salt to what is probably already in the pasta, I would think it not a good idea to let your dog drink it. Thanks for asking that as it did not occur to me that lots of people salt their pasta boiling water.

@JustForFun wrote:

@sandyf wrote:

One of my dog's favorite treats is what I call Pasta Water. I have no idea if it is unhealthy for a dog but just save the water by putting a bowl or pot under your colander to catch it and let it cool down before serving. I have to ration out the portions as my dog would lap up an entire gallon of this stuff if I put it in her bowl. I found this especially useful after her surgery a few months back when she would not drink. Gave her pasta water and all was well.

Love this. Curious; do you salt your pasta water or no?

@Sandy Shopper.. Your comment about the dramatics on cooking shows reminds me of Giada on Food Network! I don't know why

Sandyf, are you sure they are from outside? DH's friend in Texas told him he had "Pantry Moths" once he informed building maintenance. He told DH that they were in his cereal, in all of his kitchen cabinets and flying around him as he sat on his couch and they spoke on the telephone, etc. I just asked DH for more details and he has a memory problem. That was all he could recall. I hope the problem goes away for you!

You can also put wool clothing in the freezer to kill moth eggs and hard to see larvae. Fold the item put it in a plastic zip bag or other bag and squeeze the air pot.
Place in freezer for at least a week.

Some pantry moths eat natural fibers like wool and some carpet beetle moths eat pantry food.

I might be batty but i know a moth when i see one. I truly did have many moths flying around at once in my kitchen. They like to sleep? on the ceiling and the top inside shelves of my closets. I find their eggs attached to the creases and crevices of many bags of food and also under the lips of my containers. I have put almost everything in containers over the years but they seem to be able to get into certain ones. And some thinner plastic packaging they seem to be able to eat through. My food closets have little holes all along the sides about an inch apart so I can adjust the shelves to whatever heights I want and they love to use those unused holes to hole up in and lay their eggs or whatever they hatch. I go through and rout them out periodically. But they are not whipped yet although I have many less. I think this coronavirus stay at home stuff will be beneficial since I am slowly eating up all the older packages of grains and things I have. That or throwing them away when I discover an infestation in some of them.
So another story from the trenches...using up all the odds and ends of curious foods I buy to eat sometime in the future. My stock of international sauces and mixes from World Market is slowly being depleted.

@Madetoshop wrote:

Sandyf, are you sure they are from outside? DH's friend in Texas told him he had "Pantry Moths" once he informed building maintenance. He told DH that they were in his cereal, in all of his kitchen cabinets and flying around him as he sat on his couch and they spoke on the telephone, etc. I just asked DH for more details and he has a memory problem. That was all he could recall. I hope the problem goes away for you!

Sandyf, you are not batty, I am. When you wrote 'outside', I literally thought the moths flew in from the outdoors. I am an idiot.

@sandyf wrote:

No, I never add salt or oil and have never had an issue making pasta. Too much salt is bad for dogs so if you add extra salt to what is probably already in the pasta, I would think it not a good idea to let your dog drink it. Thanks for asking that as it did not occur to me that lots of people salt their pasta boiling water.

@JustForFun wrote:

@sandyf wrote:

One of my dog's favorite treats is what I call Pasta Water. I have no idea if it is unhealthy for a dog but just save the water by putting a bowl or pot under your colander to catch it and let it cool down before serving. I have to ration out the portions as my dog would lap up an entire gallon of this stuff if I put it in her bowl. I found this especially useful after her surgery a few months back when she would not drink. Gave her pasta water and all was well.

Love this. Curious; do you salt your pasta water or no?

I usually don't add salt to the water either but occasionally might if the resulting dish would require it anyway. I know many people think they have to salt the water because most pasta boxes (until recently) instructed that you do. In "home ec" class we were told it was necessary...boiling point / specific gravity, etc. I knew different because my father had health problems and years prior had been told to stop salting the water. It always cooked just fine.

The only time my pasta was bad was a camping trip my Camp Fire Girls took to Staten Island in NY back when it was a mostly uninhabited island. Neither the troop leaders nor any of the girls (age 9 or so) had ever been camping. We had cots and brought bedding but cooking was outdoors on an open fire pit with wood we had also brought. The leader had secured a huge pot from her church and brought enough pasta for the 12-15 or so of us. The adults started the cooking by throwing pounds of the stuff all at once into the very cold water. It took forever for the water to heat up. At the end we had one big giant piece of pasta that weighed 5 or 6 pounds. There were no grocery stores or electricity or anything to help us. I think out of all of us I was the only one who ever went camping again in our lives. I don't know if they had thought to salt the water but I do not think it would have mattered.
That is a story from the old trenches.

Just for Fun, thanks for clarifying that I am not batty. These days I just don't know.

@JustForFun wrote:

I usually don't add salt to the water either but occasionally might if the resulting dish would require it anyway. I know many people think they have to salt the water because most pasta boxes (until recently) instructed that you do. In "home ec" class we were told it was necessary...boiling point / specific gravity, etc. I knew different because my father had health problems and years prior had been told to stop salting the water. It always cooked just fine.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2020 07:04PM by sandyf.

LOL I had a similar experience on a group camping trip. In my case the pasta du jour was egg noodles and the meal was hamburger stroganoff. We were all experienced campers and this was a once in a lifetime week-long wilderness camping experience. It was our second day and since our ice was about out the formerly frozen hamburger was to be the last of our refrigerated food.

The adult leader's offspring, who was perpetually prodded to be "a leader" in the unit (but who had no such skills or intellect to support this forced ambition) dove in and threw in the noodles immediately before the pot was even on the fire. A few of us immediately knew this would be a problem and attempted to get a rapid agreement to scooping them out. No such luck. Our headstrong but intellectually limited "leader" assured the adults that we'd be fine, and we carried the pot to the fire.

The noodles simply disappeared. Before the water had even come to a full boil, they had completely dissolved. We all stared into the pot in disbelief as we watched them melt away. Several of us privately wondered just how many days a person could survive on a granola bar. We were miles from a phone much less a store.

The calories and nutrition represented by the noodles had to be consumed. It was an active week ahead and there was no substitute. Ultimately we ended up boiling the pasta water all the way down until it formed a thin paste. It took hours...hours which we spend frantically searching out and chopping / splitting additional firewood to keep the thing rolling. This on the end of a long day spent paddling canoes and portaging. In the dark of the last embers of our fire we added the rest of our seasoning and our hamburger to the paste, ate, then tumbled in to bed.

At dawn we were back in the canoes paddling away.

@sandyf wrote:

The only time my pasta was bad was a camping trip my Camp Fire Girls took to Staten Island in NY back when it was a mostly uninhabited island. Neither the troop leaders nor any of the girls (age 9 or so) had ever been camping. We had cots and brought bedding but cooking was outdoors on an open fire pit with wood we had also brought. The leader had secured a huge pot from her church and brought enough pasta for the 12-15 or so of us. The adults started the cooking by throwing pounds of the stuff all at once into the very cold water. It took forever for the water to heat up. At the end we had one big giant piece of pasta that weighed 5 or 6 pounds. There were no grocery stores or electricity or anything to help us. I think out of all of us I was the only one who ever went camping again in our lives. I don't know if they had thought to salt the water but I do not think it would have mattered.
That is a story from the old trenches.

Just for Fun, thanks for clarifying that I am not batty. These days I just don't know.

@JustForFun wrote:

I usually don't add salt to the water either but occasionally might if the resulting dish would require it anyway. I know many people think they have to salt the water because most pasta boxes (until recently) instructed that you do. In "home ec" class we were told it was necessary...boiling point / specific gravity, etc. I knew different because my father had health problems and years prior had been told to stop salting the water. It always cooked just fine.

This is funny Just for Fun, I guess for our camping trip when I was nine it was also a time to teach us how to survive in the "wild" and cook over a wood fire. All we learned was to never attempt it again.
don't know if this stuff belongs here but it seems like general chat applies to everything now. In any case your story of leaders whose children, and even themselves, are not up to snuff for the job they are doing is prevalent everywhere these days and probably always. This is not intended to be a political statement but is true often in privately owned businesses as well.

Well I'm late to the bread discussion but on those rare occasions when I decide to make bread I go here-

[www.kingarthurflour.com]

Agreed. Making bread because you want to is one thing. Making bread because you can't find any in the store is a whole different deal.

And I've had several trips lately where I couldn't find any.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

Wow, we have sunk to making our own bread.

We really need a recipe for toilet paper....

When you do your curbside grocery pickup at Kroger save those bags...

OMG...flashback memories of Dad taking us kids "camping" on Lytle Creek in southern California...he'd build a fire, throw some bacon in a spider (for you young'uns, that's a black iron skillet), then throw in some freshly cleaned trout....never ever EVER tasted anything so good again.

Memories of camp: pancakes as big as my plate. Mother taught us, literally on pain of severe punishment (which held sway even when she wasn't around -- she would find out, somehow!) "ladies" never, ever EVER ask for seconds. I saw other kids going up for seconds, and sort of wondered what they were doing. So I went up and asked why those kids were doing that, and that precious lady said, oh, honey, you can have as much as you want!

I had never had enough to eat in my WHOLE life up til then (I was 12); oh, did I gorge! Seconds, thirds, fourths, every single meal, every single day! I was in HEAVEN!!! And I interacted with every single other camper -- Mom wasn't there to tell me so-and-so isn't "GOOD" enough for me to play with. What fun!!!!

A good friend of mine suggested using the LA Times, especially some of the articles we do not like particularly.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

We really need a recipe for toilet paper....

Back from my shopping trip. My baby came with me. Armed ourselves with Clorox wipes in Ziploc bags, tissues and our ever present hand sanitizer. Everything was available. Fresh produce/fruit, pasta, canned items, dairy, nuts, cheese, frozen vegetables/fruits, snacks, cookies, bread and whatever else we wanted with exception of TP. Our supermarket was crowded but not annoyingly so. Taped spacing between customers while on line. Took us an hour.

The media told us that tp and paper towels would be available soon after that first week when everyone went overboard. I was sitting pretty having bought a huge pack from Costco just weeks before the outbreak here. Now I am not so sure my tp will last and so far even tho it has been weeks since they said tp would be back in the stores I have not seen any. I still have a couple of weeks worth left but now they are saying we will prob not get to go out freely until at least the end of May.
Are any parts of the country getting toilet paper...I mean in some quantity, not just a few rolls for the sprinters among us who can run fast from the front door of the store to the tp aisle and grab some?

I dunno because I have enough. I bought one package at a Safeway store. There were a few packages but no signs indicating some limit per customer. If we run out of disposable baby wipes and must-throw-away kleenex, we can wash and reuse our washcloths. If that is not enough, I s'pose the next step is to go natural and use large leaves...

Other products were well stocked, and a few items that I usually buy at a health food store were on the shelves. Happy dance moment? I found carob creamer which replaces sweeter additives for my cuppa.

@sandyf wrote:

The media told us that tp and paper towels would be available soon after that first week when everyone went overboard. I was sitting pretty having bought a huge pack from Costco just weeks before the outbreak here. Now I am not so sure my tp will last and so far even tho it has been weeks since they said tp would be back in the stores I have not seen any. I still have a couple of weeks worth left but now they are saying we will prob not get to go out freely until at least the end of May.
Are any parts of the country getting toilet paper...I mean in some quantity, not just a few rolls for the sprinters among us who can run fast from the front door of the store to the tp aisle and grab some?

No TP or paper towels here. No meat. Hamburger ( I always buy the 3# pack) went up from 12.00 to 18.00 (!!)
No milk, bread, eggs.....although they are stocked up a little more because I was able to get enough of those things last week to last a little while. But today: none (I went late in the day)

Aldi's was stocked with everything except for toilet paper when I went yesterday. I'm still amazed that people actually run out.

I order TP from Amazon every week. That way there is always some on the way.

@ Sandy Shopper re: sourdough starter. I capture my own yeast for sourdough using red grapes or rice. There's naturally occurring yeast on both. That white stuff on the red grapes is the yeast. Here's how I do it: 1 C distilled or non chlorinated water <--- important mixed into 1 C white flour. Add the whole grapes to the mix perhaps 10 or 12 blend and let it sit. Gently stir 24 hours later, and then 3X a day...after 4th day, remove the grapes and add more flour to feed the yeast. stir and let sit out. takes time to do this but well worth it believe me ! to capture yeast from rice, sift rice over the flour/water mix and then place rice next to the starter mix container to help transfer more yeast.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2020 03:10PM by SS4U.

The Aldi by me was out of flour and TP, and limiting the amounts one can buy of anything else.

I went to Aldi's this morning for some salmon. They had TP and a limit of 1 can of black beans.

Huh?