Nasty Little Pests

The culinary world is no stranger to pests and critters that plague the industry. The worst and most dangerous of these plagues are the ones we can't even see in the form of micro organisms. Given the right conditions these organism can cause serious harm and death to us humans. This short blog doesn't deal with these organisms.

This blog is related to the nasty little fruit fly, Drosophila Melanogaster, which we can see. It's as if they magically appear out of nowhere. "Where the hell did they come from Marsh." where the words uttered from my wife Geraldine's lip about two weeks ago. Other statements like; "They're driving me fucking crazy", followed shortly there after.

Forensic experts can pin point the time of death in a person by the type of bugs found on the body when it was discovered. Fruit flies appear when fruit is fermenting. They smell the rotting

produce or fruit and before you know it you got yourself an infestation. Sometimes they hitch a ride home from our friendly grocer. They can multiply in our drain pipes or on a a scouring pad, and go from egg to full fledged fly in a matter of eight days.  They can fly in through extremely small holes. Your screen door is no match for the mighty fruit fly.

Fruit Fly

This is what happened at our humble abode recently. Does it matter how we got them? Not really. It's how to get rid of them, and here is a simple trick that we employed with fantastic results. We
put several little glasses around the area of the infestation, the kitchen and breakfast nook,  with a small amount of apple cider vinegar in the bottom.

dead fruit flies and apple cider vinegar

The scent of the vinegar attracts them, and the high PH of the vinegar kills the little buggers. Much better than buying those little fly strips, and we can always use more vinegar.  Good ol' vinegar.

This helpful hint did not come from Heloise, but from my gardening friend. Thank you Brendan.

Of course bugs can be a great source of protein for a hungry world, but that's another blog for another day.

Peace...Make Food, Not War

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Update...I was doing some cooking yesterday and I was going to deglaze a pan with some white wine when I noticed that our nasty little fruit flies love white wine also. Of course they would because that's where vinegar comes from.The little buggers flew right in through the pour spout, and never made it back out. In fact it did a better job than the little glasses with the vinegar.