I fed my family ants last night.

[grasswire]

Breakfast for supper. Ham and eggs and pancakes. I thought I would use up an old box of pancake mix -- about six months old. We rarely have pancakes and I don't even know why we bought the mix.

Mixed it up -- made the pancakes. Eaten with homemade crabapple jelly. Too carb for me, so I didn't have any.

As I was washing the bowl later, I found a couple of dead ants in the batter. Ack! I checked the last of the mix in the bag. Oh no. Several dead ants in it.

Damn. I fed my family dead ants.

Shhhhhhh.

[cbayer]

1. Protein

:rofl:

[Inchworm]

2. They'll never know... unless

You serve Moroccan Lamb with Shiraz Honey Sauce or the like tonight to make it up :P

:rofl:

[grasswire]

10. I'm tellin ya...

...when I made tonight's meatloaf I doublechecked the oatmeal container. :-)

[Denninmi]

3. Really, it's NOT a problem.

Ants are actually edible. I took a one-hour nature walk at the local park once about "edible wild foods" -- one of the things we got to harvest and sample were great big, squishy, black carpenter ants crawling on the tree trunks. Not bad, sort of crispy crunchy with an acidic bite from the formic acid with which they sting their prey and their enemies.

Actually, any time you eat any grain product, or much of anything plant based which is commercially prepared, you are getting a certain level of insect residue. The government sets allowable levels of insect contamination in various food products.

I wouldn't worry about it, ESPECIALLY if they don't know. In this case, what they don't know won't hurt them.

You might want to pick up some ant poison bait packs though.

[trud]

4. I'd rather

have ants in the house than poison bait packs, myself.

Too much poison. Those of you who have heard of Pale Male, the hawk in NY Central Park, may know his mate of some years Lola disappeared a few weeks ago. Probable cause: eating a rodent poisoned with the poison bait the Parks Dept puts out. God forbid they pick up their trash instead of poisoning everything that moves.

Ants in the house? Find where they come in and seal it off.

[grasswire]

13. I learned last summer that ants don't like febreze.

A spritz of the stuff kills them, and they don't want to come back to that area.

Febreze is probably filled with poison, I guess.

[kestrel91316]

5. Just extra protein. I have occasionally baked with buggy flour.

You don't even notice them.

[hippywife]

6. Like everyone else said,

I wouldn't sweat it. It won't kill anyone or even make them sick. If I find moths in my flours, I take and sift them out and use it, unless it came that way from the store, then I take it back. I've even told Bill and he has no problem with that. About every five years, I seem to get a moth invasion, I try to keep things well sealed but it's amazing what small spaces they can work themselves into.

:hi:

[grasswire]

12. those kitchen moths are a real pain

About five years ago we had them. I think they came in on birdseed cuz I was sitting a cockatoo for a friend. It took months to get rid of them. The worst event was when I was cooking a lovely bechamel to make mac and cheese for supper, and noticed something wiggly was on top of the sauce in the pot. I looked up, and saw half a dozen of the larvae had crawled up on the ceiling. One had fallen into the sauce. Disgusting.

There are pheremone traps for pantry moths -- little cardboard boxes that emit a scent attractive to them, lined with super sticky stuff that captures them. Of course they die there, no doubt screaming with frustration. It seems cruel.

[hippywife]

14. They really are!

As soon as I see the first one, I start killing them on sight. I don't want to have to deal with sifting them out of my stuff or throwing things out if I don't have to.

I do have those old spun aluminum canisters and they don't seem to be able to invade into those, so I've bought extras when I can find them.

:hi:

[tigereye]

16. I put out bay leaves in cupboards for a while (along with

making sure everything was sealed well) and that seemed to send them packing. Yeah, they are a PITA.

[MrMickeysMom]

7. It'll be our secret...

(snicker)

[elleng]

8. Natural source of Vitamin B-12!!!

http://beyondrawfood.com/blog/natural-source-of-vitamin-b12-eat-ants/

As food:

Ants and their larvae are eaten in different parts of the world. The eggs of two species of ants are the basis for the dish in Mexico known as escamoles. They are considered a form of insect caviar and can sell for as much as USD 40 per pound (USD 90/kg) because they are seasonal and hard to find. In the Colombian department of Santander, hormigas culonas (roughly interpreted as "large-bottomed ants") Atta laevigata are toasted alive and eaten.<143>

In areas of India, and throughout Burma and Thailand, a paste of the green weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) is served as a condiment with curry.<144> Weaver ant eggs and larvae as well as the ants themselves may be used in a Thai salad, yum (ยำ), in a dish called yum khai mod daeng (ยำไข่มดแดง) or red ant egg salad, a dish that comes from the Issan or north-eastern region of Thailand. Saville-Kent, in the Naturalist in Australia wrote "Beauty, in the case of the green ant, is more than skin-deep. Their attractive, almost sweetmeat-like translucency possibly invited the first essays at their consumption by the human species". Mashed up in water, after the manner of lemon squash, "these ants form a pleasant acid drink which is held in high favor by the natives of North Queensland, and is even appreciated by many European palates".<145>

In his First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir notes that the Digger Indians of California ate the tickly acid gasters of the large jet-black carpenter ants. The Mexican Indians eat the replete workers, or living honey-pots, of the honey ant (Myrmecocystus).<145>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant

[grasswire]

9. "tickly acid gasters"??

!!

[pengillian101]

11. Ha! Welcome to the real world.

TV shows depict something else.

Years ago at the famous Seattle Market, we paid good money to crunch and eat some good insects. Also tried horse meat and it was tasty.

Ban me now!

[Dover]

15. Next time you serve them call them antcakes...lol! Mmmmm.

I ate ants regularly as a toddler so that's got to be some kind of litmus test for safety.
In fact anything that crawled went into my mouth. Seems a good way for a sprouting foodie to develop a diverse palette, don't you agree?

And then there was the time I snuck down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to help myself to the hostess twinkies that resided out of sight and reach on top of the frig. I quietly pulled a kitchen chair over to the frig, climbed up and felt around in the dark for the package. What luck. I found one that was already open and I stuffed it in my mouth with devilish delight. My mother must have heard me, turned on the light and I froze like a deer in the headlights. She was looking at me with utter horror. I thought she was horrified I would do such a thing and was about to do some 'splainin'....when I felt things crawling all over my face, my hands and in my mouth. ANTS!!!!
Lesson learned the hard way. Never eat twinkies in the dark.