Sunday, April 5, 2009

WEEVIL FOR DINNER

I had boiled a chicken and when it was cool I and cut the meat into chunks. I cooked carrots, celery and maybe peas, I don’t remember for sure. I thickened the broth, tasted it and knew it was just right. I put the chunked chicken back in the broth along with the veggies and added boiled noodles. My chicken noodle soup was as good as that served at Heaps, our favorite restaurant.

Gillmore Girl was at Emily’s and wasn’t home for dinner so we ate without her. After we ate, someone noticed weevil sitting on the top of the leftover chicken noodle soup. There were gagging noises made and then much laughter when we realized we had all eaten weevil—they must have been in the bag of noodles. "More protein," someone said, as if that made it all right. More gagging noises and finger pointing and things said, like, "weevil eater," but everyone had weevil-soup-filled stomachs so we were laughing at ourselves, too.

Gilmore Girl was due home in a few minutes. What was I going to do? We had all eaten the weevil, the soup had been delicious and I had nothing else to feed her for dinner. So I did what any woman who lived through the Great Depression would do—okay, I didn’t actually live through the Great Depression but my mother did and I’m nothing if not my mother’s daughter. I skimmed every weevil off the top of the soup and then stirred it up in case any others surfaced. They didn’t, so I was confident I had found them all. Then I warmed the soup and threatened the kids to say nothing.


Gilmore Girl came home and ate dinner. After she was finished I threw the rest of the soup out. It wasn’t until later—much later that I confessed to my daughter. There were more gagging noises and even a little anger, I think, but you know what? She is the daughter of the mother who is the daughter of the mother who lived through the Great Depression and Gilmore Girl is as thrifty as I am—maybe more so—and I think she may have forgiven me by now. We’ll see what she has to say in the comments section.

PS This is not actually a photo of my chicken noodle soup. I pulled this off the Internet. You can tell it's not mine because there aren't any interesting protein bits floating on top.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, my goodness, how horrible! I cannot believe you served poor Hildy weevils. We used to get weevils in our rice, and if memory serves me right, my mom would just pick them out. We would always joke with each other to keep an eye out for Larry the Weevil. I am horrified, but not in a bad way. I am horrified in the way that I have a huge smile on my face!

Bonnie said...

How about serving weevil to your sick grandmother who is in the hospital? Well, that is just what my sister and I did.

When I was about 9 or 10, my Grammy McKinnon had a heart attack and ended up in the hospital for a few days. This was very traumatic for me because Grammy was like another mother to me. My older sister and I decided to bake her some sugar cookies. After they were all baked and we were eating some (who can resist freshly baked cookies?), I noticed some little brown things in the third cookie I was eating. Then we looked in the flour and sure enough it had weevil crawling around in it.

However, the cookie were all baked and we had to take Grammy something, didn't we? So we frosted them and gave them to her anyway.

Besides, my dad used to brag and tell me about when he was a boy scout, he put ants on his cereal instead of sugar.

I decided to make my dad proud of me and we ate the rest of the cookies.

Hillary said...

I am still not amused. Well, maybe a little. And, I would do the same thing. I know I have done similiar ones to my poor family. Mostly to Max who is a total food snob.

I have also told that weevil soup story to many people. The last time was to my Activity day girls and the other leader. She was telling us about the pioneer ladies and their flour, and that if it got weevils in it they would just sift through it and use it still. She told us that our mothers would just throw the bug infested food away. Not My MOTHER. She feeds it to her daugther. That's probably what's wrong with me.

Unknown said...

Maybe you should start collecting FRESH bugs.

Camille said...

I laughed so hard (and gagged even more) when I read your story. I'm not sure what I would have done, but I'm pretty sure my mom would have scooped out the weevils and just eaten the soup too. After all, she's been known to season cookies with weevils. But I do have to say one thing, I think I need your recipe, minus the weevils of course.

Bonnie said...

P.S. The good news about this story is that you felt good enough to make the soup without fear of spreading your bug to others--well, I guess you spread a different kind of bug this time.

Jessica said...

Sorry, Hillyerie, this is stinkin' funny. I might not think so if it had been fed to me, but it wasn't. Funny stuff, funny stuff...

Shan said...

It seems that everyone has a weevil story to tell. Who knew so many people ate them. I had weevil soup on my mission in Los Angeles. It was a Spanish speaking mission and those poor illegal people sacrificed lots to feed us. You ate what you were given no matter what. (Ask me about the cocroach birthday cake I had to eat.) I ate that weevil soup right down, only I noticed BEFORE I ate it and I had to stare those things down as I put them in my mouth and down the gullet. I don't feel sorry for Hillyerie one bit because she was at least ignorant of the whole ordeal and besides her loving mother took great care to skim them off the top. Plus, also, she threated to steal my shoes.

Hey it's Amy Benson said...

What a funny story! I am sure I have eaten plenty of weevils. UGG!! But I have also thrown out everything in my pantry that was in a box, cuz I found one! Now I just freeze everything that comes into my house for a few days just to be safe.

Pam's Place said...

Oh, Lynne, this is my laugh for the day!

C'mon over, I'll make you some fish chowder ;)

Shawn said...

OH,NO!! YOU DI-ENT!! Naughty girl, you.

I would think that as long as they weren't moving? :)