As you stir the pasta you realize

[Anonymous]

that there is a little bug swimming in the water. What do you do? Chalk it up to extra protein and scoop it out (or not) and continue on? Or make new pasta?

I'm pretty sure the right answer is scoop and continue but I could not make myself do that last night. I know food has contaminants, including tiny amounts of disgusting stuff that I don't want to think about, but knowing that bug had been there would have ruined the meal for me.

[Anonymous]

Little bug? Scoop and continue.

[Anonymous]

What kind of bug?

Like a cockroach, or a little gnat?

The former, I'd throw it out, even though logically I know it's fine (plus you're boiling the water). But gross.

If it's something small like a little gnat that somehow got in and flew in the pot, I'd remove it and continue on. Every now and then a gnat seems to fly up my nose, and end up somewhere in my body. No big deal.

[Anonymous]

It wouldn't worry me. There are already a bunch of ground up bugs in the pasta itself.

[Anonymous]

If I was going to continue boiling it for at least three or four more minutes, then I would scoop and continue. If I couldn't boil it for a few more minutes without making the pasta all goopy, then I might very well toss it. I would need to be able to boil it long enough to convince myself that the boiling had killed all the germs.

[Anonymous]

Scoop and toss.

[Anonymous]

Scoop. Everything's been boiled so what others don't know won't hurt them.

[Anonymous]

Scoop and continue.

Bugs don't really grips me out, though (assuming little gnat type thing, not a giant cockroach like a PP said). If I find a gnat in my wine glass, I scoop it out and continue drinking.

[Anonymous]

Scoop it out unless it was something huge and gross.

[Anonymous]

Pasta sometimes gets infested with little bugs. I'd be thinking about it the whole time I'm eating, and carbs are a splurge, so I might consider starting over with a new box.

[Anonymous]

Depends on where that bug came from.

If it was just one little bug, like a gnat, that had flown in through the door and managed to land in the pot - scoop and toss. If it had come from a box of buggy pasta. Dump and start over with a fresh and non-buggy box of pasta.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pasta sometimes gets infested with little bugs. I'd be thinking about it the whole time I'm eating, and carbs are a splurge, so I might consider starting over with a new box.

When that happens, you'll see a bunch of tiny dead bugs in there. And yes, I would dump that. One little fruit fly type thing? Scoop and pretend like it never happened.

When I get farmers market lettuce there's always lots of tiny bugs. Can't boil the lettuce. So I just keep rinsing til there's no more evidence, and pretend like there are no lurkers left behind, knowing full well there's GOT to be more than one left in there.

[Anonymous]

Scoop and toss the bug unless it's a cockroach or stink bug. Then I'd toss the pasta too.

[Anonymous]

It's probably a meal bug. I don't know the technical name for them, but my grandmother would always call them meal bugs. They're little and brown and often get into cornmeal, flower and pasta. If it's just one, I'd fish it out and eat the pasta. I'd also check my cabinets to see if there are more. They may be living in a package of something and ended up crawling into the pasta box. Something similar happened to me and I found a ton of them living in a bag of crushed walnuts. Yuck! I cleaned out the cabinet and no more bugs since.

[Anonymous]

Scoop