Friday 20 February 2009

I need help

Well, you all know I need help, but today I need help on a specific topic. Namely: how do you round up lentils?

I often have a half-used pack or two of lentils in my cupboard - green for curries and red split ones for soup - in beside the couscous, bulgur wheat, rice and so on. Foodstuffs like this all have one very special skill: put a half-used bag of them in the cupboard, and by the next time you open said cupboard the bag will have miraculously climbed to the top of the shelf, balanced itself precariously on the tins of tomatoes and leaned against the inside of the door, thus ensuring that when you open the cupboard, the bag launches itself out into space and all over your kitchen. I think it's some sort of primitive survival mechanism. Maybe pulses and grains have a rudimentary intelligence, like ants or bees.

Anyway, about a week or so ago, I opened the cupboard door and the bag of red lentils did its swan dive and spilled all over the floor, the worktop, you name it. I said a few choice bad words ("Oh........Falkirk!!!!") and set to work clearing up the mess. It took me ages but I thought I had been pretty thorough.

I was wrong. Ever since, I have been spotting red lentils dotted around the house in odd places. I pick them up and dispose of them every time I see them, but I still keep seeing them. I just found one in our downstairs loo (not in the loo itself, but on the floor by the wash hand basin). Where has it been for the last 10 days? Where are they hiding? How many of them are there? Are they breeding? Am I going to be overwhelmed with lentils if I turn my back on them? Any advice?

11 comments:

  1. First you need to find the queen lentil. She will be much larger than the other lentils. Place the queen in a bowl of water on the kitchen floor. Alerted by her distress cries through their collective consciousness, all the drone and worker lentils will come out of hiding and attempt to rescue their queen from drowning. Then you vacuum them up. Works every time.

    Sorry. Mid-afternoon low blood sugar silliness.

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  2. Oh it's friday afternoon (here in the colonies anyway) an I will happily pick up on Allison's sillines.
    Lentils actually come from another planet in another galaxy far, far away. Punishment for their most heinous crimes is to be sent to earth and eaten alive. When they lept from your cupboard it was an intentional prison break to escape their sentance. Have everyone in your house search high and low to round them all up. You don't want criminal pulses lurking around your house planning their next vicious crime.
    Oh it's a good thing it's almost the end of my work day and I'll be 'off to the pub' to meet friends for drinks.

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  3. Don't turn your back on the lentils, they will only strike when you are not watching, much like the tooth fairy, but in a bad way.

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  4. Obviously they escaped from a lentil institution.

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  5. I think the best thing to do at this point is consider moving. The lentils will never fully go away. May as well give in to this fact now....there is no hope.

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  6. Get a dog!!!! I am so messy in the kitchen that my dog actually waits by my side when I'm cooking, picking up everything I drop! We're a great team!

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  7. That's funny. It's too late for the lentils that have already escaped, but I'd like to suggest that in the future you keep all these sorts of things in glass jars. You can purchase decorative glass receptacles of varying sizes from the dollar store (or whatever the equivalent is yonder) Or you can clean your jam jars and such and put all your dry goods in them. First, they're less likely to spill and second, the stay much much fresher in glass jars than plastic bags AND keep all those little microscopic critters out that find their way into dry goods

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  8. I know the problem well! It's just like Christmas tree needles....... I am still finding the odd one all around the house, even though I tried so hard to vacuum them up!

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  9. I know the problem well! It's just like Christmas tree needles....... I am still finding the odd one all around the house, even though I tried so hard to vacuum them up!

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  10. Lego bricks too. For some years after your children have ceased playing with Lego.

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  11. Lentils are scum. I too have been a victim of spilled pulses.

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