The Art of the Triple Sift
- Lifestyles
- Special Interest
Author: Aramco ExPats Staff
Released 16 October 2006
Grains for Sale at the Local Suq
Photograph by Aramco ExPats
In Saudi Arabia, grain bugs are part of life. You learn to rid your food of bugs just as you learn to tolerate the heat, and eventually it all seems quite normal. For those not accustomed to grain bugs or weevils, co-existing with the little creatures who inhabit your edibles may sound darn right sickening. But it is true that after a while in the Kingdom, you begin accepting them as commonplace. You may even find yourself considering their protein value to set your mind at ease. However you learned to cope, it does little to erase your memory of the first time you encountered bugs in your food and what convinced you to eat it anyway.
When Vicci Thompson and her family arrived in Saudi Arabia back in January, 1975, the Abqaiq commissary offerings were at their sparsest. Ramadan had just ended and the commissaries hadn't been restocked. What little groceries available didn't add up to much considering she had a family to feed. Another problem she faced was, at 26 years old, she wasn't a great cook.
She remembers well her first weekend in the Kingdom when she took the shopper's bus into Al-Khobar to shop at Buluchi's Grocery and made the wind-fall discovery of boxed Rice-a-Roni in assorted flavors. So excited by the prospect of a meal she could actually cook, she purchased a half-dozen boxes.
While making dinner that evening, she opened a box of Rice-a-Roni and poured the rice into a pot of water. Bugs, lots of them, came floating to the surface. Disgusted, she threw the rice out and opened another box. She again poured the rice into a pot of water, and again bugs came floating to the top. Not wanting to be easily discouraged, she threw out the second pot of rice and opened the third box. As she went through six boxes of Rice-a-Roni with similar results, her resolve was shaken and she recalls making the mental note that she wasn't about to stay in Saudi Arabia any longer than the tax break requisite of 18 months.
The next day, she recounted her story to a new acquaintance who had lived in the Middle East for several years working in the oil patch. The friend advised her very matter-of-factly that all one needed to do was ladle the bugs off the surface of the water and continue to cook the rice. Vicci listened, silently aghast. Her friend went on to share several other methods to combat bugs in the kitchen including: freeze your flour, rice, and cereal to kill the bugs; sift, double sift, and then triple sift your flour to get rid of bugs before using it in a recipe; add milk to your cereal and spoon the bugs off before eating.
Maybe it was the enormity of the acclimatization going on for newcomers to Aramco compounds, the lack of alternative foods available at the commissaries, or the desire to cook familiar foods for the family. Whatever their reasons, most women overcame their initial disgust of finding bugs in the food quickly and without much drama. Advice was sought and followed straight away. The women of Aramco became adept at proper grain storage and handling techniques. You were to place grains in sealed containers and store them in the refrigerator or freezer. Before consumption, grains were either immersed in liquid so bugs could be gracefully ladled out, or grains were artfully triple sifted.
Vicci went on to spend almost twenty-five years in the Kingdom. She managed to accept the bugs, and she became quite a good cook too!
Other tips for coping with grain bugs: use extra cinnamon and vanilla in baked goods to mask the musky aftertaste, store dried bay leaves in your flour, place a new nail (one you'd use for hammering) in your flour, place a book of matches in your flour.