Monday, October 01, 2007

Ahh, the twin joys of the warmer weather: suddenly fruit can't survive in our fruitbowl, and big black ants invade our house.

At the end of last week I made a banana cake out of a couple of bananas that were getting a bit squishy. I was kind of proud of being so frugal and house-wifely; I have this secret Stephanie-inspired aspiration to eat fresh food all the time, to cook what's in season and to always be zinging with ideas of what to do with the delicious bits and bobs I keep in my pantry. I was pretty stoked with myself a) for even thinking of making a cake out of old bananas and b) having the rest of the ingredients on hand. I thought it was a big step in the right direction.

But I didn't get to taste the banana cake (I was a bit distracted helping to finish off Hayden's birthday cakes) before a herd of enormous black ants had smelled the cake from outside and marched inside in a big long line - up the outside wall, in through the kitchen window, along the window sill, down a bottle of wine and along the edge of the bench to where the cake sat on a plate.

Sometimes when the ants invade, you can brush them off quickly and the food is still ok (I find I get more and more cavalier about this throughout the summer). This time the ants had infiltrated the cake so completely that we just let them keep it. Over the weekend they nibbled the 22cm loaf down to this knobbly end:





Yes, well done ants. Very good effort.

But now what am I going to do with these?

Stephanie?? anyone?

4 comments:

Drue said...

my solution to your rpblem is to eat the cake quicker.

did you eat what the ats had left?

sarah and i make the stephanie bannana cake too... except we double up on the sugar/walnut topping. highly recommended, best banana cake ever!

Naomi said...

No we didn't eat it ... it had been outside all weekend on the ground! When I said that I gave the ants the cake, I didn't mean that I just let them parade through our kitchen all weekend. I put it outside for them so they could have it all to themselves. Whoops, was that not clear?

Eileen said...

I too was thinking you left the ants in your kitchen in which case I was going to recommend the use of some cling wrap to keep your food stuffs safe.

I loathe ants. It's something about how segmented they are. It creeps me out a bit.

Naomi said...

I'm ok with their segmentedness, I just find that when I'm looking at them I feel all itchy.

No-one wants to feel all itchy in their own kitchen.