Fruit Fly Frenzy

When Jason got home from Chile I was determined that he experience the best fresh fruit that Oregon had to offer, so we got a box of peaches, one of pears, and one of nectarines.  Oh my goodness were they good—especially those pears. 

Because it was a big box (almost 30 pounds) we still had quite a few left when I had my accident.  And interestingly enough, it turns out that

lots of fresh fruit + a concussion = fruit flies

Who knew.

The fruit flies were obnoxious.  And they bred, well, like fruit flies.  Every day there were more and more of them.  Within a couple of days there were fruit flies in the kitchen, in the dining room, and even a few in the master bathroom.  (I know—I don’t get it either!)  It was so annoying.

On evening I was texting my awesome cousin Bethany (supplier of Jiff peanut butter for choosy mothers who’s Costco’s insist on selling Skippy) about our mutually favorite television show, MasterChef.  (Survivor meets Chopped.  How can you not love it??)  I mentioned the fruit fly fix we were in and she quickly texted me a solution she’d found on pinterest.

Within moments I knew that I’d found the cure.

 

And here you go, for the next time you have a fruit fly (in)festation.  Take a pint canning jar.  Fill it 1/3 with apple cider vinegar.  Add a few squirts of dish soap.  Fill with water until you have a lot of suds, going all the way to and above the top of your jar.  Set this jar wherever you’re having a fruit fly problem.  The flies are attracted to the smell of the vinegar, but for some reason when they touch the dish soap suds they die.  Dead!  As in no more fruit flies breeding everywhere!  It was really marvelous.  The suds do wither away eventually and the jar needs to be redone.  But seriously—I’d buy a lot more soap and vinegar to get rid of those pesky things.

PS—here’s a picture with Bethany and her sister Megan (who came to visit here last fall) from one day this summer when we had lunch at Café Rio and Bethany passed off her contraband of 8 large jars of Jiff peanut butter.  Bethany is the one on the right holding her darling baby Maizie. 

PPS—even though I am much, much older than Bethany (in fact I once babysat her when she was a small child) we are very close now.  We bonded at the farm one year at a family reunion when we made taco salad together.  In a (clean) garbage bag.  It was awesome.  And Grandma almost had a coronary.  (The bag was clean!  Brand new, Grandma, we promise!)  We call each other “taco salad cousin” to this day.  And we still will, because that has a better ring to it than “fruit fly killin’ cousin.”  Don’t you think??