and would you like some roasted worm on the side?

I roast just about any vegetable that can be roasted and I roast veggies often, but for some reason, it never crossed my mind to roast broccoli. Then I read a friend's Facebook post about roasted broccoli and decided to try it tonight.

I bought a beautiful head of broccoli this morning (read below for more about that big 10% discount I got on that broccoli!), cut it up and washed it this afternoon.

I put the broccoli on the roasting pan, added some olive oil and salt, and put that pan in the oven to let the magic begin.

Soon the smells of roasted broccoli were wafting around the apartment. I went down to toss the broccoli around to make sure it was cooking evenly and imagine my horror when I found this:


Now you might be saying, "Well Susan, I can't really see what that is next to the broccoli. It looks like it could be a worm, but surely you weren't roasting worms?"

Yes, sadly, I was roasting a very big, very fat, very black worm that apparently had been hiding out in the tree part of the broccoli. I'm ready to vomit. And throw that cookie sheet away forever since it's got roasted worm juice on it now.
I don't know when I'm going to next decide to eat broccoli, but I can assure you that it will be cut into such small pieces before cooking that it won't even resemble broccoli.