tomato, chilli and (meal) worm soup

i had these barbecue flavour worm 'crisps' kicking around since around christmas time from the boys at edible, so i figured it was time to get them down as a strike. i had thought of many ways to enjoy them - worms and whiskey, worm stir fry, worm fritters - but i figured worm soup was the way forward. or more like, standard tomato soup with added chili and wormy croutons.giving the worms a dry run, i tossed a few into my mouth for test purposes. crunchy, slight barbecue taste. one end of the worm is seemingly more crunchy than the other (disturbing). a bit like the crickets but not quite as eerie to eat. the soup was heating up on the hob so i prepared a chunk of buttered bread to serve as the worm soups companion on this one-way trip to digestion town.

i scattered the worms onto the soup, each of them sitting menacingly on their final, orange stage. the appeal for the enticingly fragrant soup was diminished somewhat, the bread somehow turning into the sidekick of a new form of food villainy.

apprehensively i sat my spoon at the edge of the quagmire. oh well, let's eat worms. at first, the worms were crunchy and not awful, the barbecue taste overcome by tomato and chili. not so bad then. but time is any man's curse, and today it be mine. arrr. pirates aside, as the meal went on, the worms took to themselves to become soggified with soup. droopy, life-like worms. the crisp was all gone. the crunch was dead. long live the sloppy worms!

fortunately, the soup was over. crunchy worms are good, soggy worms are not. i think next time i eat worms i'm going to put them in a salad and i will certainly avoid earthworms. *shudder* saying all this, i still think you should try the worms in their crisp format or at least make your friends eat them as you stand by smirking.