Why you must sift flour

Okay, so I kinda forgot, I got lazy, I hadn't been sifting my flour for all recipes.

Last night I was scooping out flour for a pastry crust and happened to notice something sort of longish and dangly go by as I scooped.

So I dumped the flour out onto a flat surface and started gingerly picking through it with a fork.

"Whatcha doing?" asked my Omnivore brightly, peering over my shoulder.

"Looking...." I replied slowly, raking through the flour like a CSI.

"Looking for what?" he said a little more warily.

"For something..." I replied, still prodding the flour.

"For what," he said with more low-toned urgency. "You're freaking me out now the way you're looking at that. Is this another 'Hail, J' moment?"

"Maybe..." I said.

I didn't see anything, so I put the flour into a sieve and started to sift though... I just wanted to be sure, and there... at the bottom of my mesh was a one-inch long wormy thing.

"Okay," I said very calmly. "I'm really quite bummed out by this."

"EWWWWWWW...." was my Omnivore's response.

Moral of this story? Put bay leaves in your flour storage container, and always, ALWAYS sift.

Was it the Indian Meal Worm (pictured above)? I dunno. I threw it, um.... AWAY.