Pepitas

I am currently sitting at my desk (I normally go home for the lunch but ol'Concord had to have a few belts replaced and is chilling at the auto repair guru's dojo. We found a really great mechanic; ask if you need one) enjoying my Provider Cajun Chicken Ceaser Salad lunch.

Now, don't get me wrong. I heart CBU salads. Mostly because all boxed salads come with a cookie. It's sort of my reward for the "ho-hum, I'm eating rabbit food for lunch" complex. Here's my issue, though.

Flashback 2003. Wanda's is still in the basement of James. Salads are still coming in these itsy bitsy little containers that all full to the brim, so when you open them they explode on everything. No cookies. Nope. Not for us. I like to call this the "dark ages" of CBU food service.
The age when everything was covered in pepitas.

For those of you who don't know, pepitas are roasted pumpkin seeds. I do not heart roasted pumpkin seeds. Seeds should be planted in the ground to grow delicious things that I then scoop the seeds out of before I consume them. Seeds are not food. That should be a t-shirt, or at least the motto of a semi-serious human rights campaign. But I digress...

Anyway, cajun chicken ceasar salads used to be covered in pepitas. Oodles of pepitas. I could've saved them from the bottom of my salad (where I did my best to leave them) and started my own pumpkin patch PLUS a black-market pepita business on the side. I exaggerate very, VERY little. I actually stopped eating the salads and moved to the turkey and cheese sandwiches...partly for the pepitas, and partly for the cookies that came with the sandwiches. You have to know where the loyalty lies, people.

Now, jump ahead to 2005, wherein I return to the salads upon viewing the included cookie and whole-grain roll. I carefully examined my salad for pepitas. Nothing. I thought I just got really, really lucky and tried again the next day. Still no pepitas. Two years later: no pepitas, even though they are listed as ingredients to the salad on the label. (Also listed on the label as an ingredient: cherry tomato. Literally, a single cherry tomato. Every time. But no pepitas. Not even one).

Oh well. Chocolate chip cookie, anyone?