Roasted What?!?!?!

Cowgirl Cre and I share a cubicle, and we work with a lot of food products. She and I are not in the same group though. But for some reason, her group likes to bring all their "projects" to the desk and process them in the cubicle area.

Not sure what's up with that. But ya'll need to cut that out.

(Some folks where joking the other day. They had cartloads of stuff in the cubicle area. "LadyLee gonna come around that corner and run into everthing." If I didn't know any better, I would think that they were setting up a trap to make me fall on my face. Humph.)

Anyway, I was typing away on my computer (probably blogging, lol), and Cowgirl Cre was taring open plastic packages, making up all kinds of unnecessary noise. I turned around to see what she was doing, and she was dealing with what appeared to be some seeds or something. Couldn't really tell much from the jacked up non-english packaging.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Roasted Watermelon seeds," she answered nonchalantly.

*crickets*

"Roasted What?!?!?"

"Watermelon seeds, girl!"

So, I got real nosy and rolled over to her side of our cubicle, and looked in the bag. Sure enough, it was a bunch of watermelon seeds.

"Yeah right!" I said. "Don't nobody eat watermelon seeds!"

"Who the heck would eat some doggone watermelon seeds?" I asked.

Cowgirl Cre shrugged and kept fooling with the bags. Hen-Dog comes over, and we have an even bigger discussion.

I got even nosier, and decided to taste one. Turns out it is similar to a sunflower seed. You have to crack the shell with your teeth, THEN eat what's inside. It taste alright, but it is much harder to eat than a sunflower seed, and you know how much you have to fight with a sunflower seed shell.

But who would ever known of such of thing?

And for me, it kills that old stereotype for sure:

"Black people love watermelon."

But doggonit, who would've known the seed was useful? If anyone should know, WE should know.

The Asians like them a lot. Watermelon seeds are a REAL popular snack over in that part of the world, and they rival sunflowere seeds over there. Also, I found out, doing a little research, that tea made from ground watermelon seeds does wonders for cleaning out the kidneys!

"Man," I said. "Somebody could've been making watermelon seed butter."

*Cowgirl Cre gives the gas face*

"I wonder why George Washington Carver never did anything with watermelon seeds?"

*Cowgirl Cre laughs hard. (A bit too hard)*

Hmm... interesting.

My biggest memory concerning watermelon seeds is swallowing one when I was around 5 years old. I cried the rest of the day about it, because I thought a watermelon was going to grow in my stomach, an my stomach would bust wide open and I would die. I was mindful about that for a couple of weeks, before deciding that maybe a watermelon was not going to grow in my stomach.

So now, after all these years I have another memory about watermelon seeds.

Now... if I can just wrap my mind around the existence of square watermelons...



Geez. Folks know they come up with ideas, don't they?!