Looking All Wholesome And Innocent...On a recent trip to the farmer's market Crabby came home with a pomegranate. She ate it in two sittings: once by itself (yumm), and once accompanied by a kiwi (even yummier). Note: we're talking the fruit kind of kiwi; Crabby did not pick up a New Zealander at the farmer's market, even though they do have cute accents and the Lobster happens to out of town. Crabby is not that sort of Crab.
Anyway, the kiwi/pomegranate combination is awesome. Both fruits are sweet and tart in the same kind of way, and the colors look so pretty together. The visual effect is so impressive you may want to take a picture of your little fruit bowl and post it on your blog! But that would mean hunting down your camera and the battery's probably not charged and you're too hungry so whatever. Forget the picture.
Kiwis and Pomegranates are both high in antioxidants. And though research is somewhat preliminary and mostly animal-based, pomegranates are suspected to ward off all kinds of diseases, like prostate cancer and heart disease and diabetes and such.
So why is that probably the last pomegranate that Crabby will consume until next year when she is again tempted?
Because if you commissioned a battalion of engineers to try to design a more sneaky inaccessible fruit they'd be hard-pressed to beat the pomegranate.
The outside is all hard and leathery, so you dig your thumbs in to peel it. Squirt.
The inside is all stuck together and you have to try to pull the little sections. Squirt.
The sections are covered with a thin membrane that tastes terrible and that seems to start coming off but then gets stuck--sort of like when you're peeling a hard boiled egg. You're so close, yet the membrane keeps breaking so you dig little more frantically and... Squirt.
And note: All this Squirting would not be a big deal if this were a lemon or a cantaloupe, but pomegranate juice is dark reddish and it stains!
By the time you're ten minutes into and spattered with juice stains, it's is easy to declare, NO MORE POMEGRANATES EVER, OR AT LEAST NOT FOR A VERY LONG TIME!
(You can buy the juice instead, which may actually be more nutritious anyway--but Crabby detects a yucky musky flavor in the juice which she doesn't in the fruit, so she's learned to ignore those cute little overpriced bottles of pomegranate juice at the store).
So here's one way to deal with opening up a pomegranate.
But Crabby has her own instructions.
1. Take pomegranate in left hand, sharp kitchen knife in right.
2. Rethink; put both down.
3. Take off all your clothes.
4. Take pomegranate in left hand again, sharp kitchen knife in right, and retreat to bathtub.
5. Decide knife is superfluous and set it down nearby.
6. Dig in rip open pomegranate with fingers, greedily biting any exposed sections and covering most of self in dark red juice.
7. Try to calm spouse down when you are discovered in tub with kitchen knife at your side, covered in dark red fluid.
8. Resolve to buy pomegranate juice next time even if you don't like it as much.
Winter fruit is a hard subject to comment on--so Crabby will not be offended if you stray onto other subjects or even other blogs. Just come back eventually, or she will be very sad!
