Written for the Alameda Sun November 2003

Throughout the San Joaquin valley the pomegranate trees are flush with bright red fruit. If they grew on pine trees they would be they perfectly decorated Christmas trees. A pomegranate tree is really a big shrub and it depends on the warm summer months to produce the right piece of fruit. When the fruit has a pinkish to red skin it is ready for harvest. I used to pick the pomegranates off of the tree that hung over my fence from the neighbor's side and make juice. Pomegranate juice is a bit labor intense, but well worth the work. I would share the recipe, but nowadays I find myself buying a product, new to the market last year called POM Wonderful. POM stands for pomegranate and Wonderful is the name of the most common variety of the many seeded fruit that is available October through December. This, by far is the best commercially produced pomegranate juice that I have come across, and all of the work is done by someone else. Another product that I have enjoyed immensely is the already seeded pomegranate. That's right, again the work is done for us. Fresh Pomegranate seeds in the refrigerated section of the produce department packed in 4 and 6 oz plastic tubs. No mess, no Spray n' Wash moments.

Now, that all of the work is done for us there is no need to write this article. Actually, there is. It is still a beautiful piece of fruit and even though the seeds and juice are available to us already processed, it is nice to have the fruit around for looks. And for those of you that are purists you can always remove the seeds from the fruit by slicing off the stem and blossom ends, scoring it from top to bottom, and submerging it into a bowl of water. Under the water the spongy seed casing will float to the top of the bowl and the tasty seeds will sink to the bottom. Any burst seeds that would normally bloody your shirt will leak into the water. The trick is to make sure that the fruit is completely submerged while breaking apart. With a strainer scoop all of the spongy casing off the top and place it into one of those fancy green containers that the garbage company has forced on us. Then pour the water out of the bowl over a colander to catch all of the seeds.

I usually don't get into my ethnic background, but being half French and half Armenian, the pomegranate has a special meaning to me. The word pomegranate comes from the French pome garnete which means "seeded apple." Although it originated in the Himalayas the pomegranate made its way through the Mediterranean with many legends in many lands. To the Greeks it was a symbol of Fertility. images of the fruit were chiseled into the pillars of King Solomon's temple, and the fruit is mentioned 31 times in the Old Testament. The fruit made its way to the eastern European country of Armenia. It is there that the pomegranate became a national symbol. Armenian legend has it that each pomegranate contains 365 seeds. One to symbolize each day of the year. I've never counted the seeds in a pomegranate and it's not on my "to do" list any time soon, but it sounds reasonable enough to me. A tradition that is still remains today at Armenian weddings, is where the bride is handed a pomegranate and she winds up a fast ball right against the wall smashing the pomegranate to pieces. The scattered seeds ensure the bride of future children and most likely ticks off the janitor.

Here in California it is always associated with the holidays. Some folks spray paint them gold and silver and place them in a bowl or hang them on a tree. Whatever you do with them keep in mind that pomegranates are high in vitamin C and recent studies have shown that they contain higher antioxidant levels than red wine and green tea.