Aside from the Greek myth involving Persephone, I was first introduced to the existence of pomegranates when I apparently ate something horrible and was desperately trying not to die. A former friend’s boyfriend gave me blackberry pomegranate tea (POM!) and saved my stomach from what had seemed to be imminent destruction. He’s the same guy who once wanted to egg my house for no apparent reason, but decided not to when he found out I lived in it because I was a nice person. (Hooray for the golden rule?) I’ve since also tried the lychee pomegranate tea, which they were handing out at the Nike Women’s Marathon, but my first encounter with the actual fruit was two falls ago, when I was tabling with Dori for Na Keiki ‘O Hawai’i. He handed me a piece and told me to just remember to spit out the seeds.
I thought they were interesting fruits, although a little tedious to eat, but I wanted to find recipes where I could use them to make awesome things. This recipe was from last year, where I picked up four of them from Mekala. She has awesome fruit trees. :D
Pomegranate Banana Smoothie
Ingredients:
-banana
-soy milk
-pomegranate
-flax seed
Instructions:
1) Reduce banana into pieces and stick in blender. Add soy milk until it just about covers the banana pieces. Scoop in spoonful of flax seed.
2) Juice half a pomegranate into the mixture. Blend until smooth-ish. Serve!
A word of advice: if you’ve never juiced a pomegranate before, please do it by the sink, because that stuff stains like no other. I basically cut it in half and crushed it with my fist. I’m sure there are definitely more efficient/less bloody methods than the way I did it. For instance, if you happen to own a juicer, life would be a whole lot easier. But I have no idea where ours went. (It’s been MIA for many moons/years. :/ )
