Pomegranate Peccadilloes

(Get out your dictionary and look 'em up. I had to get mine just to make sure I spelled the words correctly.)

So what could possibly be the faults of that luscious, nutritious fruit? Have you ever tried to eat one? If so, you know!

Our Kroger store had a great deal on pomegranates recently so I bought a few. When the girls were little I would occasionally splurge. I remember that the first one I ever bought came with a little paper telling how to eat it. That was back before Al Gore invented the Internet so the importers had to include instructions for all of us uninitiated.

I also remember that the purchase was quite expensive but the enjoyment rivaled anything that a doodad from Toys 'R Us could achieve and at less expense at that. I never bothered to tell the girls that it was good for them. Why spoil the fun?

Until yesterday, I had never eaten a pomegranate for myself. I may've sampled a seed or two from the ones given the girls but that's about it. Watching them get juice stains all over their mouths, hands, and clothes looked like the kind of fun I'd experienced as a child while picking wild blackberries in the thicket behind our house but tended to avoid as an adult who no longer desired to play with food.

So here I was with half a pomegranate in front of me and no idea what to do with it! Should I really just pick those seeds out and pop them in my mouth? I gave it a try. And immediately I decided to employ the help of a grapefruit spoon. It worked pretty well, I must say.

Lest you think I am a total ignoramus I will admit that I already knew I liked the taste of pomegranate as I have been known to indulge in bottles of juice and grenadine syrup on occasion. But my education is more advanced now as I came to understand why those bottles are so expensive!

As I was eating my seeds yesterday I decided to share them with the Bear. I wasn't sure he'd ever had the opportunity of sampling this fruit and my memories of his sisters just made it seem normal to want to indulge my nostalgia. I should've known better. I waited much too long to introduce him. He looked at me like I had two heads, then gingerly picked up a seed and popped it in his mouth.

"Not bad," he said before returning to his video game, which was the obvious signal that I was dismissed.

I see now that my approach was totally wrong. What I should've done was told him that under no circumstance was he to eat this fruit because it's on the list the orthodontist gave us of forbidden food items.

Every pomegranate seed in the house would've disappeared before the day was over.