Friday, December 12, 2008

pomegranates & other things


I happen to absolutely love pomegranates.  They might be the most fun thing to eat ever.  What other fruit allows you to eat a spoonful of SEEDS?  I mean, hello.  However, although pomegranates are delicious, they come with their fair share of problems.  If you research the correct way to extract the seeds from the fruit, it goes something like this:

1. Slice pomegranate in half.
2. Score each half into several sections.
3. Hold sections in a bowl of water, releasing the seeds.  The seeds will sink, and all the white stuff will magically float up to the top.  
4. Scoop out the white stuff, drain the water.
5. Enjoy.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Wrong.  When I prepare it, the steps usually go something like this:
1. Slice pomegranate in half.
2. Look down, realize that I am wearing a white shirt which is now covered with many miniature purple splotches.  Lament for approximately five seconds.  Change shirt into something dark red or purple, soaking aforementioned shirt with Oxi-Clean (TM) or similar product to try to remove stains as quickly as possible.  Return to kitchen.
3. Score each half into several sections.
4. Hold sections in a bowl of water, painstakingly pulling out every little cluster of seeds.  Most of the seeds sink, except for the ones that still have tiny bits of white stuff clinging to them.  These can't decide whether to float or sink so they hover in a kind of halfway limbo.  Try to remove white bits from seeds, but they never seem to go away.  Give up and realize that eating a little bit of white stuff is not going to hurt me (right?)
5. Wish that I had some sort of small strainer to scoop out the white stuff floating on top, but I don't.  So I use my hands and it takes about ten minutes.  Meanwhile, all this unrest in the water is making the seeds rather uneasy.  Some more seeds with clinging white particles float into the limbo position.  
6. Give up completely on removing white matter.  It's probably loaded with fiber, anyway.
7. Strain seeds. 
8. Enjoy.


Also, I am now officially finished with my first semester of medical school.   Hooray!  I am planning a very full Christmas break.  Tomorrow I am headed home to Huntsville for the holidays.  Here are the books I am taking home with me:



Obviously I will probably not get through all of these books.  If anyone has any suggestions as to which ones I should go for first, please let me know!  The only one I have read before is Enduring Love by Ian McEwan, but the other ones are all new.   

*NOTE: Tricia, if you are reading this, that is your copy of The Kite Runner.  I am sorry for keeping it this long but I really, truly am going to read it over break and I will bring it back to you ASAP.  

6 comments:

Neal said...

I couldn't tell which ee cummings books you have in the stack, but I highly recommend "i (six non-lectures)". Simply amazing.

Katie said...

1. i love pomegranates too, and you are SO right about the "simple" process of extracting the seeds...it's more fun to pick them out anyway...right?
2. definitely read "searching for god knows what"...it's awesome.

Tricia said...

keep the book as long as you need, as long as you read it. It is life-changing. You will then need to read "A Thousand Splendid Suns" as well. He might be my new favorite author.

sharon said...

this is sharon btw! i dunno about a lot of the books, but i am reading love in the time of cholera right now, so maybe you should read that sometime and we could compare. :)

Kacie said...

Hilarious

WikiStevia said...

There are 840 seeds in each of those. You should double check me by counting them.

Let me know.