POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice

When I was a kid growing up in Fresno, California, my mother would bring home whole pomegranates given to her by co-workers who grew them in the trees in their yards. Mom would cut the pomegranate in half for me, the only assistance I would receive, and I would sit on the lawn in the back yard with a paper napkin in my lap and pick out the red seeds one by one and pop them into my mouth. When I could no longer reach the seeds with my fingers, I'd gently peel back the skin and pry away the white membrane to reach even more seeds. It would generally take more than an hour to completely devour one whole pomegranate, single seed by single seed, and when I finished, my mouth and fingers would be stained bright red and my legs would speckled from the red juice. But not one seed escaped.

I don't think I've eaten a pomegranate since I was a teenager...a very, very, very long time ago.

Just in the last couple of years, I discovered pomegranate juice was being sold in stores, first in the smaller bottles and now in quarts and I've been buying it regularly ever since. But, in the last couple of months, I noticed that many regular food bloggers were using pomegranate juice in everything and praising all things pomegranate because they had received free samples of pomegranate juice. WTH???

So I did it. I did what I sometimes do best. I whined. Publicly. I whined too much about all the other bloggers getting their free samples of POM Wonderful while I made my weekly trip to WalMart to purchase my POM Wonderful with my own money. I suppose POM Wonderful finally took pity on me and guess what I got ~ Yaaayyy!! Free POM Wonderful!

Now you know that I already used pomegranate juice (when I purchased it with my own money) in that barbecue sauce I made a while back. And, I use it in the that refreshing summer drink recipe I also shared in the same post. Of course, I also use it in a pomegranate martini. But what else? I have a box full of those bottles.

I have some ideas. Like reducing the juice down into a syrup and using it to flavor mascarpone cheese for a dessert. Or maybe using it to flavor a salad dressing. Or how about a citrus and pomegranate glaze for salmon. So, I'll be working on those recipes in the next few days to see if I can come up with something delicious to share.

In the meantime, thanks POM Wonderful and Molly for the delicious stash!

I hope this doesn't make me a shill.