Doug and I have been writing this blog for 6 months now – a great experience all around. We’ve gotten inquiries from numerous readers, and some surprising emails from educators, marketing agencies, and now a food-related company.


Janny, the blogger from POM Wonderful, the pomegranate people, offered to ship us some pomegranate juice to try.


She knows we’re fans, because we’ve written about pomegranate juice before – using it to make the FABULOUS pomegranate martini , as a marinade for shish kebab, an ingredient in Muhammara , and a news item about POM Wonderful.


Of course, we considered any potential conflict in accepting Janny’s offer. Could we be objective, for the sake of our readers, if we allowed ourselves to be favored by this one company?


We thought about this for…oh, about a minute, and decided: No problem. Send us the juice!


In fact, we were already enamored of POM. It tastes right, which is what we care most about. Of course, POM’s health claims are pretty interesting. We’ll leave that to those more qualified to judge.


I did a little “digging” into the origin of pomegranates (Nur, in Armenian), and found that they have been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times – Armenia included.


Then I discovered that California has 14 varieties of pomegranates, one being the WONDERFUL. (I guess that’s where “POM Wonderful” got its name.)


Here’s a tidbit I found at www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/pomegranate:


“Wonderful Originated in Florida. First propagated in California in 1896. Large,
deep purple-red fruit. Rind medium thick, tough. Flesh deep crimson in color, juicy and of a delicious vinous flavor. Seeds not very hard. Better for juicing than for eating out of hand. Plant is vigorous and productive. Leading commercial variety in California.”


Interesting, yes?


No matter what variety you buy, pomegranates are, well, wonderful!