Just a little inspiration.  Am feeling sentimental today.

*Pom Wonderful"

I trust that you are drinking your pomegranate juice or getting your
MDR (minimal daily requirement) of the fruit in some other fashion.
Ted takes softgels which we get from Costco.  And he also buys pom
juice concentrate at the local market, Fairway, which he mixes with
water and grape juice.  Why?  Because he says he can't drink it
straight.  It's the taste, stupid.

Ted is not the only one who likes to grouse about the palatability of
the pomegranate. I hear this all the time - if you ask me, it's like a
bonding ritual.  Maybe that's because for guys with prostate cancer,
pom juice is the "cod liver oil" of yesteryear.  It's hard to swallow,
but you just gotta just hold your nose and do it.  Like so many other
things in Cancerworld.

A couple of guys have written me offline to say that they really like
pomegranates.   But they are too ashamed to admit it in public.

It bothers me that the pomegranate "don't get no respect," in Rodney
Dangerfield's words.  I like to stick up for underdogs anyway, but in
this case I take the pom-bashing personally.

First of all, I love the taste of the fruit.  It is not cloying like
so many others.  Maybe I like tart because I am a tart?

But I do prefer the taste of pomegranate in moderation:  For example,
I use just a dash of the concentrate to season a whole pitcher of
water.  It's yummy, healthy and lo-cal.  I feel bad because Ted has
taken to hiding his little bottle of pom juice concentrate in the
vegetable bin under a pile of greens so that I don't help myself to
it.

I also enjoy eating pomegranates whole.  For me, part of it is
nostalgia. At home we used to eat poms on special occasions like Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish new year, because this fruit has always been
considered sacred in that tradition.  The reason:  It was produced in
the Holy Land and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible many times;  it's
got a lot of seeds, which signifies reproduction and good luck;  and
folklore has it that the pomegranate contains exactly 613 seeds, the
same number of "mitzvahs," or commandments, in the Torah.

I must say I was surprised to read about the above on the Costco web
site, of all places.  The company sells some good pom products, and so
they provide a brief history of the fruit.  Apparently, the
pomegranate has been revered for millenia by many different cultures.
The ancients were not as dumb as we think: they recognized the pom's
powerful health benefits.  In fact:

"Pomegranates thrived as the preferred food of kings and nobles for
centuries."

And I'll bet the gods ate it, too.

And there's more: The pomegranate featured prominently in Ancient
Egyptian mythology and art.  It was also regarded by the Egyptians as
a symbol of passage into the next life.  Poms were found alongside the
many treasures buried in the tomb of King Tut.

So how do you like that?  Lowly becomes holy.

I went to the liquor store recently to buy some red wine for Ted.  On
a nearby shelf I spotted some "Pomegranate Schnapps" made by Hiram
Walker, which was recently introduced.  I tell you, the pomegranate's
time has come!  There was also a pom liqueur called PAMA.  What caught
my eye was the florid language on the label:

"Experience a unique blend of mythology, seduction and forbidden
fruit.  The pomegranate is a mystical,  mythical food that has spanned
the years.  The pomegranate is so ancient it appears in the earliest
folklore and mythology.  And the pomegranate is so modern that it has
become the not-so-forbidden fruit of those making tomorrow's myths."

So go ahead guys, make my myths!

And be sure to drink to your health.

Cheers, Salute, L'Chaim, Skoal, A Votre Sante, Slaint, Nazdrovye. . .

Leah

prostatecancerblog.com