Pomegranates - Yum! Yum!

It is Sukkot. The festival of Booths is a time to connect nature and G-d. I love to go camping; the sukkah is like camping but always seems a little more fragile than a tent. The fragileness of the sukkah corresponds to the fragileness of the seasons changing from warm during the day to cold at night which almost always seems to occur during Sukkot. Watching the wind sway the palm fronds and eucalyptus branches covering the sukkah while the stars at night peek through those branches seems to bring G-d and nature that much closer. 

The Sukkah or Booth of my youth always contained pomegranates and pictures of pomegranates hung up and swinging above my head. I also remember colored paper chains, pictures of wheat and fake grapes hanging. Not much has changed in the intervening years, other than my youth of remembrance and my baby granddaughter who will hopefully also gather some memories of pomegranates hanging in the sukkah.

These happy memories turn into almost an obsession with the pomegranate which essentially means - I like pomegranates. I like to include pomegranates in the foods I cook. So naturally, I looked for articles about pomegranates. And I was pleasantly surprised to find two current articles.

Seven Species are mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:8 in connection with which foods would be available in the land of Israel for the people of Israel - A land of wheat, and barley, and vines; of fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey (dates). The first article talked about the virtues of utilizing one of the Seven Species during Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, the pomegranate. The pomegranate is said to have exactly 613 seeds which correspond to the 613 commandments Jews follow. Medical reasons abound for eating the pomegranate or drinking the juice of the pomegranate, one of which is that it helps fight prostate cancer. One important aspect of pomegranates is the taste of sweet and sour all in one mouthful. This last is an advantage when cooking a variety of dishes.

Substitute pomegranate concentrate for vinegar, marinade meat in pomegranate juice, or add the fresh seeds to salads. There were recipes of pomegranate risotto and roasted short ribs with pomegranate juice. Recipes by Syrian Jews who use pomegranates when making kibbeh balls and pomegranate chicken often served as a Moroccan dish. The recipes included in this article made my mouth water and my stomach growl. Dishing it up/ With Virtues as Numerous as its Seeds by Haim Cohen and Eli Landau, Haaretz.com.

How can one purchase this lovely fruit? In my neighborhood in Southern California, it grows quite well and abundantly. Ah! But this blog is supposed to incorporate what is going on in Israel. Well, in the Golan Heights, the apples are not doing so hot. Key word is hot. It has been hot and there is a drought in Israel, like California. Apples require water and pomegranates are not as thirsty for water. So, some Israelis are pulling up the apple orchards and putting in pomegranates instead. There are 1,375 acres of pomegranates producing 18,000 tons of fruit in this year.

What does one do with so many pomegranates? Moshav Kerem Ben Zimra, in the Upper Galilee, has bred pomegranates to obtain juice sweeter and darker in color for wine making. Rimon Winery also produces pomegranate wine which was described as fine and expensive. Farmers Consider Turning from Apples to Pomegranates by Hana Levi Julian, Arutz Sheva, Published: 10/02/08, 4:24 PM 

A city in Israel, Raanana, likes pomegranates; I do not mean little pomegranates to hang from the sukkah, but big street size pomegranates. Raanana’s main street, Ahuza, has been known to sprout 43 pomegranates, as these pictures show from the city’s website from 2008. Okay, this is last year’s current event but it was hard to resist and just plain fun to post pictures of giant pomegranates.

These articles were easily verified. The Moshav and winery both have websites selling their products. As for the amount of pomegranate production, I found a Vietnamese vegetable, flower and fruit industry website promoting Israeli pomegranates. According to this website, pomegranates are a substantial income crop in Israel. I could also verify the medical and gastronomic claims of the first article. Medical studies utilizing pomegranates have been done by University of California, Los Angeles and there are journal publications touting medicinal applications of pomegranates such as United States National Center for Biotechnology. The gastronomic claims can only be verified in one manner I know of – making the recipes. All I can say is YUM, YUM!