Move Over Pumpkin, Pomegranates are Here!

Ok, I know pomegranates have been in the stores for quite some time now, yet I waited until only last week to try my first pomegranate of the season. For some reason I had forgotten just how delicious they were.


I bought a HUGE pomegranate at the grocery store and one provided about 300 arials (the seeds that you eat). That is about 1.5 cups of juicy, delicious, edible pomegranate.




At work I did a demo on how to de-seed a pomegranate under water. Here is a good video to watch if you have never tried it yourself. It's a great way to prevent a huge mess from all of the arial juice.

Pomegranates are seriously one of the healthiest fruits available. Who needs goji and acai when you can get pomegranates fresh at your local grocery store?!

Health Benefits

• They help lower your blood pressure and maybe even increase your libido

• They are packed with antioxidants, which fight chronic diseases and reduce whole-body inflammation

• They might help lower your bad LDL cholesterol

• Recent studies have linked pomegranate consumption to decreased risk of breast cancer

Don't just drink the juice because you would be missing out on all of the fiber (and there is a lot of fiber in those arials!). I have been using pomegranates for many things lately, such as;

Adding it to yogurt....

Sprinkling it on top of my morning oatmeal with yogurt and cinnamon....

And this...

Pomegranate and Pear Salsa

Ingredients

1.5 cups pomegranate arials

1/4 cup POM juice

The juice from one lime

1 bartlett pear, chopped (or any pear)

1/4 cup diced red onion

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1 T sugar (optional)


Directions

Combine all ingredients and serve with your favorite chips.

**This salsa looks so pretty and would make an excellent snack/appetizer at a holiday party. The colors are just spectacular! Sorry I don't have a picture. I need to start carrying my camera with me to work. **



QUESTION: How do you like to eat pomegranates?

Our Own Farmer's Market

Since the last time I posted about our garden (aka "The Forster Farmer's Market") we've been busy working to get it finished. After tilling all of the dirt we added pebbles for drainage purposes. We only added a very thin layer, barely enough to cover every square inch.


Then we opened the bags of topsoil, which I thought looked a lot like a giant brownie. Doesn't it? I wanted to eat it but Nick wouldn't allow me to. haha



We added one layer....


Then another layer....



And then we added the Organic Gardening Soil.






Last, but certainly NOT least, we planted our seeds! We recorded each fruit and vegetable with a permanent marker on our fence. We hadn't thought to buy any tags to mark which row contained which seeds, so the permanent marker was our best bet. I think it'll work just fine.


We planted winter squash, pumpkins, cantaloupe, bell peppers, cilantro, broccoli, kale, and spinach. Yeah, we are going to have a TON of food!! This is why we are calling it a Farmer's Market. I just know we'll be selling (well, giving away!) some goods in the future.

On the side of our house we planted some herbs. We didn't plant these in our garden because we planted them before our garden was ready. They were about to die and they needed planted ASAP.

Garlic chives, English thyme, and common sage

I recently made another batch of my summer/spring salsa, but this time I added some fresh grown Ohio corn! I can't get enough of it. Do you like corn on the cob? I do. Nick hates that is gets stuck in his teeth, but that doesn't bother me. I'm not deathly afraid of FLOSS like he is....

We've been making some fires in our fire pit lately. Clearly we need a new one because this one is cracked, but it still works and we're loving it. Each night we just sit by the fire and drink one of our favorite wheat beers; Paulaner (I can drink wheat in the form of beer because it's already fermented, therefore it won't ferment again in my intestines and cause gas and bloating). With Nick's new job he is not working nights as often as he used to. I really love it. Now all I need is a job of my own :) I'm supposed to hear about my job by Saturday.

Coming Up

On Saturday I will be posting a job update. By that time I will have heard about my job (good or bad) and I plan on spilling the beans about what the job is, and hopefully all the good details. I will also post a new summer/spring salad.

Thanks for reading everyone! Have a great end of the week.

New Garden and Summer SALSA

Last weekend (when I wasn't getting mad about marketing ploys) Nick and I finally started to create our fruit and vegetable garden! Yeah I know we're sort of late, but we've had so many other things to do with our new house, the garden kept getting pushed aside.

This is the area that we deemed "Garden Central". Just last weekend it looked like this.....


About an hour later, after we both contributed some serious muscle and sweat, it looked like this......



An about two hours later, it looked like this......



Tonight plan to till the soil then add a layer of pebbles, followed by a layer of topsoil, followed by a layer of gardening soil. We want to make the garden rise a bit so the water can fall off to the side (this will prevent puddling in our garden). We also want to make a walk-way somewhere in this area so we can get to our plants more easily. But first we have to kill the giant ant hill that we found. Yuck.

We had hoped to buy all organic soils, but after looking at the prices of the conventional vs. the organic soils we've decided to do about three-fourths organic, and one-fourth conventional soil. The man at the garden center also told us that the pesticides in the conventional soil will help our garden grow faster. Yeah, at this point we need any help we can get. We want to start small this year, so here is what we are planting:

Cucumber

Tomatoes

Zucchini

Pumpkin

Spinach

Cantaloupe

We'll also plant some herbs, such as cilantro, so I can make more of this:

Gina's FODMAP-Friendly** Summer Salsa
(** Contains zero garlic, onion, or avocado . To read more about FODMAP, check out this post)

If you choose to make this at home you can obviously (and should!) add garlic, onion, and avocado. I am not able to eat these because they contain FODMAPs.

1. Chops some fresh tomatoes

2. Add your favorite spices
(a dash of salt, 1/4 t cayenne pepper, 4 squirts of NuNaturals clear stevia (or one packet of your favorite calorie-free sweetener), 1 tsp cumin, 2 tsp ground pepper)



3. Add as much chopped cilantro and lime juice as you wish (it's really a guessing game)




4. ENJOY with your favorite chips! I love my salsa nice and chunky, can you tell? I chose some flaxseed chips, which contain whole flaxseeds. I am always sure to really chew these well because the beneficial fats are only released when the flaxseeds are ground by my teeth :)

Coming Up
Tomorrow I'm heading to Pittsburgh for an interview! I couldn't be more excited (I promise I will be posting about this soon.....). When I get back Nick and I will be celebrating our 4 year "dating anniversary". We plan to go to the restaurant where we had our first date (if I make it back in time). If not tomorrow night we will celebrate Saturday night.

On Saturday I will be posting a new frozen yogurt flavor....BLUEBERRY!

Have a great day/weekend, and thanks for reading!