What can you do with a pomegranate?

Having come across three pomegranates this week, I feel like I need to come to a decision about them. Friend or foe? Fruit or vegetable? Corey or peely?

It doesn’t fit into any of my ‘fruit categories.’ There’s the eat the fruit and throw away the core/stone type (apple, pear, peach, plum etc.), the peel and eat type (banana, pineapple, orange, kiwi etc.) and the pop the whole thing in type (berries, grapes etc.).

I guess you do peel a pomegranate, but then what? Crazy little mini-grape-like seeds and an explosion of red juice. The seeds are almost berries and they do have a pip in the middle which you could chuck away. It confounds categorization!

It seems that while vegetables are here to cheer me up in my pre-Christmas stress, pomegranates are here to infuriate and confuse me.

I’ve been collecting some opinions about this perplexing ‘fruit’. My mum said that you’re supposed to ‘roll it on a table, collect the juice and eat the seeds’. My colleague recollected eating the seeds with a pin?! 

I presented one to my class and gathered their ideas. Apparently it smelt like a ‘gone off apple’ and tasted like a grape/cherry. There was much ooing and aahing at the pretty star pattern inside. I can’t deny it is a rather handsome fruit (inside at least).

In short, pomegranates are perhaps the most bizarre fruit in existence. I sure can’t get my head around them.

Just thought. Rhubarb – where the heck does that fit? Good for sword-fighting though. Pomegranates can’t do that. Ha!