To escape the winter blues, try red

The winter-morning kitchen is quiet except for the soft scuff of my slippers as I step to the chilly back hall and fetch a white, oxford shirt from its hook beside the aprons and the stockpot.

It’s a man-sized washable, bleachable shield against messy tasks, such as seeding a pomegranate.

Before reading the news of the day (or maybe because of it) the task of freeing pomegranate seeds is pleasingly meditative. Score the skin and break away the sections beneath the surface of water in a bowl to avoid a CSI-worthy spray on the white backsplash tile.

My fingers working underwater, loosening the thin tissue that separates crimson chambers, make vaguely aquarium-like sounds; the occasional seed plops like a fish surfacing. Nutritionists say the ruby fruit possesses powerful polyphenols that tame inflammation. I’d add that the relaxing task of seeding also serves as a tonic.

Picking up already-seeded poms is something I can’t bring myself to do. I like sorting through the mound of globes in the produce aisle, hefting candidates for the heaviest fruit. They come home in grocery bags during the drab season, when the landscape suffers from color deficit, a dun palette highlighted only by blue jays, holly berries and the red feathers of cardinals and their more subtly tinged friends.

Red is not a color I wear — in clothing, lipstick or nail polish. But in this month, when early garden blooms are still hibernating inside bulbs, I’m happy for red, as if, like paper hearts cascading across shop windows, it’s a harbinger of brighter days.

My mother liked to make cherry pie on Washington’s Birthday, a sweet honor based on the I-cannot-tella-lie fable. But maybe her baking tradition was done more out of a late February need for color when she was tired of bark brown.

The visual appeal may explain why it’s one of the oldest cultivated fruits and a symbol in Grenada, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In my own kitchen, it’s simply a bright spot in the day, in a season when we’re hungry for color.