To escape the winter blues, try seeing some red
The winter-morning kitchen is quiet except for the s oft scuff of my s lippers as I step to the chilly back hall and fetch a white, oxford shirt from its hook beside the aprons and the stockpot.
It’sa 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 avo idaCSI-worthy spray on the white backsplash tile.
My fingers working underwater, loosening the thin tissue that separates crimson chambers, make vaguely aquarium-l ikesou nds; the occasional seed plops like a fish surfaci ng.Nutri tionists say the ruby fruit possesses powerful polyphenols that tame inflammation. I’d add that the relaxing task of seeding also serves as atonic.
Picking up already-seeded poms is somet hing I can’t bring myself to do. I like sorting through the mound of globes in the produce aisle, hefting candidates for the heaviest f ruit.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 feat hersofcardinals and their more subtly tinged friends.
Redisnotac olor I wear — in clothing, lipstick or nail polish. But in this month, when early garden blooms ares till 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 sym boli n 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.