I love fruit. I love its fresh juicy yumminess. I love the way different types of fruits combine different flavours, from sweet to tart and everything in between. I love the fact that as well as being so tasty, they’re also really good for you. Almost like nature’s own treats.

I tend to go through phases where I go berserk over a particular fruit and eat as much of it as I can. Sometimes it will be raspberries. Sometimes it will be passionfruit. Sometimes it will be peaches (especially the clingstone ones). Sometimes it will be blood oranges (and boy am I hanging out for those to be in season again). But at the moment, there’s one particular fruit that’s number one on my list. And that’s the wondrous pomegranate. 

I can’t get enough of pomegranates. I love everything about them. I love the complexity of their sweet/tart flavour. I love the burst of juice when you first place a bunch of seeds (I believe the technical term is aril) in your month. I love the crunch after the juice has gone when all that remains is the fibrous heart of the seed. And I also love that apparently they’re full of antioxidants that keep me healthy during these cold winter months.

One of the really fun things about pomegranates is peeling them to get the seeds out. It’s always a bit of a suspenseful moment when you first open one up, just to see what sort of state the seeds are in. There’s nothing worse than opening up a pomegranate to find the seeds inside are rotten.

Once you’ve ascertained that it’s a good pomegranate, the real challenge begins. Gotta get every single seed out. I’d hate to lose any. And surely, in the way the seeds are arranged internally, the pomegranate is one of nature’s wonders. The more you pull the thing apart, the more the seeds reveal themselves. Just when you think you’ve found them all, you peel back a little more and discover another hidden pocket. It’s a bit like exploring a house and finding hidden rooms around ever corner.

Peeling a pomegranate also feels a bit like writing a book. The more you peel the layers of a story apart, the more that is revealed. As you continue to write, you’re constantly finding little hidden pockets of story that you never expected. Characters show themselves to be more than you anticipated and plots twist in unpredictable ways. And in the end, you’re hopefully left with something that’s truly tasty and satisfying.

So there you have it. Stories and pomegranates – two of my favourite things. I knew I could find a way to bring them together.