Paradox with a P

It seems like one of the paradoxes of adult life is how to interject variety into a healthy but potentially boring routine.  I was thinking about this just this morning as I prepared, yet again, the same breakfast I have been eating for years – yogurt, a few tablespoons of raw rolled oats, some chopped almonds and fresh fruit.  The first three ingredients are a constant, but the choice of fruit shifts with the seasons, preventing monotony from ever setting in.

Every season has its charms, but I particularly enjoy this segment of the year during which the summer peaches segue into late summer pomegranates, which are followed by burnt-orange persimmons.   Of course the “P” sequence doesn’t play out so neatly, and like now, when baskets of persimmons are filling the greengrocer’s shelves, there is a lovely overlap.

We have two pomegranate bushes in our yard – one variety that ripens early in the season, with intensely sweet, ruby red seeds, and a second, late bloomer, that yields pale pink fruit that is almost too tart.  When we built an addition onto our house over a decade ago, this bush was bulldozed flat, then miraculously came back to life, and I believe its fruit has special properties.   Now at the end of October, I’m sharing its yields with the insects who have already bored holes into its thick skin – cutting away the good parts and mixing the sour jewels with chunks of chopped persimmon for an exceptionally chewy, complex and sublime meal.

Hosting a group of Americans on a culinary tour last week, we had a chance to taste fresh pomegranates, which two of the six participants acknowledged that they’d never eaten before.  And I realized that having not one, but two pomegranate bushes in my own yard is anything but routine.