Soul Food Celebrates With Pomegranate

During the holiday season, so many traditions come to mind. Many of these traditions are wrapped up around food. Unfortunately, too many are unhealthy and made with less than ideal ingredients. Luckily, if you get creative, you can easily find ingredients that are delicious and fun! One of the most forgotten: pomegranate!

Below are two great recipes that are jazzed-up with the use of ravishing red poms. These tiny, fruity seeds are incredibly healthy and super festive. Eat up!

Pomegranate Guacamole

Serves 4

What you need:

• 3 avocados

• 1 small white onion, diced

• 1 small bunch cilantro, diced

• 1 jalapeno, diced (with or without seeds)—How hot do you like it?

• 1 pomegranate, seeded

• 1 lime, juiced

• ½ teaspoon salt

Here's How To Do It:

1. Create a paste by mashing half your diced onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and salt with a mortar and pestle or the back of a spoon.

2. Add the avocado, and the remaining ingredients. Mash with a fork until chunky and creamy in appearance.

3. Fold in about ⅔ of the pomegranate seeds, and use the rest to garnish on top when you serve.

Not sure how to deseed a pomegranate?

Here’s how: http://bit.ly/1m5PTcf

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate

No Baking Needed

What you need:

• 1 cup of pomegranate seeds

• ⅔ cup of dark, organic chocolate (at least 70%)

• ½ teaspoon curry powder

Note: When choosing a chocolate, the fewer ingredients the better. If there are weird ingredients you don’t recognize, move on! And if you can find one that uses honey, maple syrup, or coconut sugar instead of cane sugar, purchase that one.

1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and then carefully stir in the pomegranate seeds. Add the curry powder and stir well.

2. Use a fork to scoop out a small cluster and place on a parchment-paper-lined plate or tray.

3. Place the clusters in the fridge to harden.

4. Eat with joy!

Jackie Trippeer Batruch is a Brooklyn-based holistic health coach at Roots of Balance. She is also an organizer for Farmigo, an online farmer's market.

—Illustration by Sharon Watts

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