[Sca-cooks] Persephone and pomegranite seeds

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 23, 2005, at 1:35 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> So pomegranites were known in Italy and Greece in classical times?

Yes.

> Or has the meaning of this name changed through the centuries and  
> been applied to different fruits?

Not that I know of...

> I don't think I've even seen a pomegranite. The seeds are edible?

Well, sort of. I'm sure you could eat the actual seeds and suffer no  
ill effects, within reasonable limits. What we usually mean, though,  
by "seeds" in this case, are more like kernels. The pomegranate has a  
rind, a little like an orange (except it's usually a deep, pinkish  
red), and inside, sections (again, something like an orange, only  
there's no skin or membrane around each section). Each section  
consists of small juice-bearing kernels, somewhat like the little  
juice cells in an orange, only each has a small, white seed. You eat  
the kernels (each shaped something like a small kernel of maize  
corn), with most people spitting put the actual seed.

You try (usually unsuccessfully) to keep the juice off your  
fingertips as you navigate and eat the pomegranate,  because it  
stains the fingertips something fierce.

I gather not all pomegranates are red; all the ones I've ever seen  
have been, though. They're pretty much in season now through January  
or so, I believe.

>
>> The side effect of this is winter--when her mother grieves her
>> daughter's absence, plants cease to grow and flourish.
>> See? Actually even kinda food-related, especially when you catch the
>> mother's name (Ceres-->source of the word "cereal").
>
> Oh! Did "cereal" come from "Ceres"? Or the other way around? Or did  
> they both just come from the same root word?

Yes, yes, and yes. This is kind of a chicken-or-the-egg question  
(although everyone knows the egg, laid by a proto-chicken, had to  
have come first), or at least a philosophical question along the  
lines of, does Man create his Gods or vice versa? Suffice it to say  
it to say that everyone seems to agree that they're etymologically  
linked.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04