Pomegranate-Orange Ice Cream Float

Aaaaaaaah…….this is so good! And I have drunk so much pomegranate and orange juice this afternoon that my jeans are bursting at the seams and my belly needs a bra. Is it bad to drink so much juice? The ice cream is the least of my worries because I’ve only had a little bit of it. The juices, on the other hand, have been inhaled in significantly larger quantities.

At first I was just going for a nice pomegranate juice and fruit blend for a fun, nonalcoholic Holiday drink and then I kept changing/adding/subtracting until low and behold I plopped a scoop of ice cream in the whole kit and kaboodle and screamed at the sheer wonder of it all. Actually, I smacked my forehead with my hand and mumbled something to the effect of, “Geez, dumbhead. Why didn’t you think of this sooner?”

Okay, back to the inspiration for all of this hoopla—the pomegranate. When I was little, I remember pomegranates as being one of the most intriguing fruits I had ever seen and I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t so sure that they were safe to eat. To a little kid, they are pretty strange, especially for a little kid growing up in the South. There are loads of berry-type things that my mom always warned me were poisonous and told me to never eat them. I do remember my first encounter with a pomegranate arial and I thought for sure I would die and go home to Jesus if I ate one of them, despite the fact that my mother said they were safe. Obviously she was right.

As with my post about Jerusalem Bagels, this is an Israel inspired post. Although pomegranates grow in the the U.S., I had never seen a pomegranate tree until last year when I was in Israel. Somehow, appropriately, I saw my first one near the Garden Tomb. If you ever get to go to Israel, make sure you go to the Garden Tomb. It is a beautiful, tranquil place.

You may be wondering why I would talk about the place where the Savior was buried after his crucifixion, but it is also the place where he was resurrected. His birth, his life, his death, his resurrection are all about hope and Christmas is about hope, right? I have great hope in the resurrection, great hope in having eternal life, great hope in seeing Christ one day.

Strange that I should begin this post in such a loud voice and wind down to sober thoughts. Talking about pomegranates has that effect on me now. As I sit here thinking about them, pomegranates, I think that I am going to make having pomegranate floats on Christmas Eve a new tradition at my house. Somehow it just seems like a great thing to do…read the Christmas story, talk about baby Jesus, and have these floats.

You may also like:

/

/