Pomegranates

We live in a agricultural rich area. Currently it is pomegranate season. That means that I can use any amount of pomegranates I can pick or get my hands on. A friend of mine knows my love for pomegranates and has generously let me go over and regularly pick them. For those of you who do not know what a pomegranate tree looks like (though if you googled it, the actually grow on bushes) it is a huge 8 foot tall and covered in 2-3 inch thorns.
One of her trees has very scary looking bugs on them, they are leaf footed bugs.  These bugs are like the devil himself. They not only fly, they jump at you and cling to you to scare you at a later time. They are over an inch long and so gross. Needless to say my picking is accompanied with lots of yelps from me, and laughter from my kids and friend.

First trip yielded about 60 of them. I had never done anything with them except eat them or drink the already processed juice. I have never processed it myself. After a google search I found a few ways of getting the juice from the seeds. I decided to go with the easiest way. I just get the arils (red juicy seeds) from the pomegranate, throw them about a cup at at time into a blender and blend for a few seconds. It bursts the arils open and releases the juice. I then drain it through a double folded cheese cloth, to strain the juice from the seeds and the skin of the arils.

I now have beautiful fresh juice to do what ever I want with! In the past two weeks I have made pomegranate jelly, syrup, molasses, white chocolate pomegranate mousse pie, pomegranate cupcakes and pomegranate pork chops. Plus, lots and lots of frozen pomegranate juice to use at a later date.


I think my family by this point is getting tired of pomegranate everything, but my husband still brought me home another box of them yesterday! Not sure what I will be doing with this batch, but once they are processed into juice I will figure it out. Any Ideas?