Persephone Salad

Yummy pomegranate season is upon us! Try not to let your kitchen turn into a murder scene getting the pomegranate seeds out. Time to get your wooden spoons out witches. The least messy, yet strangly theraputic, method I've used to get the seeds out of the pomegranate is to cut it like so..

Hold the seed side down into a bowl and beat the living shit out of the back side. The seeds fly out and suddenly your no longer mad at your husband.

Mix the pomegranate seeds with desired amounts of yogurt and granola for what I call
Persephone Salad.

Persephone is the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology. She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Persephone was such a beautiful young woman that everyone loved her, even Hades wanted her for himself. One day, when she was collecting flowers on the plain of Enna, the earth suddenly opened and Hades rose up from the gap and abducted her. None but Zeus, and the all-seeing sun, Helios, had noticed it.

Broken-hearted, Demeter wandered the earth, looking for her daughter until Helios revealed what had happened. Demeter was so angry that she withdrew herself in loneliness, and the earth ceased to be fertile. Knowing this could not continue much longer, Zeus sent Hermes down to Hades to make him release Persephone. Hades grudgingly agreed, but before she went back he gave Persephone a pomegranate. When she later ate of it, it bound her to underworld forever and she had to stay there one-third of the year. The other months she stayed with her mother. When Persephone was in Hades, Demeter refused to let anything grow and winter began. This myth is a symbol of the budding and dying of nature. Source

I also relate this symbolism to Inara Serra, one my favorite TV Goddesses. A profoundly beautiful, deep and spiritual woman torn between two worlds. Ironically enough, Persephone is a planet she frequented. (If you haven't watched the Firefly on DVD yet, what are you waiting for?!?!?)