Halloween was SO FUN! I am so blessed that I was able to take the day off work and pretend for a day that I was a stay-at-home mommy and get things done and enjoy my day. I could get used to this. Unfortunately...I cannot live above my means. And I like my lifestyle right now. I like it a lot.
Back to business here. Can't make this post longer than it already is going to be. (Sorry about that, by the way.)
I went to Walmart with a baby TWICE today BY MYSELF. I know. I showered, I fed the kiddo, got both of us around, headed out, came home, put the kiddo down for a nap, cleaned my car (what, what!), carved out my pumpkins, separated the seeds from the goo, spray painted them and carved them out, got the kiddo ready for Halloween, took her to Jacob's work and my work - all by myself! Then after we met up with Daddy-o, we went to a friend's house, then to the mall where they had some games and a kiddie haunted house and whatnot (all activities were very much advanced for Gracie, but we didn't realize that until we were already there, so we just wandered around and checked out everyone else's outfits). Then we came home and made a stop by the neighbors' houses. (One of our neighbors was so sweet - she got Gerber puffs and some yogurt blends for her! So thoughtful!) Then we came home and handed out some candy with our friends the Dotys. Here is a picture of Gracie in her outfit with the Doty boys.
Hudson (red) was Lightning McQueen, Gracie was a sock monkey (her favorite toy for the longest time was her purple polka dot sock monkey) and Landon (blue) was a police officer. We had a fabulous time celebrating G's first Halloween.
After everyone went home or went to bed I started making baby food...because that's what I do. Make baby food. I was doing very well. Started with lentils, then bananas, then carrot/tofu, green beans, spinach (new!), plum (new!), and pomegranate (new...).
Now...I've tasted the flavor of pomegranate, but I've never made anything with pomegranate before. I've seen Rachael Ray make some sort of something with pomegranate though, and she's nothing special, so I figured, "piece of cake". All I remembered from that episode was that she rolled the pomegranate on the counter and it made this kind of popping or cracking noise. So I got started rolling and sure enough - this weird sound and sensation of feeling like I just broke something crystal inside of 6 layers of leather.
I liked it.
No, I LOVED it. I loved it a little too much, actually. I went and somehow poked a hole in my pomegranate. That's when I learned those things are pressurized. Red juice came shooting out at me. It got everywhere. The counter, the stove, my shirt, the floor, my face.
Imagine me almost giddy having a great time popping my pomegranate and all of a sudden I get a little too giddy, poke a hole in it's vein and it's shooting it's little pomegranate blood at me.
Okay, after I realized I hadn't just somehow slit open my own wrist, I almost found it humorous. Almost. So next I find a pot for my mangled pomegranate to go in so I can figure out what to do next.
In the meantime, like any normal person would do, I google "how to peel a pomegranate" and the first thing to show up was a YouTube video titled "How to Cut Open a Pomegranate - Episode 7". Ha! Any fruit that takes 7 episodes for one to learn how to "cut open" it... Well, let's just say that this was the first point that I actually thought to myself, "maybe I shouldn't have gone for the pomegranate". So a YouTube video was a strike. Plan B.
Squeeze the crap out of the sucker until things come out. Out came maybe a couple of teaspoons of juice. Awesome. There's got to be more in there. This thing's bigger than my fist.
So I pull out the kitchen shears. I cut it open. And this was when I realized that not only have I never actually peeled/cut open a pomegranate before, but I really don't think I've ever seen the inside of one, either. What in the sam-hill are these things and what in the heck am I supposed to do with them? To say the least, this is not what I expected. I squeezed. I smushed. I tried to get juice out, but all that was happening was these seed thingies were just falling into the pot. I did the best I could. Which wasn't very good. Then I realized I had two pomegranates.
Ugh... So...I don't know if I need to or not, but I boil these things. Probably a third of the little amount of juice that I have evaporates. I think about watching Episode 7 at about this time, but let's face it - it's too late. I tried mushing these seed thingies with my potato masher. Didn't do anything. So I strain everything through a colander. That might have been right, but I didn't get any EXTRA juice, no matter how hard I pushed with that spoon.
When I strained it from the pot that I needlessly evaporated it in, I strained it into a bowl. Then I thought I could just dump it into some ice cube trays and make little cubes of pomegranate juice out of it and that would work just fine. So from the bowl I started pouring it into the ice cube tray. You know when liquid magically decides it owns gravity and doesn't go STRAIGHT down, but it just follows the dish or jug or glass that it's being poured from? Yeah...this liquid kicked gravity's @$$. So instead of going into the ice cube tray that I had carefully lined up the bowl with, it dumped itself at the tail end of the bowl on the countertop.
So instead of 3 tablespoons, I had 2 to work with. This is totally pathetic, but I even tried to sop up the juice from the counter and sort of "wring" it into the ice cube trays. It just wasn't meant to be.
One hour later, I learned that Gracie will not be eating anymore pomegranates.
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