Every week Samin & the team post 3 things (give or take) we find delightful, enriching, and worth encouraging you to check out for yourself. When we have them, this is where you’ll find updates too.
Hope you get as much joy from all this as we do!
FEED (Y)OUR COMMUNITY
This is always good advice, but it’s an especially crucial time to take action now as tens of millions of Americans are losing their SNAP benefits. It’s been heartwarming to watch people across the country rise up to take care of each other as the shutdown continues. The fact is, no one in this country (or anywhere!) should go hungry—there are more than enough resources to go around. Life is more fulfilling for everyone when we’re all cared for. Over here, we’ll continue donating funds to local food banks, No Kid Hungry and Feeding America, participating in other forms of mutual aid, and taking care of the people around us as our government fails to do so.
We’re grateful to those of you who’ve shared information about resources in the comments section of our post earlier this week, and we encourage more comments like these.
Samin recommends Good and Cheap, a cookbook for people with very tight budgets, particularly those on SNAP/Food Stamps benefits. And we were glad to learn about Kiki Rough this week and appreciate the good work she’s doing too.
ACTUALLY, THEY’RE CALLED ARILS
We love to eat the sweet, tart, juice-filled sacs surrounding the seeds inside a pomegranate, but freeing them from the pith is infamously tricky. So, as promised in our Choose-Your-Own Chicory Salad post earlier this week, we put together a few tips to help you!
Start with a really sharp knife that’s small enough to fit comfortably in your hand.
Cut around the base of the stem, then pop it off to expose the pith.
Look for the ridges or “shoulders” of the fruit and score the skin down those lines.
Put both thumbs in the space where the stem was and pull the pomegranate apart. It will break into wedges along the lines you scored.
Gently peel away any visible pith to reveal a cluster of arils.
Cup a section, skin side up, in your non-dominant hand. Then use the back of a wooden spoon to bonk the arils free. Yes, bonk is the official term for this. Keep bonking until all the arils are free. You may need to pick out the last few.
Finally, pick out and discard any errant pith left among your beautiful arils and you’re good to go!
That’s about all there is to it! Hope this makes it easier for you to enjoy pomegranates!
GOOD STUFF
People in Oregon are giving free dance lessons outside of ICE facilities. They’ve been coined “craftivists” and it’s one of the best forms of protest we’ve seen this year.
Misty Copeland took her final bow.
Billie Eillish calls out billionaires. A delightful, short speech on giving away money.
My pomegranate game has been vastly improved! Thank you ❤️
Thank you!! The pomegranate instructions are perfect timing...I have two fruits and didn't know where to look for this method :)