After reading this thread on Chowhound, I was intrigued by all the new Reserve flavors from Haagen-Dazs. Many people on the thread where asking where they could find them, so I assumed, as the name implies, that they were hard to get. Imagine my surprise when I found the whole array at a local market.
Now I’m a little bit of a pomegranate freak. I love the fruit, and there’s nothing like the first pomegranate of the winter to signal the approach of the holidays. Most people lament the hard work involved in enjoying the fruit and are happy with all the new pomegranate products on the market. Being a real fan of the fruit itself, however, I don’t think any of those products actually taste like they should. Tangentially, the only exception I’ve found to this is Polar’s Pomegranate Seltzer. The biggest problem with this rash of new products is that the relatively small crop of fruit are all being juiced. I had a very hard time finding the whole fruit this winter in the market, when the year before, they were everywhere. The ones that did materialize where small and anemic, hardly worth the effort. Pomegranates are the John Mayers and Howie Days of the fruit world – they were better before they became popular and famous… now they just suck.
So vainly, I picked the Pomegranate Chip from the freezer. I would have been much better off trying one of the other flavors, one that wouldn’t disappoint me so completely. The Hawaiian Lehua Honey and Sweet Cream sounds really interesting and is probably the best of the bunch, so if I see that again, I might give it a try, although $5 is a little steep for a pint of prepackaged supermarket ice cream.
And what were my impressions of the Pomegranate Chip? Meh. M-E-H, meh. It tasted like a strange raspberry chip ice cream, nowhere near as good as the raspberry chip yogurt that I devoured when I worked at Emack & Bolio’s. I was expecting some hint of tart-y goodness, something to suggest that, indeed, a pomegranate had even been near the ice cream at some point. I guess it’s just one more product to hold in contempt of taking away my precious fruit.
5 comments:
I love real pomegranates too. Aside from pomegranate juice, I haven't ventured elsewhere - and it sounds like I shouldn't!
And also - I can't believe John Mayer dated Jessica Simpson - doesn't that stand against everything he stood for??
They're still together, depending on which trashy magazine you read... thus strengthening my point that pomegranates are the John Mayers of the fruit world. Sigh.
Dude - I saw this in MY market today.
have you tried pomegranate molasses? it's found in middle eastern stores and it makes an excellent glaze for lamb, with some olive oil, cumin, and lime juice. or added to some fresh heavy cream as you're whipping it to give it a nice pomegranate flavor and pink hue. it's a good way to have pomegranate flavor when they're out of season.
Andrea, I'm Armenian, so I've probably had it mixed in with something before. I will definitely pick some up, though, to play around with. Thanks for the heads up!
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