Some time ago I got an email from the lovely folks over at the POM Wonderful juice company wondering if I might like to sample their product. I, of course, said yes and eagerly waited the arrival of my juice. I have tried the POM Teas before and thought they were really very good. I have not had the 100% pomegranate juice yet so I was pretty excited when the above box landed on my front step the other day. Pomegranate juice has many possibilities both as a beverage and as an ingredient in cooking, so I was eager to experiment.
I unpacked the box and was confronted by 8 attractively packaged bottles of juice-
The bottles have sort of a feminine, Venus of Willendorf feel to them and they are appropriately sized at 8 ounces. Only 150 calories a shot. I immediately gave one to the wife, who is a juice fiend, and she cracked it open. She seemed to like it and said that it had a pleasant tartness and tasted very much like an actual pomegranate (makes sense in light of the whole 100% pomegranate juice thing).
As a first test I decided to see how the stuff played in a cocktail. I have a bunch of homemade Green Tea Vodka so I thought this would be a good accompaniment to the juice. I used 1 bottle of POM Juice, 2 cups of green tea vodka, and a 16 ounce bottle of diet lemon lime soda. I would have preferred to use sparkling water but I did not have any handy. All of this went into a pitcher with plenty of ice.
This was a very nice early summer drink. The green tea and pomegranate go very well together as the scads of bottled juices out there with this combo can testify. A little carbonation was nice as well, and it was tart and sweet. I am usually a pretty strict beer and whiskey guy, so the fact that I enjoyed this is fairly surprising.
I am looking forward to doing something with the rest of the POM juice. I have been experimenting with a lot of Middle Eastern dishes as of late and pomegranate factors in many of these recipes. Perhaps I might venture to attempt a Persian recipe or two as well. Anyways, my thanks to the POM company for laying some juice on me. I appreciate it immensely.
It's really good in iced tea. I make a picture of iced tea (from tea bags, not a mix) and add a cup or so of the pom juice and some sweetener. Some times I add other fruit juice as well, pom and raspberry/cranberry juice is nice.
ReplyDeleteThe POM makes a wonderful cocktail too. I'm not much into whoopsy drinks, but every once in a while, they go down really good. I'm more of a beer girl. POM kind of hard to find in my area - you really have to search the recesses of the markets here for it. Would love to do some experimenting with it if the price was better. I love pomegranate stuff and could probably do a book on it.
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