The first thing I ever read by David Foster Wallace was his Harper's magazine essay, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," though I think it originally went under a different title than that. It's about his experience on a cruise ship. He notes that while the unexpected level of service at first seems like you've died and gone to heaven, after just a few days your standards shift. Then you start noticing that the lettuce isn't quite as fresh as it could be, the beds aren't made up with truly military-grade creases, and the crew has carelessly left a few unpolished spots on the brass railings.
When I was a kid, pomegranates were a rare treat. I loved eating the seeds--but, boy, did I ever hate having to dig them out one or two or three at a time. As I grew up and took over doing my own grocery shopping, I never bought one, because of how I dreaded the work-to-pleasure ratio. Occasionally I had the thought that if somebody would sell just the seeds, already shucked out of the shell, that would be a super-duper product, and I would buy it forever.
And then the other day I was reading the new issue of Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer, and learned that TJ's sells pomegranate seeds, just as I had long thought somebody should! It instantly went on my shopping list.
I brought a container home yesterday and ate half of the it late last night. I quickly ran into the David Foster Wallace cruise-ship experience. It didn't take days, but only minutes.
With the first few, I was giddy--all the sweet juice with no hassle! (Yes, I was just eating them straight, the way real men do.) But before I was a quarter of the way through the package, I began to notice a change in my feeling about them. Sure, that little burst of flavor is nice, but then you're left with the unpleasant nub of the seed to chew and swallow (or spit out, if you're that kind of person).
When I was doing the work of digging the seeds out, the pleasure of that juice burst far outweighed the bit of unpleasantness that followed. But that ratio changed when there was no delay before the next one or two got popped into my mouth, and no effort invested in harvesting them. I began to want just the juice, with none of the flavorless, chewy parts. My dislike of the latter began to outweigh my enjoyment of the former.
Of course I can buy bottles of pomegranate juice. In fact, I can buy them from Trader Joe's. But it's just never quite as good as that tiny squirt of divine goodness that comes from a seed.
It seems that the more of the work that is done for me, the less I appreciate the result.
Maybe I should just go on a cruise, where everything will be perfect.
Will I buy it again?
Contrary to a lifetime of expectations, no. They're rather pricey at $3.99 for this little plastic dish, and I don't intend to pay that just to be disappointed.
Update
I wrote the above a few months ago. Since then, I changed my mind, sort of, and did buy another package, though it was specifically for the purpose of adding the seeds to a salad. For that, they worked well, though it's a pretty expensive way to add some fruity zing to a salad. I might do it again, though not often.
