Cucumber Mint Pomegranate Lime Yogurt Bowl

Oh, my. I haven't made any new posts to this blog in a whole decade. Wow. So much has happened, right? For me, food-wise, most significantly, I've been playing with eating a vegetarian and/or vegan diet as much as is practical for my life situation for a few years now, so that will influence my food and recipe choices here. No one would accuse me of being a purist, but I've gone from having meat 16 meals a week to about 5 (to compromise with my wife's preferences and needs in a two-person household, mostly, but also because old habits and cravings die hard, especially when I keep indulging them now and again). Anyway, now that we're caught up a little, on to today's food bits.

There's some backstory to this recipe, which you can feel free to skip. I've been making myself a particular mixture of yogurt, fruit, and seeds for breakfast once or twice a week since November 2022. Plain Greek yogurt, banana, blackberries or raspberries, maybe a mandarin orange or clementine or diced dried apricot, pomegranate seeds, pumpkin or sunflower seeds, topped with honey and/or petimezi. (Petimezi is a Greek form of grape molasses.) Why this particular mixture? Well, it tastes amazing, but really because I had been on a yoga retreat near Axos, Crete, and this is what was on the breakfast buffet every morning, during high pomegranate season. The retreat was a wonderful and sometimes profound experience, the setting was gorgeous, the connection to the surrounding nature and culture deep, the weather was incredible, the company warm, and the food absolutely out of this world. A peak life experience, a lit bit of which I could revisit (approximately) and literally take inside me through the sensual and nourishing medium of food, whenever I wanted to. Approximately, right? It's easy to get pomegranates all year round where I live, but it's not like I just pulled them off the tree outside my window. I have to order the petimezi online and it's not the same -- a little too thin. I can't yet find the sour cherry preserves they had in Crete in the US. I even went to a Greek grocery in Astoria, Queens, that took me an hour to get to by subway and found some actual Cretan honey. (OK, I was in the neighborhood for another reason and I got lucky, but I'm seriously thinking of going back. When I pulled the honey off the shelf out of like 10 choices, the grocer exclaimed, "Oh, that's the best honey!!") So this is a very contemplated recipe I have here, not at all improvisational.

This morning, though, I went to make a yogurt bowl for breakfast and re-discovered that I had procrastinated going food shopping and was out of the ingredients for my Cretan Yoga Retreat Yogurt Concoction. Hmm, what to do? Time to scour the fridge.

I had the yogurt, and plenty of pomegranate seeds. I was out of bananas, berries, and oranges. Hmmm. 

Let's start with the yogurt and pomegranate. Hey, there's some spearmint in the back there left over from our Kentucky Derby mint juleps, slowly wilting. No time like the present. I crushed a few leaves with my fingers and put them in the bowl. There were dried out blueberries and an apple available, but nah. Wait mint and . . . cucumber is thing? Yogurt and cucumber is huge thing, right? Cucumber is a . . . vegetable? But also mild and with a fruit-fleshy texture and even a little sweet. OK, great. Stripped and diced some cucumber and crushed it a bit with the bottom of a rounded bowl. In!! Some unsalted, roasted pumpkin seeds, and squeeze in some fresh lime juice (1/8 of a lime, but it could tolerate maybe a quarter) to tie it all together and brighten it up.

(I put in a couple diced dried apricots but I gotta say: to negligible effect. Might try it next time with 4 or 5 to see if that flavor mix is what I imagined.)

I gotta say -- it's absolutely delicious -- bright and sunny, sweet and tart, crunchy and creamy. This one's going into the rotation!

There's something to be said for revisiting the comforts and peaks of the past, but there's also a lot of wonderfulness in being creative in the present.

Serves: 1

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: Nada

Weight Watchers Points (2024): 1

Ingredients and prep

• 6 oz Fage Total 0% Fat Plain Greek Yogurt (5% would be yummier, but I'm counting WW points closely at the moment)
• 1/3 cup cucumber, peeled, diced into 1/3 inch cubes, and partially crushed to release juices and soften
• 1 tbsp pepitas (shelled green pumpkin seeds), roasted, unsalted
• 4 tbsp pomegranate seeds
• 1 tbsp mint leaves, crushed gently (I used my fingers on a cutting board, but you might use a muddler or a spoon) 
• 1/2? tsp freshly squeezed lime juice (1/8 of a lime). Really to taste.

Steps

1. Put ingredients in a bowl
2. Mix ingredients with a spoon
3. Eat