POM Pomegranate Sherbet

Spring in Seattle is a negotiation between the city and the sky — gray mornings that burn off into blue by noon, cherry blossoms lining the streets of Capitol Hill like confetti from a celebration that happened while I wasn't looking. I walked to work this week through the blossoms, which is something I never did before. I was always in my car, headphones in, moving from condo to office to condo in the efficient, joyless loop of a person optimizing for productivity rather than experience. But something has shifted — the cooking, maybe, or the kimchi, or the rice cooker that plays its little song — and I'm noticing things. The trees. The light. The way the air smells different in spring, green and wet and promising.

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I made rice and eggs three times this week, which sounds monotonous but is actually my version of practice — each time I varied something. Monday: soy sauce and sesame oil over rice with a fried egg. Wednesday: rice with kimchi (jar kimchi, still, from H Mart) and a scrambled egg mixed in. Friday: rice with a fried egg, topped with gochugaru and a drizzle of sesame oil. The Friday version was the best. The gochugaru added heat that built slowly, not the sharp punch of Tabasco but something deeper, smokier, a warmth that started at the back of my tongue and spread. I ate the whole bowl and then sat with the empty dish and thought about how this is what Korean babies probably eat — rice and egg and a little spice — and how I'm twenty-two and learning to eat like a Korean toddler. The irony is not lost on me. But there's no shortcut. You start where you start.

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At work, I shipped a small feature — a tweak to the recommendation weighting for Amazon Fresh's produce section. Nobody noticed, which is how you know infrastructure code is working: invisibility is the metric of success. I find comfort in this. My code runs silently, correctly, behind the scenes, serving millions of people who will never know my name. There's an elegance to that. Maybe that's why I became an engineer — not for the building, but for the disappearing. The work that matters but doesn't need to be seen. I wonder what that says about me. Dr. Yoon would probably have something to say about it, if I knew who Dr. Yoon was, which I don't yet, because I haven't started therapy yet, because I am twenty-two and still believe I can think my way out of feelings.

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Kevin called on Wednesday. He sounds better — not good, exactly, but better, like someone who has remembered how to stand up after a long time lying down. He's still at the coffee shop in Portland, still going to meetings, still living in the sober house with three other guys. He told me about roasting profiles — how different temperatures and times bring out different qualities in the same bean, how a lighter roast preserves the origin character while a darker roast imposes the roaster's interpretation. He was talking about coffee but I heard something else. I heard: what's native to you versus what's imposed. I didn't say that. Kevin doesn't need me projecting adoption metaphors onto his coffee career. But I thought it.

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I drove to Bellevue on Saturday. Karen made her lemon chicken — boneless thighs baked with lemon slices and dried herbs, a recipe she's been making since the '90s. It's good, reliable food, the kind that tastes like a specific era of American motherhood, and I ate it gratefully because I am grateful, always grateful, the adoption tax I pay in smiles and compliments and second helpings. David was in the garage working on something — he's always in the garage working on something, tinkering with the lawn mower or organizing his tools, the engineer's version of meditation.

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Over dinner, I told them about the rice cooker. Karen said, "Oh, that's nice, you're cooking more!" David said, "What brand?" (David always asks what brand.) I did not tell them about H Mart. I did not tell them about the kimchi. I did not tell them that I have been eating Korean food alone in my condo and feeling things I don't have words for. This feels like a secret, which is strange because there is nothing secret about buying groceries. But the kimchi is mine in a way that Karen's lemon chicken is hers, and sharing it feels like opening a door I'm not sure they can walk through without hurting themselves on the frame.

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Sunday morning I went back to the Korean restaurant on 12th Avenue. I still didn't go in. But I stood there longer this time — maybe five minutes — and I read the full menu, and I practiced pronouncing the dishes under my breath: bi-bim-bap, bul-go-gi, jap-chae. The syllables felt foreign in my American mouth, which is ridiculous because my mouth is Korean, my tongue is Korean, I was born speaking — or at least crying — in a language I can no longer understand. Next week, I'm going in. I've decided. Next week, I walk through the door.

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Tonight I made rice with kimchi and a fried egg and gochugaru and sesame oil, and I ate it at my desk, and the cherry blossoms outside my window were catching the last of the evening light, and for three minutes — just three — the silence in my condo wasn't empty. It was full.

Later that week, after I’d stood outside the restaurant and practiced those syllables and come home full of something I couldn’t name, I wanted to make something bright. Not kimchi — not that night. I wanted color, the deep garnet of pomegranate juice, something cold and sweet that would slow me down and let me sit with the fact that I’d decided to walk through a door. This sherbet was that thing — three ingredients, no fuss, just the quiet patience of waiting for it to freeze while the cherry blossoms outside kept doing what cherry blossoms do.

Prep Time: 6 hrs 20 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 6 hrs 30 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 cups POM pomegranate juice
1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
1/2 cup honey (or more to taste)

Instructions

Warm the mixture. Add all ingredients to a medium sauce pan and warm, over medium heat, until the coconut milk solids and the honey have completely dissolved in the juice. (Do not bring to a boil.)
Chill. Remove from the heat and pour the mixture into a bowl. Chill in the refrigerator, stirring occasionally so that the pomegranate juice and coconut milk don’t separate. You’ll want to chill the mixture (about an hour or so) until it’s cool enough to churn but not so cold that the coconut milk starts to solidify again.
Churn. Churn in an ice cream maker according to your manufacturer’s instructions.
Freeze. Freeze 4-6 hours before eating.

Nutrition (per serving)

POM Pomegranate Sherbet — The Color of a Door I’m Learning to Open