No One Asked Me But… (November 1, 2023)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… It’s fall in Moapa Valley and all is right with the world.
Halloween is over and the kids will have succeeded in with their demands for loot. Ghost, hobgoblins, and super-heroes have appeared throughout the community.

With the war threats in the Ukraine, the dysfunction of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and the break out of war in the Middle East, it a great to find a signs of normality in the valley. This normalcy is also to be found in the Pomegranate Arts Festival that traces its roots to an Art Festival instituted many years ago by the great western artist and art teacher Max Bunnell.

The traditional Pomegranate Art Festival, sponsored by the Moapa Valley Art Guild, will once again be in session this weekend at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Logandale. After navigating the road work that has come to dominate the entrance to Moapa Valley, the admission and parking are free.

This will be a great way to spend a day or two in the Moapa Valley. Artists, artisans, and craftsmen will have their work on display; and, for the most part, for sale; from 9 am – 5:30 pm on Friday, Nov. 3 and from 9am – 4pm on Saturday, Nov. 4.

There will be over 100 booths displaying the various efforts of these skilled people. There will be hourly raffles as well as art activities for the children. There will be homemade pomegranate jelly, jams, candies as well pomegranates freshly harvested throughout the valley on sale.

There will be entertainment on the Plaza featuring many of our local entertainers. A dozen food venders have committed to being there so there is no reason to bring a lunch or dinner. If you can’t find something to your liking, you aren’t trying hard enough.

The Festival with all its booths will give you a great opportunity to find a special unique Christmas gift without the Walmart label. There will be homemade jewelry, cutlery, artwork, woodwork and a couple of local authors will be offering their books. There will be quilts and other handiwork by dedicated artisans available. Stop by my booth and have a chat, I will look forward to see you at the Festival.

No one asked be but… Let me state clearly that I love the Pomegranate Festival. But not so much the pomegranate itself.
Even though they are mentioned in the Old Testament ten different times, if you had asked me, I would have told you, I never heard of a pomegranate before moving to Moapa Valley. That may say more for my lack of Biblical study than the pomegranate.

They were used for decorating the robes of the high priest as well as the pillars of the temple built by Solomon. In the Song of Solomon, the great wise king speaks of a spiced pomegranate wine which he enjoyed.

I have never seen pomegranate wine on sale at the festival. I saw syrup, jellies, jams, chocolates, and juice – but no wine.

I have a theory about regional foods like crawfish in the south, oysters on the coasts, squirrel in the Ozark Mountains, and pomegranates in Nevada.

While my southern kin revel in their crawfish, it’s a bug and I believe if they could get lobster, they would never again eat crawfish.

Why anyone would eat an oyster is beyond me; it looks like something sneezed out of a buffalo’s nose.
The very thought of a roasted squirrel brings unpleasant images from the movie Deliverance flooding to my mind. The squirrel is a rodent, a rat with a fuzzy tail. If the hillbilly could get anything else to eat, the squirrel would lose a natural enemy. Have you ever seen squirrel on a gourmet dinner menu? I think not.

This brings me to the pomegranate. This is a rock growing on a tree. I refuse to eat crab because I will not work that hard to get a bite of food. This rule is true also of the pomegranate. The strawberry or raspberry you can pick and eat. To eat a pomegranate, you fight the tree for them. Then you must get out a sledgehammer and try to remove the outside cover. If successful, you get to spend the next hour trying to extract a number of small arils.

I know. Local enthusiasts have devised a number of ingenious ways to extract the arils and the juice. But if they had planted strawberries instead pomegranates, they would have saved themselves a lot of time and trouble.

Don’t let this discourage you, though. The pomegranate jams and jellies are great and the hard work has been done for you.

I will miss the pomegranate ribs from Sugar’s restaurant that were barbequed with a pomegranate sauce. Some of my family will even miss the pomegranate salad dressing. Not me, I stayed loyal to the good old blue cheese dressing. Yes! I know blue cheese dressing is made from moldy cheese.

In typical Sugar’s fashion, we would order four meals for six adults and feed all to the breaking point. Four of us would eat ribs for dinner the next day, and I would finish the ribs off in a sandwich for lunch.
Just a side note, I miss my “Turkey Tuesday” call from Sugar’s as well.

All that being said, come and join the Moapa Valley community in a great two days of festivities.

Thought of the day… After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual “food” out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps.
– Miss Piggy