Recently our large extended family celebrated an early Christmas. Every family brings a favorite plate of goodies which results in an array of candies, cookies, chips and dips. Since a number of us try to eat as natural as possible, I wanted to bring something that was nutritious as well as festive. Our local supermarket has had beautiful and reasonably priced pomegranates the past few weeks. While they are in season, I keep a half a dozen or so on hand. The amazing little seeds, or arils inside pomegranates are perfectly suited for juicing or eating whole on salads, yogurt, or as a topping on any other food you love. They are delicious, tangy, and light up your taste buds when you eat them.
I peel my pomegranates in a large bowl of cold water. If I work under the water, it doesn’t splash and pomegranate juice stains miserably! Each fruit will yield hundreds of beautiful arils!
The ingredients for this parfait are arils from 2 pomegranates, organic frozen wild blueberries, homemade granola (recipe here), non-fat Greek yogurt, 1% cottage cheese, coconut nectar, vanilla and berry stevia.
Read about the health benefits and how to order, here.
Place 1 1/2 c. yogurt and 1 1/2 c. cottage cheese in blender. Add 1/2 c. coconut nectar, 2 t. vanilla and 1 dropper full of berry stevia. Blend until smooth. (Order berry stevia here)
Starting with granola layer ingredients in a glass bowl. Top with the pomegranate arils and garnish with some Christmas holly atop a dollop of vanilla cream.
I figured I better label this, just so the foodies in the group knew what they were eating! As you can see…there wasn’t much left to take home. 
Yogurt Vanilla Creme
1 1/2 c. non-fat Greek yogurt
1 1/2 c. 1% cottage cheese
2 t. vanilla
1/2 c. coconut nectar (could use agave or honey)
1 dropper berry stevia
Blend until smooth. Layer with granola and fruit to make a beautiful parfait!
