It's funny how things come full circle. My mother grew up in Glendale, CA, and when she went halfway across the country for college, my grandmother started sending her California-grown pomegranates in the mail. For four years, the U.S. Post Office carried round, ruby-skinned exotic fruits from California's sunny climes directly to the frozen tundra of Michigan.

Although I grew up in Minnesota with easy access to pomegranates (not entirely sure how that happened, since it was the 80s, but I'm pretty sure that my mother's persistence, combined with Byerly's superb produce stock, had something to do with it), my mother continued the Pomegranate Mail tradition when I was away at college in Michigan. The bulky brown boxes containing nothing but pomegranates confused my roommates and delighted me.

Now my husband and I are the Californians, so we carry on the family tradition and send pomegranates to Minnesota every Christmas.

After sniffing around various grocery stores and farmers' markets, we found that Sigona's Farmers Market in the Stanford Shopping Center carried the biggest poms with shiny, unblemished skin.

As a kid, the thing that fascinated me most about pomegranates came from Greek mythology. I thought it was cool that we got our seasonal divisions because Persephone absent-mindedly ate some seeds while taking an off-book vacation in the Underworld. I also thought it was beyond stupid that Persephone was dumb enough to eat the food of the dead, thus sentencing herself to spend half her life as goddess of the Underworld. However, in some versions, Hades is said to have tricked Persephone into eating said seeds, which isn't hard to imagine given his bald-faced abduction of her. I also liked how Persephone's enraged mother, Demeter, reacted to the vile kidnapping by shutting down the world in her own personal Amber Alert until Zeus finally got off his Olympic duff and intervened.

(Yes, in various analyses, the pomegranates seeds are really seeds of another sort in which Persephone was partaking, but I was a kid and not interested in that side of things.)

Pomegranates are included on the list of super-foods for their numerous health benefits and their seeds can be enjoyed in so many ways.

(Well, as long as you can get the little suckers out of their papery prisons -- and there are a ton of online videos out there showing you just how to do it. Pom Wonderful also offers grocery store containers of pomegranate seeds with the work already done, but I've noticed they can taste a bit fermented.)

You can add pomegranate seeds to salads, cocktails, meat sauces, and baked goods. Additionally, Jen Maiser rounded up the pomegranate recipes she found on various blogs last year.

Aside from my Lady in Red cocktail, my preferred pomegranate recipe is simply to toss juicy handfuls in my mouth and crunch down.

Enjoy delicious health!

Let's face it -- Christmas is not about the joy of giving and receiving. It's not about the much-disputed birth of Christ, or miracles, or even the tarting up of pagan trees while singing Songs of Cheeses.

It's about whether you get your chocolate on odds or evens this year. It's about whether your older sister will force you to give her your day's haul of chocolate. That's right my friends, this month is ALL about Advent calendar chocolate.

(Sidebar: remember non-chocolate Advent calendars where the only reward for us kids was first, the sheer pleasure of finding the tiny digits in an almost Where's Waldo of numbers, and second, the excitement of opening the perforated hatch to expose what lay beneath? Sigh. Simpler times. Simpler pleasures.)

Okay, so since we're currently over, um, two weeks? Into Advent, this post is a skosh late, BUT forewarned is forearmed for next year.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Advent calendar chocolate tastes no better than the cardboard doors they hide behind. To wit: last year, the chocolate in our Andronico's-purchased Advent calendar was so horrific that by Christmas Eve, I had been handing over my "turns" to my husband for at least a week.

Finally, my ire over the paucity of good chocolate sent me scurrying to the Wide, Wide World of Web. If we live in an era of artisanal cheese, specialized olive oil, rare vinegar, and DIY flour, quality Advent calendar chocolate MUST exist, right?

Eh. Sort of.

After scouring the websites of my favorites -- Burdick's, Scharffenberger, Reciutti, and Cocoa Bella -- and coming up dry, I widened the search.

I hit pay dirt when I turned up a link to Godiva's Advent calendar, but of course it was sold out, so I filed the information away in my brain, and the link in my bookmarks, and I found it again this year. (Okay, so it's sold out again, it's not like you were going to buy it now, right?)

At British Delights, I also discovered a Cadbury Dairy Milk Advent calendar. Well, of COURSE the same ingenious Brits who have the foresight to install refrigerated Cadbury chocolate dispensers in the Underground would stuff their Advent calendars with Cadbury chocolate!

While Godiva and Cadbury are clearly a flavor step above the usual Advent calendar chocolate, I still think there's room for improvement.

The Godiva Advent calendar is very sophisticated, very adult, in that there are no Christmas-themed pictures of angels, presents, teddy bears, or Santa Clauses (Clausi?) on or behind the little doors. The calendar is illustrated by a big, stylized tree made up of green ornaments on a red background; white snowflakes and gold strings of beads provide additional decoration.

Basically, it's the chocolate Advent calendar equivalent of those special jacket covers that some adults buy to hide the fact they're reading Harry Potter.

The Godiva chocolate is...fine. You get thick green, red, and blue foil-wrapped coins of milk, dark, or white chocolate with a bas-relief of Lady Godiva molded on them. Not Santa Claus or Jesus or a Wise Man, just a naked lady on a horse. Very adult.

The Cadbury Dairy Milk Advent calendar is clearly aimed at kids or the young at heart. The doors have little pictures on and behind them, and the chocolates themselves are molded into Christmassy shapes that can only be deciphered if you squint at them after several glasses of ruby port. Again, the chocolate here is just middling, but "middling" is a giant step above plastic cardboard, so I'm not really complaining.

In the next few years, I want to see Burdick's, Scharffenberger, Reciutti, Cocoa Bella, or even Dove step it up, Advent calendar-wise.

What, you think they won't sell? Aside from the adults who would kill to find orange pekoe truffles or fleur de sel caramels behind the little doors, are you telling me that the parents with kids who ask, "Is the beef local?" wouldn't brag about those same kids lisping, "Is the chocolate artisanal?"

Back when my plans for Christmas Eve crab were threatened by some dumb-ass humans, I decided to resurrect a Christmas Eve tradition from my childhood: snails. That's right, people, I grew up a picky eater in Minnesota where I gagged on string beans, yet I ate snails.

There's no explanation, but where my mom failed with wild rice, succatash, and scalloped potatoes, she succeeded with hot, buttery, garlicky gastropods. As much as my sister and I loved escargots, we never asked for it any time of the year other than Christmas Eve. It was tradition and we loved our Christmas Eve traditions.

We sat on the floor in front of the fire and ate our Christmas Eve dinner from the coffee table. We felt elegant, grown up, and quite worldly as we carefully applied the escargots pincers to the natural shells and pulled out the butter-soaked meats with tiny forks. Small and soft rounds of baguette were used to wipe the plates clean and stuffed into the shells to soak up every possible spot of garlic butter.

The Vander Weide Family's Christmas Eve Escargots

1 can large snails
Natural shells (you can also use frozen pastry or phyllo shells)
1/4 lb. unsalted butter, softened
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 scallions, chopped
Salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 375°

1. Pour off liquid from snails, rinse under cold, running water.

2. Combine butter with garlic, scallions, and salt. Smudge a small amount of butter inside each shell, stuff the snail in, and pack it in with more butter. Let snails chill overnight.

3. Put snails upright in a baking dish and bake on lower rack for about 25 minutes. Serve with baguette.

Last year, I revived the family escargots tradition and brought the sumptuous snails to a Christmas Eve party. However, instead of my mother's traditional recipe, I used the one I discovered in my 1963 copy of Samuel Chamberlain's Bouquet de France.

The squeamish didn't partake, but those who did came back for seconds until there were no seconds left. The highest compliment I received came from a French guest who told me my escargots tasted exactly like the escargots she enjoys in Paris.

Escargots Maison from Bouquet de France

2 cans large snails
1 cup butter, softened
8 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Large pinch of grated nutmeg
6-8 blanched almonds, chopped and finely pounded

Preheat oven to 375°

1. Pour off liquid from snails, rinse under cold, running water.

2. Combine the butter, parsley, garlic, shallot, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and almonds. Smudge a small amount of butter inside each shell, stuff the snail in, and pack it in with more butter. Let snails chill overnight.

3. Put snails upright in a baking dish and bake on lower rack for about 25 minutes. Serve with baguette.

Serve either recipe with Champagne or a red wine from Burgundy.