Thursday, October 2, 2014

Apples: 30 Days of Random

Today's topic is "apples".

Despite appearances, apples aren't actually my favorite fruit.  Bartlett pears are.  I love them.  But Bartlett pears bruise almost as badly as bananas do, and they, like bananas follow the same ripeness curve:

Day 1:  Too soon
Day 2:  Too soon
Day 3:  Too soon
Day 4:  Too soon
Day 5:  Too soon
Day 6:  Just right
Day 7:  Too late

And I never hit day 6.  But apples are usually pretty good.  If you get good apples that is, and by that I mean, if you leave the store with a good apple, it stays good.  If you buy a shitty mealy apple, then all bets are off.

So my go-to apples are:

Pink Lady (aussie apple)
Cripps Pink (apparently the gangbanger equivalent of Pink Lady...also aussie)
Honeycrisp

They're crisp, and my taste runs more to tart than sweet (heh...tart), with just enough sweetness to reduce the pucker factor.  I just got into honeycrisp apples this year.  They grow to gigantic proportions.  As big as a baby's skull.  In fact, I think I unwittingly tweeted about them a couple years ago when there were gigantic baby skull-sized apples in the grocery story.  I bought one just to bring home and make the other apples feel inadequate.

Here's the chart that allows you to buy baby skull sized apples...

This actually isn't right though.  I think Honeycrisps come out in late September, and are only "good" for a few weeks before they disappear.

People say Fall is "apple season" but since two thirds of my favorite apples come from Australia, and since those apples are currently OUT of season I usually just ignore those people.

 
it's obscene, right?



































Here's Emma with a gigantic honeycrisp apple as big as her head.  Seriously, they're like fucking pumpkins.  We'll buy them and carve one for Halloween.  It'll be a jackapple-o-lantern.

I don't know why that picture looks distorted.

One day I saw a video on youtube about eating apples the "right" way.  You eat them end to end, and you never really see the core.  It's weird.  I tried it.  It worked just fine, except you need to spit the seeds out.  "Need" is a strong word.  They're poisonous, but I think you have to eat like 750,000 of them to kill you, so probably you'll be alright.

I have never successfully eaten an apple and NOT gotten a piece of apple skin stuck in my teeth.  That is my sole beef with apples.

The End.


6 comments:

  1. When I was a kid we lived on a farm, one day I sat in an apple tree for hours and ate an entire branch worth of fruit. Haven't been able to eat apples since :)

    P.S. Cripps Pink and Pink Lady are the same type of apple, one is the generic and one is the brand name. And I think even though they're Aussie apples, the ones you get are still grown in the US.

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    1. lies. all lies. You didn't even know what a Pink Lady WAS until I told you. Apple pedant!

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    2. What?? How DARE you, sir! *slaps you with glove*

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  2. Apples, when they are crisp and not gross-mealworm-like I prefer a Gala; however, they can be mealy too and that's just icky. Fujis are often crisp, Granny's usually altho their pucker factor is High, Braeburns are often delightful but no way to tell til you bite into them. I prefer Clementines (mandarins passing for tangerines) to all fruit but they too can be grody inside with no outside warning to prepare one for the yuck-factor. And bananas have a mouth feel that is so weirdly smooshy that I cannot stand them if they are the slightest bit soft-one brown spot disqualifies them from being eaten and they become banana bread which doesn't care how ripe the 'nanas are.

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    Replies
    1. Gala, Fuji, Ambrosia, and Red Rome apples are all good...but I'll take those listed in the posting over them any day. Clementines, specifically Cuties, are delicious.

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  3. Slice those suckers, throw them in the slow cooker with cinnamon and vanilla for 6 hours and you have heaven on earth!

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