Heart these apples so much

These apples on the old tree in the field look unremarkable. Late October/early November, they're still on the tree and they look overripe and done. Not so. This apple - both apples that I picked using on old long branch someone kindly left in place leaning against the tree to knock apples off up where they are too high to reach - was so good, so scrumptiously delicious. Crisp, juicy, and the flavours!

These ones have a certain banana undertone. Not banana banana, but banana flavour banana, banana candy banana. Sharp, and I loved the superficial blemishes they have on the skin that means people won't be picking them. Miniscule cankers and scabs, completely innocuous and only on the surface of the skin, and you can see the stuff on the skin - you know, the stuff, like what grape skins have and cabbage leaves have, that makes them suitable to ferment without adding yeast, because it's already there on the skin. You have to get that stuff inside you.

If any organically grown food is worth the extra cost, it is apples. Or if you can find a farm/orchard that grows them using just the dormant sulphur/oil spray that is fine too.

A sincere injunction. Even if you are not into buying organic stuff and don't even go for fruits or vegetables. Make cleanly grown apples a part of your daily diet.

When you eat the apple - at least one a day - make especially sure to eat the seeds - the entire apple core. But make sure you chew the seeds before swallowing them, otherwise they will just pass through your system.

Do not pay attention to the idiotic parrots on the internet who mindlessly blabber about how apple seeds "contain cyanide" - LOL - and therefore should be avoided.

Let's repeat: eat organically grown apples everyday. Eat the seeds in the apple, chewing them well. Tell anyone who says to you "Oh, apple seeds contain cyanide" to eff off.

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Also tell that to people who say, "Oh, figs have worms". People are so stupid. Any fruit that has gone overripe can and may likely have the larva of the fruit fly in it. This is especially true of overripe cherries and blackberries. You will know when a fruit is overripe, past its prime.

In fact, there is a smell the fruit will have that will tell you it has SWD - Spotted Wing Drosophila. And by the way, as an aside, while no one wants to eat the fruit fly larva, ultimately it really is only protein. It will not breed inside you. In other words, it will not "give you worms".

You want to know how this bullshit started with the fig? It's not because they have worms. In fact, they are less likely to have the fruit fly larva than other fruits. You want to know what happened? Some dumb schmoe opened up a spoiled fig that naturally had the fruit fly larva, and what did he see that sparked his imagination? Ever look at the inside of a fresh fig? The whole inside bears a certain resemblance to worms. (Though really to anyone who is more diligent and clear in his imagination the inside of the fig bears a certain fertile representation of sperms making their way to some nucleus.) Thus was born the whole stupid parrot fest about figs containing worms.

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"Oh, you shouldn't plant bee-loving plants where children are going to be playing." LOL. People parrot this ignorant bullshit as though having plants that bees love near where children are going to be playing is the same as putting hives of bees and wasps there. Bees are never more safe to be around as when they are foraging nectar and pollen from blossoms. A single stray bee is more dangerous than an entire host that is busy at work on some flowering plant. And a host of bees busy on some flowering plant does not make for any strays, because they have found flowers, and are therefore occupied.

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"Oh, putting coffee grounds into the soil will turn it acidic" - LOL. "Oh, you shouldn't bury meat or bones with your scraps in the garden" - LOL. "Oh, drinking raw milk will make you sick" - LOL. "Oh, the police in helicopters will descend on your garden if you grow opium poppies" - LOL.

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"Oh, wild pigs are rapidly multiplying in Canada - they're taking over!" - LOL.

I'm all for that. Sounds like lots of free food to me, and delicious food, thanks to Global Warming. If they become that invasive the government can simply say, "Go out and kill. Take and eat."

But I can imagine the Pork Industry wouldn't like that very much. They would spawn a whole lot of official-sounding bullshit on the public about how wild pigs contain cyanide and worms and will eat children and the cops will come and get you and shit.

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"Oh, this plant is seeding itself all over the garden - it's invasive!" - LOL.

Listen, I'm from the Pacific Northwest where the temperate rainforest climate is very conducive for invasive species, both flora and fauna. I know invasive. A plant seeding itself - or even aggressively seeding itself - does not make it invasive, alright? Be happy, and thankful, that you don't have to deal with horsetail, creeping buttercup, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, Japanese knotweed, et alia - yes.

Be happy. And eat apples and the apple seeds.

The best apple I have ever eaten

Or the best apple I ever ate.

Both sentences are legitimate and perfectly viable English grammar. The only arguable part is the word "ever". For it may not be "ever". We need to cut back on "ever". (Just like we need to cut back on "beyond".) Only if I died tomorrow would the sentence be true with "ever", for tomorrow - and tomorrow, and tomorrow - I could, and hope to, eat an apple yet that will take the title "best".

For there are many apples, and many apples I have not eaten or ate (I love how you southerners say ate instead of eaten - it's perfectly excellent grammar). I'm just a newbie when it comes to knowing the tastes and textures of the vast array of apples. And further, apples do not differ from each other in the way that - say, mangoes differ from each other. Certain apples can take on such a distinctive profile as to induce this commonly known phrase among pomologists: "If you were to eat this blindfolded, you would not know that it was an apple." For this reason you would not be far amiss to say that apples are the most universal fruit.

The two apples in the picture are not, and yet are, the apple I am referring to when I say, "The best apple I have ever eaten." For those are apples from the tree from which I had the best apple I ever ate, but neither of them are the apple. That picture was taken 2015. The best apple I ever ate was one from the same tree only last year, 2017.

I do not know the variety of this apple tree. It grows by a horse trail. The two apples in my hand were picked, and just under ripe. No matter. When they are not quite peaked in ripeness they are intense. Have one and your mouth goes raw. Have two and your stomach lining is in a questionable state. Of course I ate both, one after the other, for they are complex - intensely sweet and intensely...sour? I don't like using the word sour in this case, because sour too often refers to something that has spoiled, like sour milk. Anyways, the rawnesss of both mouth and stomach didn't last long - it's no matter to me. Many wimps today with overly domesticated palettes would not be able to get past one bite.

But when they ripen to full peak - now that is what I'm getting at here. The best apple I ever ate had fallen from the tree. It was lying by the trail in dusty grass, just a few feet away from a pile of horse dung. I wiped the dust off the best I could on my shirt and took a bite.

I wouldn't know how to describe it. Champagne? But I'm not a fan of champagne. I don't know. It was amazing. Just in case you might be thinking, "Ah, Paul, the apple was starting to ferment" - no, it wasn't. It was perfectly ripe, nowhere near overripe. The burst of sharp intensity, the warmth of it - not just the warmth of the apple basking in the sun, but the warmth of the flavour. It was a taste that completely filled the mouth, exuberant, superabundant.

The knowledge that we have of apples according to what we get from the supermarkets is impoverished, to say the least.

Just like our notion of heaven.

Northern Spy

Everything that Golden Delicious wants to be but isn't.

Hurray!

Julie and Nigel have some new apple tasting videos!

Here's episode 4:




LOL @ 15:38


Go to Growing with Julie to watch more.