Our Disappearing Apples

An article of crucial significance by Ed Yowell for The Atlantic Monthly.

"During the latter part of the 20th century, as the physical and experiential distances between Americans and their food became greater and greater, the few varieties prized by large distributors and retailers—for transportability, uniformity, appearance, and shelf life, not necessarily for taste and a specific use—became the apples available to most Americans. Today, four out of five uniquely North American apple varieties are close to disappearing."

More HERE

The Neglected Tree

That little scrubby, sad looking thing is a neglected apple tree leaving apples to rot in the parking lot of a Jiffy Lube.


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Cider Sampling

Every orchards cider is different .  North Star orchard is sweet but lacks complexity. I would not suppose this is a blend of more than 2 varieties. generally baking apples don't produce a good cider.Cider is generally made from dessert apples and crab apples in an 80/20 mix.

This tastes mostly like Jonathans to me but it could easily be Jonogolds or Jonomacs. Once blended with a little crab apple for extra tartness it's difficult to say for certain. I'm sure a brix measurement woudl help. But what's notably absent here is the astringent taste that you find in crappy commercial brands that shall today remain nameless.

Apples in Advertising

Apples are utterly ubiquitous, like baseball, eagles, dollars, American flags and the color red.Secular art makes it a symbol of love, and sexuality.  I'm not making that up.  that's why Venus poses with one so often.  But American advertising uses it to project the opposite: chaste wholesomeness. It's inexplicable. t4he earliest use of the phrase "wholesome as apple pie" that I can easily find only dates to 1961, in the book "Lord Love A Duck" by Al Hine.

North Star Orchard

Always worth visiting a new orchard or their stand, today was the North Star Orchard.  Summer Blaze, Premeir, and Honey Crisp were all on the counter today. Summer Blaze I am assuming is just "Blaze" a Jonathon cross with the Grimes Golden. It matures in early August. Their own site refers to it as the (Dayton) in parentheses which is news to me as that is a known and complicated hybrid. See here. The Premiere  I'd never seen before.

Apple Recipes

No Shelf of cook books should be without one.

Heritage strains on the table

From a farmers market in Allentown, PA. Summer Rambos are rarely seen this far north these days but have been grown in Pa for at least 150 years old.  It's also called the Western Beauty, Rambour Franc, and Rambour d'Ete. At least two different varieties have carried the name. They may be a third related variety in Ohio there called the "Big Rambo" also called the Hoadley. From the name I expected that  the variety has a distant origin in France.  Further research puts that date at as early as 1535.

Molly's Delicious is a much more recent variety first bred in the 1960s. The Peceniak site has the following to say. I've never tried it myself. "It should not to be confused with Red Delicious strains, but having a more unique complex flavor with a juicy crisp flesh. The apple is mostly red with light yellowish/green background."

More apple symbolism in branding

It's unsurprising that United Health care would employ the imagery of apples to imply wholesomeness.  Also they use one red apple, a Red Delicious in a set of green Granny Smith apples to indicate uniquemess in a sea of the banal and homogeneous.

Of course insurance companies are none of those things. They're all evil money-thieving whores bent on depriving care for the accumulation of wealth. All the same, all evil bastards. ...But symbolism isn't regulated by the FTC.