Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 19, 2025

What does apples have to do with ruining the world? Auto-tune I could see, but apples? Oh yeah, and the garbage too!

Not ALL apples taste great. Some are sour and unpleasant. But a LOT of them DO taste great.

I don’t understand why they still sell red delicious apples. They were one of the 3 apples available when I was young and they were awful.

There have always been thousands of apple varieties. You just need to go to the farmer’s market, or plant your own.

Well, we can’t let him off that easily:

“By the late 1990s, U.S. commercial orchards were growing fewer than 100 varieties of apples—and only 11 of them accounted for 90 percent of grocery store sales. Experts estimate that 11,000 Heritage varieties were extinct”

bARK.today

The old guy was right. I keep apologizing to my 30 year old and I feel terrible for my niece’s 4 year old.

When I worked on a fruit farm (ca 1958-1960), red delicious were still tasty. They have since been bred for size, shape and color, not taste.

Sounds Gala and Delicious.

Recommend reading about Tom Brown who has spent the later years of his life recovering varieties of lost apples from long-abandoned orchards of Appalachia. atlasobscura.COM/articles/heritage-appalachian-apples

With so many varieties that appear over a year, I’m always ‘auditioning’ apples. The taste of each seems to vary. It is also interesting how the same variety will command nearly $4 a pound and a few months later be $.99 a pound. I seem to enjoy them all, regardless.

Garbage Patch I get. It’s a horror with its own life, similar to but far less benign than the Sargasso Sea, But what is auto-tune?

A little kid tells us how goofy a boomer is for caring about the planet; punctuates it with an eye roll; shares his perspective on the hybridization of apples, much of which he did not witness first-hand.

And this material is relatable to . . . whom, I wonder?

Great, so the burned-out people in California can enjoy some tasty apples!

The “great Pacific garbage patch” is mostly caused by China and Indonesia. The USA has nothing to do with it.

I do wish I understood Caulfield’s point. What does that all have to do with the state of the world now, other than resources being applied where they are least needed.

It used to be that most apples weren’t meant to be eaten out of hand. They were mostly for making cider, and most of the rest were for pies and such.

Jazz apples are my favorite

As I recall from a much earlier strip, Caulfield is partial to Honeycrisp apples. They’re so big, they’re a meal in themselves.

You know who coined the phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”? Apple growers.

There were a lot more types of apples when I was a kid than I can get now. My favorites were stamens and winesaps. Can’t get them around here now.

Swing and a miss today, Jeff.

Apples on trees outside are food everything wants to eat. My grandfather died of multiple organ failure from spraying orchards with lead arsenate.

marketing. the red delicious is a beautiful thing to behold. A true Delicious apple, if you can find them, are boring looking and taste great.

They did the same thing to Brussels sprouts

“This old guy” may have been all of 31 from the perspective of a kid.

Apples for me mean Honey Crisp. Have you ever watched a 1970s/80s band or earlier on YouTube? They did not have Auto Tune and they sounded much better than the junk out there today, some bands are so horrible I wonder how they ever got a recording contract. Watching some bands LIVE is like pulling teeth.

I don’t know about the apples, but it’s true you have to take the good with the bad and not over-simplify things.

I’d be fine with just the three apples…

Caulfield apples?

If you want to grow your own and don’t want the squirrels to raid them, plant a sour variety. Granny Smiths for the win.

When you plant apple seeds you never know what the apples will be like. All the named types of apples come from grafting starting with a tree that happened to produce good apples. Also, apples are often stored for months before being put on sale which is why you can buy them when it’s not apple season.

The apple story – a common misconception. There were (and are) lots of tasty apple varieties grown in the North East. Only in parts of the country under Big Apple’s Thumb (Washington State) were there just three varieties.