Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 13, 2015

There were plenty of tasty eating varieties before the Honeycrisp. The Red Delicious and its ilk were “popular” because it was easier to produce and ship a good-looking Red Delicious apple. (Kind of like the baseball-hard tomatoes you find in the store: easy to ship, not so tasty.)

I wonder if any of those anti genetic freaks eat any genetic apples.

A century ago there were 2000 different kind of apples. True, most of them were in Europe. Only a dozen are still grown now. Shame.

♫♪♫“Cause he had high hopes,Cause he had High hopes.He had high apple pie in the sky hopes…….

I like McIntosh and Cortland. Red Delicious tastes like sawdust.

I read about this recently, as a matter of fact. The original red delicious were apparently, actually delicious. But as they became ubiquitous, they were bred for appearance and longevity and the flavour and texture was sacrificed. Quite interesting, actually.

I like Gala, Pink Lady and Ambrosia for eating.

My favorite is Fuji

I remember regional Virginia apples from when I was a kid that my grandparents and great-grandparents grew. The Summer Rambo you can still find, but I haven’t seen Yellow Transparents in years. Both are very early apples. The Transparent was also soft, and didn’t have a good shelf life. But it was a good cooking apple.

One of the best apples I ever ate was off a tree in my grandfather’s yard here in Detroit. It was from a tree my father received at school on Arbore Day about the time of WWI, way before the not-so-Delicious.

ginger gold, braeburn, or empire

I always enjoy going to Oak Glen in CA in the fall. They pick their apples ripe and they are soooo good. Each orchard has their own specialties, and there’s always fresh cider and apple based baked goods to go with it. That place is one of the few reasons I regret leaving California.

There is a nursery in New York (Miller’s) that specializes in antique apples.

Don’t get started on bananas. That can take you into some strange areas.Google Kirk Cameron and banana. The argument is that bananas prove Creationism because they were obviously created in the perfect form for people to eat. This ignores the fact that the bananas that we eat are nothing like wild bananas and are the result of thousand of years of selective breeding by farmers.

Sweet Tango apples, yum.

I like Mrs. Olsen’s query!

I like Honeycrisps, but the most amazing apple I’ve ever tasted came from Heartland Orchards, a u-pick farm in northern Virginia where they have just a couple of trees that grow a variety called Smokehouse, which actually has a lovely smoky background flavor.

I used to love apples years ago, and 40 years ago I had one every day. Now that all the apples are so well bred and refined, I can’t find any variety that I actually like, and certainly the “delicious” varieties are the worst of the lot, but the new ones aren’t much better. I like them tart and “crisp”, but they all are sweet, mushy, and mealy. Yuck. When I see apples in the store, these days I just walk by them and don’t even considered buying them. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve had an apple in five years.

I’ve saved this image to my phone, because when I’m grocery shopping, I can never remember which of the available apples is the sweetest.

https://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/12/7/27/NwH5sd4zr0C8KBvNE_lXfA2.jpg

@Seed_drill: our house came with an elderly apple tree that died and got cut down. The rootstock grew back—and it was a Yellow Transparent. I’d never heard of apples that are ripe in June. It’s tart and very mushy, nothing you’d ever want to just bite into, though it does sweeten up some in the last little bit. But even the millions of squirrels here leave it alone till those last few days, so, pick early rather than late and it’s a great cooking apple, absolutely wonderful flavor. Who knew. I guess, don’t judge an apple by its bite. (But don’t plant one—there are tart apples that keep a lot longer than two days on the counter before rotting.)

Sweetness in apples runs a wide spectrum. Some years, we added pears to add the needed sugar.-————————————————————————————I make my own apple-pear sauce – just 5 gala apples and 4 bosc pears. Core and peel and throw in a crock pot on low overnight; don’t need sugar or cinnamon.

How d’ya like them apples?

Of the current apples, I agree that the Granny Smith is the one I like best.

Sweetango, crossbred from Honey Crisp, Mutsu, and especially the Sonata….great new one in my area of Michigan.

When we moved to Pugetopolis from the Willamette Valley, we left behind beautiful fruit trees — figs, Bosc pears and a tall Winesap apple tree that used to drop apples onto our roof. I got curious one day and “Google Earth”-ed the house. The currents owners had cut down all the fruit trees. Guess not everyone likes figs or having apples falling on their roof.