Don't eat boring, mealy apples. In this post, you'll learn about efforts to bring better tasting apples to our local market and some interesting varieties you can grow at home
If you read my posts regularly, you know I don't care very much for supermarket varieties of vegetables and fruits.
There are lots of reasons to dislike produce at the typical supermarket, ranging from the issues of biodiversity to nutritional loss in transit, to the carbon foot print of shipping items from far places of origin like Chile.
All these are legitimate issues, but my main gripe with supermarket produce is that is just don't taste very good. Tomatoes are a prime example, but an equally sad situation exists with apples.
How Do You Like Them Apples
The most common apple in the U.S. is the Red Delicious (accounts for about 40% of production). The shiny, deep red color of the Red Delicious makes it look good, but it's beauty is truly skin deep. It's a mealy, nasty apple -- and anything but delicious in my opinion.
Better and more interesting varieties such as Honey Crisp, Braeburn and Granny Smith can be found at the store, but the potential range of options available to us is much broader than most people realize.
Upsetting The Apple Cart
The sad truth is that over 15,000 different varieties of apples have been documented in the U.S. alone. Of these about 3,000 remain.
R.A.F.T. is an organization dedicated to upsetting the supermarket apple cart; the group is an alliance of food, farming and culinary advocates managed by Slow Food USA. The organization's name stands for "Renewing America's Food Traditions" and they are actively promoting certain "forgotten" fruits, foremost of which are apples.
They've published an Apple Manifesto that makes for some interesting reading. You can download a 32-page PDF describing the efforts from their web site.
The Apple of My Eye
While RAFT is attacking some of the bigger issues, I'm doing a little apple cart upsetting as well. Earlier this year, I added 5 heirloom apple trees to my garden. These are semi-dwarf trees that I'm growing in pots.
One is a very old American variety called Spitzenburg. This was Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple. The others are heritage European apples, some of which are eating apples and a some of which are apples used specifically to make cider.
Below is the list of apples I've chosen for my garden, but I encourage you to do an online search to find varieties that are interesting to you. You might want to begin your search at Trees of Antiquity where I purchased my trees.- Ashmead's Kernel - a medium sized apple with a golden-brown skin. It is a classic English desert apple and is reputed to have an aromatic, almost orange-like finish.
- Cox's Orange Pippin -Another English desert apple with crisp flesh and a rich spicy flavor.
- Spitzenburg - American desert apple developed in New York State in the 1800's. A medium sized apple with reddish stripes, It is generally considered one of America's best apples.
- Orleans Reinette- A very juicy, sweet dessert apple from France
- Foxwehlp -a dusky red, bitter-sharp apple. You don't eat this one - use it to make cider.
- Kingston Black - A bitter-sharp apple also used for cider.
I'll post more about these Apples in future posts.
Till then.... An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
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