Author: terribleminds (page 5 of 476)

Expectations are poisonous. I believe that. I think our experiences can be colored by our expectations that precede that experience. I don’t think we can help it, necessarily — a lot of our lives are preloaded with information before we ever get to submit to a given experience. Movie previews, book reviews, comments from friends, previous experiences with similar things, and so forth. Still — there’s nothing like going in blind. I love knowing almost nothing about a book or a movie before I sit down and take the ride.

And I like that too when I’m about to eat an apple. Unfortunately, this time, I didn’t get that — I actually had some pre-installed expectations because I’ve had a lot of people over the years tell me they want me to review this apple: the Mutsu, a Japanese apple also called the Crispin. They have routinely expressed that it’s their favorite, that I need to review it or they will hunt me with bow and arrow in the woods, the dark dark woods. Maybe nobody said that to me. I have vigorous dreams, so maybe it was one of those. But people have asked, and so I got me one of these big-ass green-ass apple-boys, and so, I went in thinking, okay, this is going to be something.

Was it? Was it something?

My review of a Mutsu apple from Manoff Orchard (PA), late-Oct:

It absolutely was something! In the sense that, sometimes a thing happens and it’s weird or fine and you sarcastically say to your cohort standing nearby, “Well, that was something.” This apple was that. It sure was something.

It’s huge, I can say that much up front. It’s an apple with its own gravity. It’s own atmosphere. And it is very, very green — it’s the green of not a green apple but a candy’s idea of a green apple. My apple (which you can see me eat here) had a scar on it, like it was in a bar fight. Pretty sure on the other side of the apple was an eyepatch and a tattoo of his apple mother.

I say now, I’m sorry. I’m sorry! For those who wanted me to review this:

I’m genuinely sorry.

I did not love this apple.

I started eating it and felt, okay, this is a six out of ten, probably, but as I kept eating it, the score kept dropping and dropping.

It’s juicy, so that’s nice.

It’s the size of a soccer ball, which is less nice.

It has pear vibes, which I like.

Then it follows up with unripe green banana energy, which I do not like.

It’s crispity-crunchity: good!

But after the juice explodes in your face and then is gone, so is the flavor, and what you’re left with is the distinct feeling of eating wood pulp: not so good.

It’s more sweet than tart. I’ll bet it’s a helluva baking or sauce apple. And it’s not a bad eating apple. It’s just not a good eating apple.

Sorry, Mutsu. I don’t mean to slag on you, you big beefy nuclear green lad, you giant jawbreaker, you pulpy chewy Yoda boulder.

Actually, that’s a new tongue twister if you want it: PULPY CHEWY YODA BOULDER. Five times fast, get on it.

I’m gonna call this a 4.3 out of 10. That’s all I can give you, Mutsu.

Mutsu: Dim-witted Hulk-Shrek-born hellbaby, good for pie or tumbling down a sharp hill toward a fleeing archaeologist

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz, Esopus Spitzenburg

Let’s talk about complex, complicated flavors. I think tasting notes are often unexpectedly, unintentionally hilarious, and I love them with all my heart and here’s why: they exist somewhere between the poles of earnest and insane.

Often the more pretentious — and/or expensive — you get with a thing, the more absolutely deranged the tasting notes. Like, let’s say with coffee, right? I am a fan of the current generation of small-batch small-farmer-grown coffees that come from smaller roasters, and I genuinely like tasting a coffee and checking the tasting notes — today’s coffee from Little Wolf roasters said my coffee had notes of chocolate cake, and at the moment I ground it up I was like, yup, that’s chocolate cake. If you give me an Ethiopian coffee with notes of blueberry, I am the giddiest boy in Giddytown when that coffee actually tastes like a juicy berry bomb.

But I’ve also bought some pricier coffees where the tasting notes listed are something a poet mad on laudanum came up with on a hallucinated deadline, right? Oh, really? This coffee tastes like autumnal longing, used bookstores, and pawpaw fruits? That coffee tastes like a spa day, a cumulonimbus cloud, and owlbear dreams? No it fucking does not. C’mon. C’mon. And wines — wines are even funnier to me because I am pretty taste-blind when it comes to wines. I’m not saying I can’t taste a cheapy shit wine — I often can. But beyond that bracket, I can buy any ten dollar bottle of red or white off the shelf and I’m pretty good to go. I might detect some of the more pedestrian flavors like cherry or chocolate in a red or tropical fruit in a white, but after that, you’ve lost me. And paying more for wine has almost never rewarded me, because in the land of wine, I am a foolish chump.

So, I do find it interesting when apple tasting notes from folks leave the realm of the sane and enter, just like, bizarrotown — and yet, at the same time, I often taste some pretty bizarre things in apples. We talk about spice in apples and that doesn’t mean heat — it literally means that in some apples you will taste, perhaps inexplicably, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, ginger. There might be floral notes like rose, elderflower, lavender. I’ve tasted some pretty funky things, too — licorice/fennel/anise, for one. I’ve tasted other fruits! Lots of apples are reminiscent of other fruits, which sort of feels insane, right? “This apple tastes like pineapple, even though pineapples don’t taste like apples.” THIS APPLE TASTES LIKE A PEAR is a categorically weird sentiment, like ‘this hamburger tastes like fish’ or ‘this Snickers tastes like a hot dog.’ And yet, I’ve eaten a lot of apples that taste like pears — but curiously zero pears that taste like apples. You might get dessert flavors (vanilla, honey, caramel) or candy flavors (bubblegum, banana runts, SweeTarts). You could taste some really unpleasant things — I’ve tasted pickle brine and gym-sock sweat. I’ve tasted musky musty tastes. You just never know.

Though I think one of my favorite things is when you eat an apple and it’s just like, “This tastes like apple.” Unfettered apple. Uncomplicated apple.

Pure, uncut apple. The apple’s apple. Appleman in Appletown.

And that always feels weird when you eat one of those because so often we’re used to this complicated architecture of flavors — an orchestra of curious tastes strumming and drumming and singing and occasionally bleating together, and then along comes the apple’s apple, which is just one oboe honking and tooting, and it’s still the greatest thing you’ve heard. “That oboe can fucking oboe,” you say to the guy next to you, and he nods, because what else is there to even say?

So, apples are like that, sometimes.

Sometimes an apple can just really fucking apple.

Anyway, I say all of this because my local orchard had a somewhat popular heirloom apple — but one they in the past only used for cider! — the New York-state-born Esopus Spitzenburg, which to me sounds like the fancy name an Octopus takes. YES HELLO I AM THE OCTOPUS CALLED ESOPUS SPITZENBURG, THIS IS MY WIFE, EVAPUS DARGLETON, NO WE DO NOT TAKE EACH OTHER’S NAMES FOR OCTOPUSES ARE INDIVIDUAL CREATURES, HOW DARE YOU. NOW PLEASE SAY HELLO TO OUR SON, OVOPUS GRUNDLESTEIN.

It was also Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple but hey, whatever. I believe it’s also quite difficult to grow, and didn’t actually manage to grow in Virginia, which I’m sure made Thomas Jefferson sad, but good, fuck that guy.

This apple — sometimes called Spitz, like a nickname from someone in the Great Gatbsy — is often regarded as quite excellent, though I’ve had some bad examples. And it’s also often called… complex in flavor. Is it? Was it? What did my mouth say?

Let’s review.

My review of Manoff’s Esopus Spitzenburg, mid-Oct:

God, the amazing crunch on this thing. Actually, sorry, I feel like I must descend into Internet-speak on this one:

It had cronch.

That’s the sound it made when I bit into it.

(You can see that here if so inclined.)

BIG CRONCH, then crazy juice damming the mouth. And no delay on flavor — the flavor is a wave crashing hard against the seawall of your tongue. This is a big-flavored apple. Unfuckwithable. Unquestioning sweetness lands at the same time as the flash-bang of tartness. Dense flesh. Nice skin. (This is also how I advertise myself on the dating apps. Dense flesh. Nice skin. Hey ladies. And by dating apps, I mean iNaturalist.)

This is also… a pretty appley-apple.

There are some complex flavors — a bit of strawberry and guava, and lavender that I found present when I ate the skin, not present when I didn’t.

I’ve read reports from folks where this was a mushy, sloppy apple — even mealy. But mine was toothsome, almost to the point of being chewy. That and a lingering tobacco aftertaste are the only things from having me rate this higher and maybe even ending up the best apple of the batch so far.

Still — astonishingly good, top marks, Esopus, top marks.

And by top marks, I mean a 9.0 out of 10, huzzah and hooray.

p.s. it’s National Apple Day so HAPPY APPLE DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE, which better be you, don’t make me come over there and urgently push an apple into your open maw, and yes I make exceptions for those with OAS, that’s not your fault, God has cursed you and so we must destroy God

Esopus Spitzenburg: Big personality but doesn’t crave the spotlight, needlessly humble in the face of staggering talent, occasionally a bit weird, the Nick Offerman of apples, shut up it just makes sense

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz

Speaking more about reviews — I think it’s less fun for me and less enticing for you when I review an apple that isn’t either I PUT THIS INTO MY MOUTH AND ALL MY TASTEBUDS CAME ALIVE AND SANG A CHORUS OF HALLELUJAH or IT’S LIKE SATAN ATE BAD SUSHI AND THEN TOOK A SHIT ON MY TONGUE. This is, in part, a problem with the Internet in general, though I don’t think it started there — the reviews you tend to remember are the ones that are a total pan or a fawning fuckfest. We respond more strongly to love and to hate, and doubly so when we feel the opposite feeling to the strong feeling offered — “Oh, you hate this thing I love? May you fall into a mud hole for a thousand years.” “Oh, you love this thing that I hate? You are the most foolish mortal who has ever walked the earth, it’s astonishing you’re even managing to walk and talk and feed yourself, you huge piece of shit.” Again, this didn’t start with the Internet — but certainly shoving us all into close digital quarters with one another and dropping a comment section below every Hot Take like a sewer system has only encouraged it. And the more extreme a review, the likelier it is people are going to share it or scream at it and both of those things are going to goose the Almighty Algorithm.

(More points to why I like Bluesky — it has its problems, but the nuclear block and the lack of a presiding algorithm are key for me.)

All of this means people are far likelier to dial their opinions up or down online — and that means not just in reviews, but in general — to get the attention. The algorithm detects that sort of aggro-love-hate-arrgh-hnngh behavior, and it promulgates that opinion throughout the digital world. This is the attention economy — the algorithm detects attention or potential attention and then amplifies it, which becomes something of a self-feeding beast, a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I’m not saying this entirely explains our current political situation, but… it’s in there somewhere.

So of course I’m prefacing all of this because I found one of those… mid-apples. The Crimson Topaz (also my superhero name) is a good apple, but will probably never be great and while better than most grocery store apples just isn’t going to explode your dick with how amazing it is. It’s fine! It’s even good. But that makes it less exciting to review, and I don’t know if you can jazz up mediocrity, right? Effusive cromulence just isn’t a thing. It’s hard to make boring be un-boring. How do you make a three-star review exciting? “The plumber did his job, it’s fine,” just doesn’t hit like “The plumber was drunk and ate my houseplants and then shoved his underwear down my shower drain before falling asleep, ass-up, do not hire this guy, he’s the worst.” At the same time, the everything is amazing and everything is terrible mindset just can’t work with a perfectly normal apple like this one.

So! Please bear with me when we go through these sort of middle-ground apples. Pretend I’m yelling it at you, or that the review is lit up in fireworks or something. Maybe sing it! Everything is better in song! Probably!

That said, I think the photo I took of it, above, is one of my favorites, because it’s just a little noir — and in the background you can see the far superior Esopus Spitzenburg ready to shank it with a blade made from its dark stem.

(That apple lands at the blog tomorrow.)

And now, the review.

My review of a Crimson Topaz, from Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:

This is an apple! You can eat it if you’d like.

The end!

6.1!

Okay, that’s probably not fair to this apple.

Fine, fine, here’s a better review.

This is a perfectly nice apple. This is an apple that will get a good job regardless of how well the economy is doing, provide for its family, retire in half-comfort, and then perish knowing secretly it could’ve done so much more with its life.

We — or at least I — sometimes want a measure of complexity in our apples, which at the base level is why I think sweetness balanced with tartness is interesting. It just does more for your mouth. Thai food is great because of how it brings all these flavors to the party: sweet, sour, savory, spicy. A good apple is that way, too, with multiple flavors bouncing around in there. It’s like rhythm in a song, or pacing in a story — it can’t all just be one thing, all the time. That gets dull quick.

But the Crimson Topaz is… pretty one-note. It’s mostly just sweet. There’s acid in there, there’s a little bit of an edge, but it’s way more Jerry Seinfeld than George Carlin, if you follow me. The flavor isn’t bad — it’s quite candy-forward. You get vanilla and honey up front, but then as you eat it, you get a strong taste of bubblegum — Juicy Fruit in particular — and like, Skittles.

The crunch is flat, but releases a fair bit of juice. Still, the chew lingers too long, like that guest who can’t take the hint that the party is over? You’ve started to wash the punchbowl and yet there they stand, talking about some insipid shit you don’t care about, and you wonder? Do you need to turn out the lights? Put chairs up on the table? Throw a cat at them?

There’s a flavor that lingers once the chewing-chawing-chomping is complete — it’s a kind of savory umami thing, but it’s odd, and I didn’t like it.

This is an apple that is ultimately superior to most grocery store apples and honestly, if you like a sweeter-side apple, you might love this.

I did not love it.

I like it fine.

Just not enough to hang out with it after work, or make out with it in the shrubbery after having a few too many drinks. This lax, lumpen apple is not one I’d seek again, really, but one I’d eat if you handed it to me.

I think 6.1 is a perfectly cromulent score. I would say 6.7 but then some middle-schooler is going to kick down the door to my comment section and do the meme, and that’ll just ruin my day.

Crimson Topaz: More an acquaintance than a friend, tbh

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac

Ruby Mac or RubyMac? I don’t know. What I do know is, the McIntosh apple — and in many cases this sport mutation of it, the Ruby Mac — is an apple people either super love or super hate, and I always think anything like that is interesting. Something that inspires strong reactions is, to me, going to be an interesting something no matter how you slice it — a book or album or apple or experience with a mix of one-star and five-star reviews is doing to be a more fascinating situation than something with a scattering of three-stars. This apple, I think, is like that for a lot of people — though I suspect a lot of the people who hate it hate some grocery store version of it that has turned into an ORB OF MEDIOCRITY in storage.

Because hey, this apple is fucking legit.

Let’s talk about it.

My review of a Ruby Mac from Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:

The color of the Ruby Mac — and many of the McIntoshes I’ve eaten — is this kind of muddy sangria red color that I really love. The shape and color of it often remind me less of an apple and more of an heirloom tomato like a Cherokee Purple or a Tommy Parmesan or a River-Drowned Winelump and okay only one of those is real I didn’t feel like Googling a bunch of tomato variants, I already have too much apple information inside my head to be healthy and sane.

The smell coming off this particular PLUMP BOY was intense, perhaps the most intense apple I done sniffed this year — the aroma was not just berry-forward but as if I was smelling the scent wafting off a bowl of crushed berries. Strawberry, yes, but blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, all the berries. So powerful that I had it in my office for 15 minutes as I went inside to get a camera and do some other quick things, and I came back in and my whole office was redolent with the aroma.

That made me worry that it was too long off the tree and was gonna be a mush-slug of an apple, just a mealy tongue-scrubbing mess —

But that worry did not come to (pun not intended until now) fruition.

Because holy fuck this was a good apple.

Crazy juice bomb apple. Like a grenade full of apple juice.

The flavor itself is vinous, which is a word people use to mean it tastes like wine — and sometimes I find that word overused, but not here. It’s not a specifically rich red like, “Ah yes, this tastes like a 2016 Tempranillo grown in the Douro Valley of Portugal under the shade of a large man that smelled strongly of Portuguese egg tarts, or pastel de nata.” It was kind of like, hey, you ever had a really good, really basic red table wine? Like that. It’s red wine up front and then, curiously, white wine on the finish, and all throughout was this really lovely berry brightness.

The texture was soft, like the Jonathan, but not so soft it was problematic, and nowhere near mealy. Honestly the texture of it made it fast to eat — I do think there’s this Venn diagram of HOW LONG AN APPLE TAKES TO CHEW vs HOW LONG IT TAKES FOR THE FLAVOR TO DISSIPATE, and ideally, the chew lasts not as long as the flavor, and that is absolutely true here. The flavor is present and assertive long after you’ve eaten the whole apple.

Really great apple. If you don’t love this apple then I don’t love you okay I’m just kidding come back it’s okay if we like different things.

Let’s call it an 8.7 and head back to camp.

Video review here.

Accidentally slo-mo video of it here.

Ruby Mac: Looks like a tomato, tastes like berries and table wine, baby

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan

I don’t think you should name pets people names. It’s weird if your dog is named Jerry and not, say, Commander Poopypants or something. Lucky, Scoot, Scout, Patches, Batman, whatever, these are all very fine names for dogs, but then you have people who name their dogs like, Susan, or Gary, and nobody likes that. Nobody wants that. It confuses us all. Why are you telling Susan not to shit there? Asking a neighbor for a poop bag because Gary deuced in their yard? Just out there at night yelling for Jeff like you know some guy who is lost in the woods instead of who it really is, your dog. “Don’t eat that, Rachel,” you say to your weimeraner as she tries very hard to eat weird mushrooms.

The same is true for apples and vegetables. Nobody wants to eat a tomato called Gordon. And yet, here I am, eating an apple called Jonathan.

My review of a Jonathan apple, Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:

This is a real chasing the dragon situation — except today, I think I caught the dragon. To rewind and remind:

Blah blah blah, I generally didn’t like apples because, obviously, I’d eaten the bad ones like the rest of us. I’d had cardboardy suck-ass Red Delicous apples at lunch and they are the Fruit of Woe, so I thought, unless they’re in a pie, no apples. An apple a day keeps the doctor away because the doctor is like, “Fuck them shitty apples.” But then blah blah blah, I went to Colorado later in life with my father after we’d kind of… gotten over some of our issues, my wife-to-be was there, it was really lovely. And while there we were driving through Fruita — a town on the Western slope known for it’s SPONTANEOUSLY-GENERATED TRACTORS just kidding, c’mon, it’s known for it’s fruit, it’s right there in the goddamn name — and we stopped at a roadside fruit stand and my father bought us apples.

And we ate the apples there.

That apple was a Jonathan apple and it was a revelation.

Sometimes, though, revelations aren’t permanent. We forget them, because, I assume, our monkey brains get overstuffed and concerned about other things, like for instance we get irrationally annoyed when people name their dogs people names instead of Lord Pawsington Tailweather or Doctor Chaos, like you have all these cool fucking names and instead you went with Jerome, what the actual shit are you doing, you marry a Jerome, you don’t leash and walk a Jerome, unless that’s a thing you do with your husband, and that’s fine, no shame, no shade, you and he should explore whatever sides of yourself you feel comfortable exploring and–

Okay, I’m off track again.

Point is, I ate this gorgeous, glorious apple and realized apple could be amazing — and then I kinda forgot that again. Like, I still had the memory of eating the apple, but the deeper connection to apples didn’t stick. I did not go seek out more apples. And occasionally I’d look for a Jonathan apple and never found one.

Now, though, my local orchard has ’em.

And I got one.

I had a Jonathan apple… I think last year or so out in the Midwest, and I don’t think it was much of a revelation, which worried me. And I’ve had one or two others before that and, nope, still no revelation.

Then I ate this apple.

And it might be my favorite apple so far this season.

It was this beautifully ripe thing, just a hair shy of soft, still a lovely bite, an absolute candy gusher of juice, not bright so much as assertively sharp, still sweet in balance. Even just smelling the apple like a perverted ol’ apple-sniffer gave you the sense memory of walking through a rose garden — but blessedly, it doesn’t taste like roses, which can (for me) be off-putting in an apple. (Rose flavor tastes like grandmas smell, I dunno, don’t at me.) This might be one of those apples where we’re tempted to look for complex, complicated flavors — cherry pipe tobacco mixed with the ennui of a baby whose soul is too old for its chubby little body — but really, this is just an apple’s apple to me. It offers us quintessential appleness.

It’s an absolute classic, this apple. Even the skin was pleasing to eat!

HELL YEAH WE FUCKIN DID IT

Jonathan, lovely.

Revelation, re-revealed.

We’ll call it a 9.1 out of 10 — I would’ve gone higher, but it has a person name, and I just can’t abide that kind of shenanigans.

Remember: no kings, and fuck ICE.

Watch the video of me eating this delightful apple.

Jonathan: tender wonder boy apple, three cheers for Jonathan the apple

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature