We’ll get to the fact I’m reviewing an apple called a banana (shades of A Man Called Horse) in a moment: up front, let’s talk about food insecurity. We are entering a time of grave economic uncertainty — SNAP benefits are going away, health insurance costs are skyrocketing, inflation is simmering to boil, jobs are rotten fruits falling off the tree, and just in general, things ain’t great. And let’s be clear, that’s not happening in a vacuum — it’s not because it’s Mercury in Retrograde or some kind of external astrological circumstance, but rather, because we are under the boot of a cruel and callous administration run by autocrats and king-lickers who are glad to throw the lower and middle classes into a wood-chipper that turns them into chum to feed the wealthiest among us. As such, this is a very good time to —

Donate to a food bank!

I recommend Philabundance, but certainly, certainly you have local food banks to you, and you are more than welcome to drop links to those food banks in the comments below. Note, too, that generally the recommendation is to donate money to food banks rather than, well, food. They know their food needs and can spend the money accordingly — and often more efficiently. If you are donating food, my understanding is that communicating with the food bank to understand their needs first is helpful!

I’m sure somewhere here someone is very inclined to yell at me for bringing politics into these fun (“fun”) apple reviews — well, I mean, feel how you feel, but honestly? Eat shit. Eat all the shit instead of eating delicious apples. Food is inherently political. Agriculture and produce is inherently political. Think of all the things that goes into food: who has access to eat it, to grow it, how it’s kept safe, what companies dominate that market, where it is imported from and exported to, what food is kept to the wealthy and kept away from the poor, and so on. Food is political no matter who is in the White House — and with the current motherfucker up in there, the chaos inherent in our food system has never been more apparent.

So, drop a link to a food bank or click the ones people leave, and give some money, help people get the food they need. Cool? Cool.

All right. With all that said —

Let’s review an apple.

My review of a Winter Banana from Scott Farm (VT), late-Oct:

This is an apple called a banana. I am sorry to drop that cognitive dissonance in your lap, but here we are. Don’t even think about how there’s a banana called an apple-banana. (They’re amazing.)

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: this Winter Banana sucked, and not just because it didn’t even have enough banana to deserve the name, but because the texture was the texture of an old carrot that had gone too long in the fridge. You know the kind of carrot I’m talking about. That dread, rubbery thing. That floppy orange dong in the bottom of the veggie drawer. No crispity-crunchity texture, no hard-breaking snap — but rather, a dildoian character, a turgid latex tube of compressed vegetation. So right out of the gate, the texture was deeply off-putting to me. And the skin was shiny and waxy and didn’t help matters.

Really, though, all that could be skirted past should the flavor be amazing. And was it? Was it amazing? Will this apple pull itself out of the nose-dive?

It was not, and will not.

The flavor was absolutely mid. It wasn’t the “this Red Delicious tastes like apple-scented zero-calorie water” thing, but it wasn’t really doing much of a tap-dance in my mouth. The best thing I can say for the flavor was that it was somewhat refreshing, and called to mind some of the elderflower juice I had in places like Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm. Nice, light, floral. And it gets extra points for being fairly pretty — an ethereal, ghostly green with a true rosé blush to it. But that flavor was short-lived, and its beauty forgotten once you bite into it.

Oh, and did it have its trademark banana scent or flavor? Nnyyeaaaah no? Not really? I got a whiff of green banana upon biting into it, but that was the first and last scent of it, and caught zero ‘nanner taste out of it. So, even there, a sort of pre-promised perk of the apple didn’t show up to the party.

Meh? Meh.

3.3 outta 10 is what you get, silly banana.

Video here.

Winter Banana: I’d rather have an actual banana, and bananas are mostly terrible

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, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap, Stayman Winesap

Have I asked you what your favorite apple is, yet? Okay, consider this the ask: hit me up with what is, for you, the very bestest apple. For eating, ideally, though recs for baking, saucing, cidering, chucking at wayward children, rolling down a hill in an apple race, or worshipping for evil purpose and dark intent — all those are welcome, as well. Meanwhile, let’s get to the review —

My review of a Stayman Winesap from Manoff Orchard, PA, late-Oct:

I did a dual video review of the Winesap and the Stayman Winesap, eating them both side by side — you can find the video review here, and the blog review of the Regular-Ass Winesap here.

The Stayman Winesap is, by reports, a seedling of the Winesap — which is to say, it’s related, but not in a way that necessarily matters flavor-wise, since seeds from an apple are a roulette wheel in terms of what grows from it.

That said, I did find some similarities between the Winesap and the Stayman Winesap, though those similarities might be imagined.

What I will say is this: the Stayman Winesap is like if you took the Regular-Ass Winesap and hooked its nuts up to a car battery. It unleashes a full-electric-charge into your face when you take a bite — you still get that vinous white grape thing, but then that swiftly transforms into a honeysuckle and pineapple vibe, and when I say pineapple, I don’t mean it’s reminiscent of pineapple, but rather, there were times when I was like, I’m eating a straight-up pineapple for sure. Then you’re left with a powerful lemon buzz on the lips, which I honestly love, because I crave any feeling and meaning in this dark and lightless world.

What else? Coarse flesh. Mega-juice, like, incredibly juicy, like afterward I literally had to towel off as if I just played a vigorous game of pickleball or had just finished up at the local orgy. Is that a thing? The local orgy? I’ve never been invited to one, so I wouldn’t know. Are orgies a thing you even get invited to or do you just need to be a person who knows orgy people and you sort of just end up there together? Or is it a vibe? Do you have to give off an orgy vibe and then the orgy finds you in an act of orgy manifest destiny? This is too much talk about orgies for an apple review so I’m going to try to find an exit ramp to this paragraph now, ah, there’s one —

The skin is fairly pleasant, which I did not expect because honestly the apple had this rustic look to it, as if it pulled up on a tractor and tipped its dusty John Deere hat at you. It’s got that working man’s apple thing, like this apple can work a plow, or this apple can change the oil in your Bronco. It looks a little like it would vote Republican, which did not give me hope — thankfully, it’s got way more flavor and zest than that, and clearly cares about other people too much to ever do such a horrible thing. Anyway. It’s great! Go get it.

Let’s call it a solid 8.0 out of 10.

Stayman Winesap: Doesn’t look like it, but this apple fucks

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, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap

I keep coming back to the question of why I do this, and while the easiest answer is, I like apples and I want you to like apples too, and I find them interesting, and I want you to find them interesting too, I’ve come to the realization that there’s another reason, too–

Things are, I’d argue, really bad right now. Things are often bad in the world, because history is full of sinister forces, but right now in particular feels keenly, sharply bad. Like, every week is a brand new re-do of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” I’m not going to go through the list, because doing so would probably take me hours, and by the time I was done writing it, a new list of abhorrent news would replace the former list of aberrations and atrocities, but suffice to say:

It’s not good, Bob.

But apples, well, apples are good. They are a simple thing. An elegant thing. They are a very nice product of the intersection of nature doing nature things and human beings doing human being things. (And on this front, I gotta recommend you read Sally Coulthard’s The Apple, A Delicious History. Thanks very much to my friends at The Montana Book Company for sending it along!) Apples are a nice thing, and it’s nice to have a nice thing in a not-so-nice time. Also great to have a simple thing in complicated times. A good thing, in evil times.

And for me this act of taking an apple, eating it, thinking about it, then talking/writing about it is honestly meditative. I’ll do the video review of the first bites, but then I’ll often walk outside with the apple and wander around, eating it. And while eating it, I’m trying to be mindful about eating it — what is it like, what do I taste, what weird flavors are nested in there, what is the texture, the aroma, what is an apple, am I turning into an apple, if I turned into an apple, what apple would I be? I enjoy the weather. I listen to the birds. I eat the apple. And as such, I get to unplug from reality for a moment and… plug back into a really-real reality. A better, nicer, truer reality, where apples exist, untethered from this troubled timeline. It’s not disassociating, not entirely. I’m not unpinning my mind from everything. I am simply pinning it to something pure, something essential, and above all else, something small. The humble, weird, wonderful apple.

Anyway. I’ve little advice for this current era, really, but had I something to tell you it’d be that: find you that thing that lets you disconnect. Something very explicitly not on a screen. Books, obviously, are wonderful for this. But it can be anything. Fish in a fishtank. Building a little terrarium. Cataloguing bugs. Birds, too–birds are a good one for me. None of this is advocating for not keeping up with the news and remaining active in action and advocacy and activism, I just mean, we all need to take time in the eye of the hurricane, in that place of calm, and maybe, just maybe, eat a fucking apple.

And now, a review.

My review of the Winesap apple, from Manoff Orchard, PA, late-Oct:

This is, in theory, a nice little apple. Kind of a Bob Ross apple — plain-spoken, maybe not entirely exciting, but contains hidden depths of wisdom and, perhaps, a secret squirrel. I’ve heard it referred to as vinous, which is to say, winey, though I found it to be less wine and more white grape with a little elderflower in there. That flavor isn’t particularly strong, though — it’s not so thin as to be the ghost of flavor, but it’s really quite mild. Unassertive, pretty chill, doesn’t want to get in your way, might be high on edibles.

Crisp. Juicy. I’d call it medium-grained. An easy eater. Except. Except.

We gotta talk about the skin.

(“I’ll take THINGS SERIAL KILLERS SAY for $500, Alex.”)

The skin.

This goddamn skin.

I bit into it — video here, which is actually a double-review of this and the Stayman Winesap — and found the skin was easily the toughest, worst skin I’ve had in my mouth. Maybe worse than the knobbed russet skin. It was like chewing wallpaper. You could line the fucking Space Shuttle in this shit to prevent space debris or to insulate it from the fiery heat of reentry. The skin is a nightmare. I think I’m still chewing it. I think I’m still digesting it. It may now be adhering to the insides of my stomach and bowels. My new interior skin.

Anyway, it was horrible, and it kind of ruins an otherwise nice-ish apple.

As such, I would’ve given this a nice score in the 5 outta 10 space, but dinging it down to nice-ish thanks to that fucking extraterrestrial ARMOR it wears, so we’ll call it *taps a bunch of numbers into an adding machine like I’m Sam Reich running a game of Make Some Noise* 4.9 out of 10.

Winesap: A chill white wine spritzer of an apple clad in the armor of an M1 Abrams tank

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, Mutsu, Hunnyz

Grocery store apples are quite often shit. At best, they’re terribly boring, even if they’re not themselves terrible. Though we’ve left the Red Delicious Problem somewhat in our dust, the mass production and distribution of apples still pushes onto us an army of thick-skinned Honeycrisp taste-alikes. I had mentioned before but the last time I was at the store, most of the apples looked faintly withered, like your pruned fingertips after spending too long in the bath. I half-expected the apples to have gone pale, and to spy a small vampiric bunny hopping around the produce section.

Still, while there, I found a grocery apple that was new to me, and that apple was named — and I swear to Christ this is the name, I’m not making this up, this is not a bit — HUNNYZ. It’s called Hunnyz. Fucking Hunnyz.

We used to be a real country, goddamnit.

Hunnyz.

“Let’s misspell HONEY and stick a Z on its ass, that’ll fishhook the millennials into eating our stupid new Honeycrisp variant.” What is this, 2005? Is this what passes for edgy in the fruit-based marketing world? Was Honeycrisp too formal, too buttoned-up, too Earl Grey and scones and sconces and pinkies out, so they needed a COOL APPLE to SKATEBOARD IN and do a KICKFLIP in time with Smashmouth’s ALL-STAR? This is definitely the thing a guy in his early 60s names an apple because he wants to reconnect with his daughter who cut him out of his life because of his shitty politics, and now there’s his grandson, Mylar, and he only sees pictures of Mylar on Facebook but he wants to be in his life, so hey, maybe Mylar will think this apple is cool-as-heck, and the sweet HUNNYZ branding will rebuild the bridge and bring his family back together again, and if it doesn’t, that’s okay, eventually this fruit marketing executive will join the second Trump administration as Branding Consultant for ICE.

Or, put more succinctly, the apple has strong Poochie energy.

It’s a Honeycrisp – Crimson Crisp cross. Whatever. Who cares. I can’t believe I have to do this. Fuck it let’s eat this fucking apple.

(p.s., I took a photo of the apple, but somehow fucked it up and deleted the photo, so I took another one mid-bite, but that’s an awful photo, so the photo at the top of the post is I photo I took of oatmeal with apples, which is a good thing to eat, with or without a HINEYZ apple chunked into it)

My review of, and really I hate typing this, a Hunnyz apple, from the Giant grocery store chain in PA, late-October but honestly who knows when this fucking thing came off a tree, it could’ve been 2015:

I want you to imagine this review is mostly just me sighing a long sigh and kind of shrugging a bit and then mumbling a loose acquiescence, a shoulder-slumping resignation of mind, body and soul.

It’s not that this apple is terrible. It isn’t. It’s — it’s fine. It’s very sweet because of course American consumers are all viewed as children who need CANDY FRUIT or they’ll fucking riot, but it’s sweet without complexity — it’s not even the rich molasses of a brown sugar, it’s just rock candy but in apple form. It breaks hard, this apple, but not necessarily in a satisfying way: it’s like you’re biting into compressed styrofoam. It’s juicy as hell, which is nice. There is a tartness there, but it’s maybe, maybe at a 70/30 split with the sweetness, and that sweetness is so deeply straightforward. It’s a long, unswerving highway. It’s I-80 across Pennsylvania — it’ll get you there, but it ain’t gonna be exciting. It also has a long chew to it, partly due to the skin which wants to hang out with you like a weird guy at a party, but also because that hard-breaking texture means this turns into you eating dirt for a while.

It’s fine. I’m being meaner to it than it deserves. Honestly, if it didn’t have that name, I might rate is a 4.6, but as it stands, the name is an impasse for me, just a high ugly mountain peak I am unable to surmount, and this obstacle forces me to give this sweet crunchy sadlump a 3.9 out of 10.

Watch me eat this apple here, if you dare.

Hunnyz: Divorced dad energy

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, Mutsu

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