Well, fuck this apple. I mean, don’t fuck this apple — here at Apple Snack Gang headquarters we do not condone apple-fucking. We love apples, but we don’t love-love the apples, you know what I mean? So put your pants back on.
Anyway, I’m just gonna jump right in here:
My review of this piece of shit Opalescent apple, Scott Farm, early-Oct:
You ever meet a well-meaning person who sucks? Sure, okay, they’re bright-eyed. They’re not a dipshit. They get the job done, perhaps even excelling at said job. They were on Student Council. They were in all AP classes. And yet, their eyes are kind of glassy, their gaze somehow both desperate and empty? At the end of the day you really don’t want to spend any more time with them than you have to because there is absolutely nothing interesting about them and it feels like just by being near you they are wicking away your time, your attention, your very existence?
That was this apple.
This is a beautiful apple.
And it is largely devoid of flavor.
It’s got a few characteristics worth talking about:
First, it is genuinely a pretty apple. Very shiny. Very red. For some reason, on Pomiferous it is also described as “very greasy,” which is a curious description I’m not used to with apples. GUESS WE GOT OURSELVES AN OILY BOY. Except this apple wasn’t oily or greasy in any way? But red. Waxy. Bright. It is a well-produced apple. Good job, nature gods. You got the look down!
Second, that skin is thin and yet deeply resilient — it’s not tough, but rather, pops like you just bit into a natural-casing sausage. It’s like chomping through a fucking kielbasa. As I’ve noted before, my family doctor some years ago gave me a prostate exam and referred to my butthole as having, and this is a true story, “good snap.” I would describe this apple as having good snap.
Third, the flavor is almost something. It has the desire to be more than it is. It kind of starts out with this strawberry whiff, as others have found, but it’s also one of those unripe too-white-on-the-inside strawberries you really only want to eat dipped in a fucking shitload of sugar. Then it’s gone. It’s like someone painted the apple with a light veneer of lemon juice and powdered sugar — but it’s gone three seconds into the chew.
And then it’s just a wad of flavorless, unscented apple. You know how some people buy unscented deodorant? This apple is unscented deodorant. It’s the gum in a pack of Garbage Pail Kids, except with flavor that dies even faster. It’s like licking very pretty wallpaper. Except that wallpaper probably tastes like something.
The flesh is blah blah and the grain is whatever who cares. Fart noise.
I’ll try another in my batch to see if maybe that one was just a little stinker. I’m to understand that this may be one of those apples you really, really need to eat right off the tree, and after that it’s a series of diminishing returns. (Other apples are shit right off the tree and only gain with a week or a month in storage. What a world of wonder are these mad fruits!)
Either way, I hate this apple not because it’s bad, but because it’s boring. It’s like a calculator. Like Elmer’s glue. Like a Reese Witherspoon movie. It’s just there, taking up space on the counter, in your mouth, in the world.
This apple sounds like some Clive Barker shit. Like it’s a forbidden relic — an infernal device you use to enter the Labyrinth of Hell. (It continues its horror pedigree by tasting just a little like you’re kissing a haunted scarecrow, but in a good way? Whatever, more on that in the review.)
As a writer, one of the most compelling things about heirloom apples is their names. Ashmead’s Kernel is a fantastic name. I remarked that when I first started my Heirloom Apple Journey, many of the names sounded either like vampires or hobbits. Lord Lambourne? Vampire. Claygate Pearmain? Hobbit. Calville Blanc d’Hiver? Vampire. Fearn’s Pippin? Hobbit, obviously. Black Gilliflower? Could go either way. Arkansas Black? Clearly a vampire hunter.
Ashmead’s Kernel, again, has a Clive Barker ring to it, to me — as if it were a diabolical, demonic artifact. It is, in reality, named after a man, Dr. Ashmead, which himself sounds like a Clive Barker character — some Faustian doctor and academic trying to logic his way into the pleasures and pains of Hell.
So, know that my very initial interest in these apples had nothing to do with apples, or the taste of apples, but simply because the names were so fucking goofy I had to know what was up with that, and why all these apples were clearly named after creatures of the night and fantasy folk.
Anyway. To the reviewmobile!
My review of an Ashmead’s Kernel apple, Scott Farm (VT), early-Oct:
This small, unassuming little apple sits round and dense in the hand, comfortably nestled in the palm, whispering for you to eat it. I mean, at least that’s what I heard. Perhaps you would not be as fortunate as I was.
I’ve had good ones of these and bad ones of these and the bad ones eat like you’re chewing a parsnip and taste weird, but the good ones are a special kind of sublime — oh, still weird, but a lovely kind of weird.
For instance: the first bite from this thing is giving haunted scarecrow vibes. It has this faintly burlap-sacky cornfield crow-fear taste — it is autumnal in a deeper, more eldritch way than simply “oh dry leaves and cider spice.” That fades quick, and yields more overtly pleasant, if still odd, flavors: gingerbread and graham cracker. Some of this is bound to the skin and is only present when you eat it with the skin on — and here I wonder too if the skin absorbs not only the nutrients from the ground where the apple grew, but the air, too. Gently soaking in the orchard air. Quietly inhaling the dreams of scarecrows.
The flesh of the apple is a dense, chewy thing — not so dense it’s punishing, but you’ll work harder to eat this apple. And it will reward you with big fucking flavors: it’s big tart, big sweet, brings orange and hazelnut vibes to the party — it’s really something else, this apple. It’s also juicy in fits and bursts, as if it chooses when to gush and when to not.
This is a strange apple, perfect for October, fit for Halloween. It’s also small enough but heavy enough to throw at the heads of less the treaters and more the trickers — you get some sneaky little fuckers on Halloween night trying to shit in your pumpkins, well, you could bean them with one of these. Then again, that would be a waste of a wonderfully weird-tasting apple.
Score-wise, I think its weirdness is a virtue but might turn some folks off — as such, an 8.3 feels like a perfectly odd-shaped score.
Yes, I have seen Apple Rankings, the website. No, I didn’t write it. (It’s written by comedian Brian Frange.) No, I don’t like it. Yes, I don’t like it because in part he stole my gig goddamnit and also in part because I’m petty but mostly because he loves the Honeycrisp and hates the Arkansas Black, what the fuck. It is a funny site and occasionally offers real information about apples, to be clear, even if it looks like something designed for the Myspace era. (If you want an actual apple review site that is genuinely good and useful, Adam’s Apples is a great site to go to. Visit Adam. Learn about apples. Be better for it.)
With that being said, I think it’s time to jump right into today’s review:
My review of a Suncrisp, from Manoff in PA, early October:
What we got here is an apple from New Jersey, though whether this apple calls the famous meat product from that region “pork roll” or “Taylor ham” remains to be seen, given that was produced by Rutgers, which seems to be in the DMZ where you can’t pin down the proper name. (I call it pork roll, because I am a civilized Pennsylvanian. Don’t at me.) One assumes the apple is at least a little mobbed up, and likes to go Down The Shore for vacation. Maybe it says Gobbagoo. Unsure.
The Suncrisp is, truly, a very sunny apple. It’s fantastically golden in spots, though also sometimes green, sometimes orange, sometimes blushing almost-red. It’s a pretty big apple, too — not too heavy, not too dense, you wouldn’t use it to break a guy’s nose, but it’d take more than a wiffle ball bat to knock this thing into the outfield.
It is reportedly a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Cox’s Orange Pippin, though I also saw someone assert that Cortland is in there, too? My very cool apple encyclopedia says nothing about that, though, so who the fuck knows. (It did also show me that there is a Russian apple called Striped Anis, which I definitely will always pronounce Striped Anus, because I have free will and it delights me, fuck you.)
The skin is lighter than in a lot of apples and I did not find it chewy or overly persistent in trying to stay in my mouth. It’s not as whisper-thin as the Honeycrisp’s skin, but it’s also not “I think I’m chewing a sun-dried condom” like you might get with some russets. The skin is just a little oaty in taste.
Some are quite certain they taste pear in this apple and I do not — I think it’s more of a generically tropical kind of vibe, like a POG juice from Hawaii combo. Sniffing it like the creepy apple pervert I am yields a faint rose scent before biting into it. Once you’re into it, that tropical fruit note hits big — there’s a wave of sweetness that would make the apple seem subacid, and it is, but only just so. The lingering tartness on your lips and tongue tell you it’s still like, a 60/40 split of sweet and tart, which definitely puts it in (for me) a fairly perfect Flavor Zone — not too psycho-sweet, but also doesn’t make your butthole clench from the sourness. Further eating yields some vanilla, honey, and apple pie spice.
This is a favorite apple. It’s just sunny. It feels nice. Like it cares about you. It’ll help you move and hide the bodies while cracking jokes the whole way. This is an apple that doesn’t know how bad the world is, and would you really want your apple to be poisoned by the truth of the world? I don’t think so.
This is an affable idiot apple.
I’ll score it just shy of a Cox’s — let’s go 8.9 outta 10.
The push and pull of art is, I think, the part where you do it for yourself versus where you do it for other people.
And yes, this is sort of about me making my weird apple videos.
And no, I don’t think my weird apple videos are art.
Bear with me.
When we talk about art and writing and the making of cool things we sometimes frame it as ART vs COMMERCE, but I think that’s a bit of a false dichotomy — or, at least, the deeper struggle is that thing I said at the fore: making it for yourself versus making it for an audience. Commerce in that sense is represented by audience — the thing you make? You want it to be seen or heard or experienced, and in theory (and in hope) someone is willing to throw money at you for that thing. At the same time, you had to kind of get there on your own, somehow. You had a love of a thing and at some point just wanted to make the thing, do the thing, be the thing, without necessarily having that muddied by the expectations of a mass, invisible, unknowable audience.
It’s important to find that balance. I expect that people who just make art for themselves — they’re probably pretty happy about it, I guess, and I don’t think it’s wrong to be that way or approach the making of cool things in that manner. On the other hand, art is so keenly part of the human experience and the human connection — you make a thing, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes quite on purpose, in order to put this squirming tether into the world in the hopes that your seeking tendril finds another seeking tendril and forms a connection. I often say storytelling is a shout in the dark: you’re hoping someone will hear you, and shout back. It’s an exhortation against loneliness, but it’s also fine if it’s an emblem of that loneliness, instead. Just you making something in the midst of your own existence, kept and considered only by you.
On the other hand, I think there are people who only care about the audience (or, the crass version, only care about the money and attention it brings). I don’t think this is wrong or bad, either — it just is. I think the danger is maybe you have no creative True North, right? You’re just a compass spinning, willing to make whatever others want rather than having any kind of perspective or an angle that’s yours or anything lensed through the unique human experience that is you. You want to please everyone, but that’s impossible, and at a certain point one of the things that actually attracts other humans to your work is how you parse an idea through all the squishy gnarly filters that comprise your heart and mind. They want the weird shape your own personal Play-Doh Shape-Making Factory extrudes, y’know?
I knew someone in the game writing space Way Back When who was genuinely a very very good writer but had little interest in doing what outlines asked of him and didn’t really like editorial notes or feedback from anyone, and as a result was in this space of making his own content by resisting the audience (and, further, the client). I also know writers who are like freelance guns-for-hire, and will write anything at all for anyone — not just for the paycheck but just to say YES to whatever comes across their door, and ultimately I think the work can end up reading a little hollow because it doesn’t have that mark of their own individual spiritual-emotional-intellectual fingerprint. There’s just no special sauce, you know? Like it’s missing a bit of soul. Again, there’s no wrong to any of this — it’s all about choice and who you are as a maker of cool things, but at the end of the day, for me, the goal is to find the balance of making stuff I want to make and making stuff people want to in some way experience. Letting my own freak flag fly, but also hoping very hard it looks like your freak flag, a little bit, too.
So anyway yeah okay I’ll still make my doofy little apple videos. I like making ’em and some folks seem to like watching ’em so away we go.
And now, an apple review.
My review of a Holstein apple from Scott Farm, VT, rec’d late Sept:
No, it’s not a cow.
It moos not, for ’tis an apple.
There is frankly nothing cow-like about the apple, not in taste or smell or appearance. Fruit is mysterious!
Anyway.
The Holstein — or the Holsteiner Cox, the Holsteinerapfel — is a German apple that either has Cox’s Orange Pippin as a parent or was a sport of the Cox’s. (A sport is a random genetic mutation that produces a divergent fruit, and then you take that sucker and graft its branches onto another tree to continue this new alternate universe version of the original fruit. Because clearly mutations are actually just intrusions from an alternate dimension. This is just science, you cannot disagree.)
I am ever a fan of this apple — it’s very much like the Cox’s Orange Pippin, usually just bigger, and sometimes with punchier flavors. It’s often an aromatic apple (which is a romantic way of saying smelly but in a good way) — tropical fruit forward with big pineapple karate happening in the mouth. Usually got a big burst of juice. (I was going to say, “it’s a squirter,” but I didn’t, and you’re welcome.) Further, it’s a fairly pretty apple. A little lopsidey, maybe, but that gives it character — and it takes the blushing orange of the Cox’s and dials it up, brighter, sunnier, bolder.
This batch brought all of that. And it also brought some curious additions.
I ate two out of the three I have and both had these, ahh, additions.
First: smell, very buttery pineapple smell.
Second: the bite. First apple was a bit softer, second apple, firmer. The first apple seems to be on its way out of the Zone of Deliciousness in terms of its time off the tree. Gonna judge more on the second apple regarding its score, but both were coarse-grained, and if this apple wore Yoga pants, those pants would have JUICY written across in the ass in a jaunty cursive font.
Third: the flavor, you know, yeah, it’s pineapple, it’s a bit vanilla-sugar-cookie, it’s a little lemon-orange brightness, though not as bright as some have been, not quite buzzing on the lips.
And now, the weird part.
Both apples had this smell-slash-taste that on the video I kind of described as a bleachy, cleaning detergenty vibe, but umm, there’s also something else it reminds me of? If you know, some trees (like old chestnut trees, RIP the American Chestnut, also please watch this fascinating video about the American Chestnut tree and efforts to bring it back from its weird interstitial realm of not-quite-extinct) when they blossom have an, uhhh, odor, that some have described to smell a little like, err, well, ahh, let’s call it jizz. So, this apple brought a little of that. Not a lot! Just, “what if vanilla jizz were a scent at Yankee Candle?”
And then the second apple also brought with it this faintly sulfurous eggy hell-stink with it. Just a moment’s whiff. So brief you barely notice it but also it’s an eggy hell-stink, so you’re gonna notice it.
What’s fascinating is, when I peeled the rest of each, these off-flavors dissipated. I’m not entirely sure why that is, as I am no APPLEOLOGIST and merely an AMATEUR HOUR APPLE ADVENTURER, and though I am head of the APPLE SNACK GANG, that confers upon me no special knowledge! But! I do know that the skin contains a lot of zesty molecules and volatile esters concentrated there, and so certainly the skin brings different flavors and scents to the party, and removing the skin and revealing only the sweet precious apple meat isolates different expressions.
Whatever. Anyway. Once peeled, they got infinitely more pleasing.
So, I’m still gonna call these an 8.2, even though on a better year they’d be a full point or more higher.
When seventeen-year-old Dilly Rothbart finds her recently deceased father’s hidden journal, her entire world is upended―for what she finds within are the steps to bring a dead soul back to life. Intent on finishing her father’s work and establishing herself as the greatest scientist in history, Dilly plunges into a medical underworld of corpse-stealing, grave-robbing, and even murder. And when her twin sister steps in the way of her studies, she’ll do whatever is necessary to secure the recognition she deserves.
This twisty, atmospheric, Frankensteinian tale is about a group of ambitious young scientists who descend into corruption when a breakthrough discovery grants them the power of gods.
IT’S OKAY TO START OVER AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED TO
I started this novel in 2014 as a young adult reimagining of Jack the Ripper with the main character being the daughter of JTR. However, because it evolved into being more the father’s story than the daughter’s, I decided to start over and write a reimagining of my favorite book.
I CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY COPIES OF FRANKENSTEIN (20 so far) AND WHY IT SPEAKS TO ME
Frankenstein is my favorite book (I read it when I was eight and fell in love with gothic horror). It’s—dare I say it—the book of my heart. It led me down the path of other gothic novels like Dracula, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Raven and other Edgar Allan Poe works to name a few.
The gist of it is I wrote this novel because I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of “the other” which Mary Shelley explores in Frankenstein. The term “the other” is a philosophy term used by several philosophers and writers to describe someone who is different than the societal norm. This “other” is ostracized from regular society and is perceived as different from society and therefore shunned. As a child I often felt like “the other.” I was a gifted child often bored with schoolwork. I learned to read at the age of three and by five I was reading adult (no not those kinds!) books way beyond my age. I often lugged giant tomes to school like The Complete Works of Shakespeare (in the third grade) to read during silent reading time. Or when I finished my work which was usually quickly done. I memorized The Raven by Poe in the third grade to recite in front of the class. Add to the fact my family moved often so it was difficult to make friends since I never knew how long I’d be staying, I didn’t fit in.
Writing a character who didn’t fit into whatever role society deemed she should fit into appealed to me.
This led me to write a story from the point-of-view from a seventeen-year-old Victorian who despite being told over and over again she can’t pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon she persists. She is relentless in her pursuit of this ambition to the eventual detriment to herself shaking her belief in what she’s capable of doing. She fights to claw her way back to her own true self as she questions her motives surrounding the decisions she makes.
WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION IS FUN!
I love to do research. I even worked as a research assistant for a university professor once and so I went down the rabbit hole of all things Mary Shelley. Did you know she had a half-sister named Fanny Imlay (she was three when Mary was born) who unalived herself at the age of twenty-two soon after Mary wrote Frankenstein? In fact she was helping Mary edit Frankenstein. It was rumored she might have been in love with Mary’s beau, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and her feelings were not reciprocated. Or perhaps she failed to find her footings among the strict societal standards for women of the Victorian era. We’ll never know.
EDITING IS IMPORTANT AND IT’S WHERE YOUR STORY SHINES
So many writers, especially new ones think they’ll edit once maybe twice and be done. Oh, sweet summer child…no. This is my process and it’s not everyone’s. You have to find what works for you.
I usually start with a character. I consider myself a pantser meaning I don’t plot or outline. I rarely know the ending ahead of time either. I let the story show me where it’s going. My first drafts are bare bones but each edit puts more and more flesh on the bones until it’s a fully-formed story. And I did many, many, many (ad infinitum) edits.
EASTER EGGS GALORE
I like doing plot twists and putting Easter eggs about Mary Shelley in the book because how could I not? See if you can find them!
Writing Dilly’s story was and is one of my greatest achievements. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Kathleen S. Allen is a young adult writer of gothic horror, historical, fantasy, and speculative fiction. She has published poems, short stories, novellas, and novels. She prefers dark to light, salty to sweet, and tea to coffee. She is a fan of K-Pop, classic rock, and British detective shows. She lives in Los Angeles with a sassy Tortoiseshell cat.
WE MUST BETRAY THE ALGORITHM AND BURN IT ALL DOWN wait I’m getting ahead of myself, sorry. Man, that’s a helluva way to open a fucking apple review, isn’t it? All right, to rewind a little —
Yesterday, I posted my video, uhh, “review” (more like a mukbang apple snack gang first impressions video, if we’re being honest) of the Hudson’s Golden Gem apple, but in it I posited the question: should I even keep doing them? The videos, I mean, not necessarily these reviews — it’s just, you know, Instagram is nice enough to show you the metrics on the posts that Instagram isn’t nice enough to actually show other people. Meaning, I get to see how poorly some posts do, largely in part because Instagram does not show everyone everything from the people they follow. The algorithm there is dominant, and prioritizes in your own feed not the accounts you follow but rather, a shit-ton of random accounts. And this has only gotten worse.
(Hilariously, every time I do a video that’s over three minutes, Instagram warns me a couple times — HEY WE DON’T SHOW VIDEOS OVER THREE MINUTES TO PEOPLE, ALERT, ALERT, YOUR CONTENT IS CRUSHINGLY LONG, THREE MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS IS TOO MUCH, WE WILL BURY YOU UNDER THE DIGITAL EARTH FOR THIS CRIME OF ATTEMPTING TO TEST PEOPLE’S ATTENTION SPANS, WE HAVE SENT THE POLICE TO YOUR HOUSE, YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL FOR A THOUSAND YEARS — and then I look at my top videos and they’re all videos longer than three fucking minutes. Is Instagram just fucking with me? I think it is.)
The additional fun is, of course, that I’m not only subject to The Almighty Algorithm, but further, I’m posting on yet another social media platform owned and operated by monsters who are actively, not passively, making the world worse. Not just in a, oh ha ha we’re ruining attention spans and posting slop slop slop way, but in the also we’ve helped develop a surveillance state and soon everyone will be wearing our privacy-destroying narc tech and oh sure we’ve helped a genocide or two way.
(You have to love how every tech company with any goodwill has, over the years, not only flagrantly shit itself, but further, has leaned hard into our current dystopia. “Ten years ago, we started our beloved app that delivers cat-themed videos to your phone and cat-based knick-knicks to your door. Now, Catbox CEO Jean-Luc Bandersnoot announces Catbox’s new initiative, where we are investing in a series of hunter-seeker rectal drones who will enter the colons of those who we believe have slandered us online. These drones will attach firmly to the intestinal wall, threatening to explode the next time our enemies even think of saying mean things about us. And don’t forget to subscribe to Jean-Luc’s new newsletter: this week he talks about how being a billionaire is basically like being a god, and how you’re all peons, and how he’s building a rocketship to take his friends to a planet he’s seen in his dreams that he calls NEW NARCISSUS. Thanks for using Catbox!”)
(I think I’ve gotten off the point a little.)
So I was like, what do I do? Are people even seeing these videos? My aim with them was never to like, Gain Clout or Make Content — I was basically going to eat apples and apple-related bullshit anyway, so I might as well film it. Which further gets me more comfortable doing stuff on video, because honestly I’m not that comfy with it? I thought it would be fun. And it is. But being yoked to a merciless algorithm at the same time caaaaan be a bit demoralizing.
Then again, maybe that’s just life in 2025. Endlessly demoralizing moments! Like with AI slop okay I won’t get started on AI slop again sorry, sorry, trying to delete *hits keyboard a few times, gives up*
I thought — do I want to go to TikTok? Maybe there’s an active AppleTok community over there that isn’t posting about capital-A Apple content but rather, lowercase-a apple fruit content. Or maybe I could be the first! Maybe I could colonize that space and ohhh that’s right TikTok is now further compromised by the Trump administration soooo fuck that, I guess.
Jesus, should I post these things to YouTube?
Well, that sounds terrifying.
Anyway, so I posited the question: should I keep doing them? The responses were quite kind. A few folks said they look forward to them, especially given *gesticulates broadly* All The Everything Going On All the Time, and as such, I think that means I’ll keep doing them. Whoever watches them, watches them, and whoever doesn’t, doesn’t — but I do think it’s a nice distraction for me, and maybe for you, too. If I give a little bit of weird apple joy to five people and am allowed to spread my sinister apple gospel, hey, I can take some time out of my week to keep that apple train a-rollin’.
All right, let’s review this next weird little fucker of an apple.
My review of the Hudson’s Golden Gem from Manoff Orchard, early Oct:
Okay, the Hudson’s Golden Gem isn’t that weird of an apple — but I do so love its name, which sounds like a panacea sold by some snake oil salesman out of a rickety wagon. COME GETCHER HUDSON’S GOLDEN GEM! CURES WHAT AILS YOU: IT’LL STIFLE YOUR GOUT, PUT THE VIM IN YOUR VAPORS, IT’LL EXORCIZE ALL YOUR ILL SPIRITS!
My apple encyclopedia (yes, I have one — this one, in fact, a seven-volume beast apparently soon out of print and now on sale) tells me that the apple was discovered in a fencerow by an A.D. Hudson, and sold at his (?) nursery in Tangent, Oregon. A largely unexciting origin, except perhaps for the part where I learned there is a town in Oregon called Tangent, which is great and belongs in a book somewhere. If only I knew someone who wrote those.
The Hudson’s Golden Gem has always been a mixed bag for me — each one has been of considerably different quality, and also each offering divergent qualities. Some of this is due to it being a fruit that apparently hangs long on the tree and does well in storage — and even after a month, changes itself considerably. (So I may need to keep my others in storage, just to see.) The time before last I had one that tasted so much like banana it was fucking silly. Time before that, the one I had was mealy and mushy and made my heart sad. Last time, the taste was good but the crunch was so dense and deep it was uncanny — the texture of raw potato.
So this time, what did I get?
I got a fucking pear.
This was a pear. Sure, it looks like apple and, y’know, is an apple, but also, it’s definitely a pear cosplaying as an apple, or an apple cosplaying as a pear. If you tasted this blindfolded, you’d absolutely believe you were eating a pear. And that’s fine. It’s lovely. It’s juicy. It’s over-sweet, pretty sub-acid, which for me, and not for you, is a ding — but you can look past that little dent by enjoying that it also brings a little complexity to the party: a hit of that fennel-anise vibe, and this time, no strong banana taste, just a distant tastebud kiss of banana Runts candy.
The crunch was not off-putting this time — still a deep, bone-vibrating crunch, with a bit of a chew to the dense, fine-grained applemeat, but this time it didn’t feel quite so existential, quite so cosmic horror.
The skin, roughly russeted, is not something you should care overmuch to eat, but I’m sure eating it will do wonders for your colon. And that’s the second time I’ve referenced bowels in this post, and I can’t do it a third time or I’m pretty sure I get flagged by the algorithm ha ha just kidding there’s no algorithm here, there’s just me blogsharting into the void! But I control it, I own it, and here I can say whatever I want, ha ha ha ha you fools.
Anyway. Nice apple if you can get it. It’s new to my local orchard — they tend to keep their odder heirlooms only for cider production and I’m hoping they also are willing to sell me some Esopus Spitzenburgs as eating apples because I love ’em, but they only turn them into boozy business.
Gonna call this a… let’s be generous, say 8 out of 10.
