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I ate 71 apples
Oct. 23rd, 2010 04:37 pmNot whole apples, please. Little cut-up chunks, in piles on labeled plates in a row on long tables, of seventy-one different varieties of (mostly) heirloom apples, browsed over by a small crowd of pomaceous gourmets bearing toothpicks to spear the samples with.
The grand apple tasting session could be found at the back acres of the small harvest festival subsisting in the gentle drizzle at Wilder Ranch State Park outside Santa Cruz, which I ventured over the Hill to attend mostly for them apples. Also present were a booth selling roasted corn on the cob, a pair of draft horses bearing a real plow (for the children to awe over), a booth with slices of apple and pumpkin pies, bluegrass musicians and a barbershop quartet, and another booth urging you to vote Yes on 21. (That's the proposition that would fund state parks out of a vehicle license fee.) And after you'd dined on the apples, corn, and pie, you could - and many including me did - walk it off on the mile-and-a-half trail out to the scenic cliffs above the roaring surf that's energetically trying to re-create the natural bridge that collapsed several years ago a mile down the coast.
The apples, allegedly arranged in order from sweet to tart, ranged from the mealy or dry and a few with odd or unpleasant tastes to a large number that met my preferred criteria of being sharply crisp and moist with a taste mixing the tart and sweet. Some had redder flesh than others; some oxidized faster; some attracted most of the attending yellowjackets. I took notes on the rating sheet the customers were given, but soon found myself running out of synonyms for "crisp", "tart", "sweet", and "mealy". "Fruity" would have been an epithet juste, but a bit otiose.
I don't expect to see many of these in my local grocery soon (indeed, there were only five varieties I was sure offhand that I'd ever had before), but I feel far more wise in the ways of apples.
( the list: 71 finest kinds )
The grand apple tasting session could be found at the back acres of the small harvest festival subsisting in the gentle drizzle at Wilder Ranch State Park outside Santa Cruz, which I ventured over the Hill to attend mostly for them apples. Also present were a booth selling roasted corn on the cob, a pair of draft horses bearing a real plow (for the children to awe over), a booth with slices of apple and pumpkin pies, bluegrass musicians and a barbershop quartet, and another booth urging you to vote Yes on 21. (That's the proposition that would fund state parks out of a vehicle license fee.) And after you'd dined on the apples, corn, and pie, you could - and many including me did - walk it off on the mile-and-a-half trail out to the scenic cliffs above the roaring surf that's energetically trying to re-create the natural bridge that collapsed several years ago a mile down the coast.
The apples, allegedly arranged in order from sweet to tart, ranged from the mealy or dry and a few with odd or unpleasant tastes to a large number that met my preferred criteria of being sharply crisp and moist with a taste mixing the tart and sweet. Some had redder flesh than others; some oxidized faster; some attracted most of the attending yellowjackets. I took notes on the rating sheet the customers were given, but soon found myself running out of synonyms for "crisp", "tart", "sweet", and "mealy". "Fruity" would have been an epithet juste, but a bit otiose.
I don't expect to see many of these in my local grocery soon (indeed, there were only five varieties I was sure offhand that I'd ever had before), but I feel far more wise in the ways of apples.
( the list: 71 finest kinds )
