I ate the most delicious appley-apple tonight. I picked it out from Dean & Delucas in SoHo. As I rifled through the baskets of organic apples, it struck me how our perception of "produce beauty" makes us believe we can predict how something will taste, like an apple.
I was eating on the go so I didn't want big bruised soft spots therefore, I fussed. Apples dappled with spots and imperfections, soft cratered edges and beautifully crafted blemishes. So why didn't it look appetizing?
I picked a nice looking apple with a name I didn't recognize touting a mouth-watering description.
I bit into my nameless apple. My mouth was literally shocked with the sweet tartness that radiated from the crisp, juicy flay of apple.
Which brings me to my issue with "apples". You know, the rosy, monotone "apples" soldiered up side-by-side and stacked pyramid-style at your local grocer. It's beautiful, yes. I admit nothing makes me happier than a visit to whole foods with neatly stacked produce and spotlessly clean isles. But even a Whole Foods apple just tastes like... flavorless, watery "apple".
Much like my farmers market sweet potato tastes richer and slightly nutty. It might not be as polished and uniform, but it is healthy and you can actually eat the skin because you're not ingesting pesticides.
So leave my apple rippled with yellow, rose, burgundy and pea. Show me where the vine attached to the tree and where it nestled against another, brother apple, vine-ripening to the point of a bruised side where the two hung touching, rib-to-rib.
Spare me the poisonous pesticides and tasteless fruits humorously called "apple". It tastes better and it's saving our earth, our oceans and our bodies.
