Adam's Apples

Although others have asked about my refrigerator , it isn't really a back door to Narnia . There's nothing special about it. But on Monday, when I went hunting for my last review apple of the year, I found some surprises.

Scarlett O’Hara has a reputation as an apple that improves in storage. I waited two weeks before trying one of these, and then another month and a half before tasting the second. Quick take: This handsome flavorful apple juxtaposes some unexpected tastes in an appealing way. It has a great crunch, and is a first-rate keeper.

I ate my last Ashmead's Kernel today, surprisingly good after several months in my refrigerator. (That said, my fridge sometimes resembles the wardrobe to Narnia in the way it can cough up apples I did not realize I still had.)

Winter market came early this year! You could buy 14 different kinds of apples there today, as follows.

The last day of Farmers market in Davis Square, Somerville, earlier today. The day before American Thanksgiving marks the end of the urban farmers markets in these parts. The suburban markets had their last hurrah on Halloween.

They are Suncrisp, Baldwin, and Topaz.

There were 17 kinds of apples today at  Volante Farms  in  Needham, Mass. It's a good place to get apples in what I think of as pirate season , when orchard-fresh apples grow scarce but can still be found.

The wily Ashmead's Kernel, bagged, labeled, and PLU ed.

The last of the year. As the harvest and the market and the season swell with unbearably sweet ripe fecundity, At that very moment of climactic eucatastrophe, when the labor and the fullness and the promise of the year are redeemed: cruel ice of winter, mud and blossom of spring, the heat and toil of summer, and all, That is when the feast is undermined, the seeds of contraction have taken root.

A rainbow touches down over a fall farmers market in Arlington, Massachusetts, earlier today. What's at the end of that rainbow?

This foundling apple can be large, but the ones I bought are medium sized. They are classically conical and tapered with pronounced ribbing, a pretty light yellow with an attenuated red-orange blush. The peel is smooth and glossy. Click the photo if you like for a closer look at lenticels, streaks, and tiny stipples of flyspeck.

Above: It was so windy at Arlington's Farmers Market earlier today that this vendor did not even try to set up their usual awning.

Yes, it's the King David apple. With a mild case of watercore .

Just a small sample of what was for sale last weekend at Shelburne Farm in Stow, Massachusetts.

Apple tasting featuring (left to right) Crimson Crisp, Cox's Orange Pippin, Ashmead's Kernel, and Macoun. I organized an apple tasting for my colleagues where I work today, and got a visual demonstration of their collective taste in apples.

Yes, there was a flaw in this apple. I bought it anyway because so what, and also because it was the only one left. I've been wanting to retaste Sweet 16 ever since some of my readers told me that my 2011 tasting sample did not express this apple's true flavors. So:

Seek no further! This large and essentially spherical apple (though slightly oblate) has a very pretty layered blush that is in some places a warm pink. In others there is a kind of Indian red, with brown tones. (A second sample is a little conical and has a more classical shape.)

  Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays ou il exist deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage? How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese? We may not be in DeGaulle territory yet, but I was delighted to count 25 varieties of apples at my local farmers market today.

From its sparse striped blush to its lobed ribbing, today's apple is visually distinctive. Riverbelle's red streaks are broken and spread so thinly over the light yellow peel as to appear orange. The apple's tiny lenticel dots are easiest to spot in the unblushed peel, where they are green.

Look. There were 17 kinds of apples at farmers market on Saturday.

I am used to thinking of September as a kind of calm-before-the-storm hiatus of the fall parade of apples. Today however I counted 17 different varieties at farmers market, including Ribston Pippin , Ashmead's Kernel , Wickson , and Westfield Seek-No-Further .

Two modern August apples, crisp and sweet. Zestar (L)—sometimes "Zest Star"—from Minnesota, and Elstar, from the Netherlands. So, it's 'Star vs. 'Star. Which is best?

Not this guy. It's almost fall, so perhaps you are thinking about biting into an apple that has been lying around in storage for the last 12 months. No? This time of year there's a good chance that the McIntoshs or Honeycrisps for sale at your supermarket are from last year's harvest.

I am used to thinking of the early harvest as a sort of wasteland. A niche for a canny apple breeder to fill (though not, if you please, with another Honeycrisp wannabe ). Yet by Labor Day I had already enjoyed 10 fresh local varieties.

This amiable paring came about by accident. The two apples are both ripe in August but are very different. One is a sweet modern apple and the other is probably the best early Mac-style pick.

Do I cook with these? a woman asked me at Farmers Market. I told her they were great eating apples, but I don't think she believed me. Misled by the size and by the myth of sour crabs.

Gravenstein is the Macoun of August. These are not quite at peak where I live, but still worth seeking out.

It's August already and we are up to the very fine Gravensteins . Well into the harvest. Personally I am not looking back, but it just hit me that today it is possible to eat super sweet varieties all year round and never have the joy of tart local fruit.

Get out your tiny violins. My sole source for Williams Pride, one of my favorite August apples, has none this year and will be pulling the trees down to grow something else. The apples are susceptible to bitter pit and just too ornery to grow.

Eat us now! The best of the super earlies, crisp and lively Pristine has snap and sophistication. They are ripe now, so what are you waiting for?

Ten years ago today, in my very first blog post , I said, Neither a farmer nor a gourmet, I can't promise technical explanations or rarefied flights of fancy. Still, there is a rich variety of apples still available here in New England, including many heirlooms. If you don't know these apples, prepare to be amazed. Maybe there has been a rarified flight of fancy or two. Still, my best work here is when the prose gets out of the way and the apples speak.

Perhaps not the best apple of all time, but the event it heralds has no match in the calendar of fruit. The above Lodi apple is the first of the 2018 apple harvest.

In the last few years we've seen some new faces on the supermarket shelves. Kiku is sweet and crisp and juicy. Mahana Red is crisp and juicy and sweet. Kiku Mahana Red

April may be the cruelest month , but this particular June feels like the stingiest. Of course there can be no fresh local fruit this month, but the southern hemisphere had a harvest not too long ago. Where are those apples? Not in supermarkets.

Containing coloured figures and descriptions of the most esteemed kinds of apples and pears. Source: The Herefordshire Pomona, Volume II

"Honeycrisp Saves the World" Recently National Public Radio's "Planet Money" decided to explain apples to us . Because the true story of the apple and cider renaissance is so boring , the explanation came in the form of a fairy tale, once upon a time, in which nearly every story element is unfaithful to the truth.

Imagine my surprise to find mustard in my apple last week. Not the actual golden brown spicy stuff, but rather its distinctive tang. Minus the heat.

Not a bud has burst earlier today at Huchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

I love how every apple has a story. Sometimes the stories come with titles, in the names of the apples. Here are five of them. Nodhead . This amiable old-style apple with cider and watermelon notes originated in Hollis, New Hampshire, in the eighteenth century. A local historical website records that the apple, developed by by Samuel Jewett, "was locally known as Nod-head from the fact that Jewett nodded his head when walking or talking." None other than  Jewett's several-times great grandson  has chimed in on this story. The apple is also known as Jewett's Red. Empire . What could possibly be the significance of the name "Empire" for this product of New York State's famous fruit-breeding program ? This relatively modern variety dates from...