Adam's Apples

I've tasted Reinette Clochard only once before and was mightily impressed with it.  ¶  Time for a second bite.

Back from a quick trip to the Pioneer Valley (Massachusetts), where I got a bag of Gold Rush , some interesting ciders (hard and sweet ), and this photo. Shown: The emblem of Clarkdale Fruit Farm in Deerfield.

This week marked the last of my Baldwins and Ashmead's Kernels. The Ashmead's were in top form this year, the Baldwins not so much but still worthwhile.

There are fifteen different kinds of apples for sale until 2 pm today at Somerville's Winter Market , unless they have run out.

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.

Left to right: Blushing Golden, Golden Russet, Esopus Spitzenberg It's December, and time to open up the chest of pirate booty and start eating those keeper apples you put down against the inevitable coming of winter.

Dense, hard Decio  impressed me as a likely keeper apple when I tried it for the first time last November. So I held one back to eat near the end of the year. Superficially, the older Decio is rock hard. It seems to have weathered well the past month in my perfectly ordinary refrigerator. My sample's sweet aroma is leavened with a yeasty note that is probably related to its crown of russet. Otherwise it similar to my November sample. I'll add that Decio's stem is thick and its calyx is wide open.

He's a sweet guy, with some interesting flavors. Red's pretty crimson blush, slightly streaky over yellow green, is accented by striking large light lenticels, widely spaced. The peel is very glossy and almost certainly waxed .

Gold Rush (L) and Blushing Golden on a day in late fall Two ribbed, conical, yellow late-season keeper apples with partial red blushes, in between medium and large. Blushing Golden , at right, is larger, yellower, and with a livelier, more-saturated orange-red blush. Gold Rush is more elongated and conical, with a streakier and more-subdued bronze-red blush over a more-subdued green yellow, flecked with brown.

My Hauer Pippin is, unfortunately, almost certainly too early, but with that warning I shall share this placeholder against the day when I have a peak sample to taste. Mine is an oblate apple, a bit bulgy and closer to medium-sized than to large. Ribbing is only evident in faint bumps at the base. Hauer's blush is a dull wash of red splashed across a saturated spring green. Lenticels are light on the blush and largely dark, probably with russet, elsewhere. There is a ragged circle of russet in and around the stem well.

The dreams of the trees mass like gray smoke on the slope of Punkatasset Hill, at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts, earlier today.

In December we live off the fat of October: winter apples snugly chilled in cellars or refrigerators and valued for their long shelf lives as much as their flavors. Suncrisp This year the pickings have been unusually slim. I discovered (too late to stockpile any for this year) that Suncrisp is a magnificent apple for December. Instead, I have mostly been living on russets and Blushing Goldens from New England orchards, leavened with Mcintosh and Macoun from the supermarkets.

For some of us I gather this is not a trick question. However, I live in New England, and mine are in my refrigerator. I took a little census earlier today. and here's what I have left: Fifteen russets   Five Blushing Goldens   One American Beauty   Four Cox's Orange Pippins   The Cox's, which I picked at the end of September, have hung in longest of all and are still quite good.

The season is all but over in my part of the world, where "what to eat" is a question of (1) what keepers you've already stockpiled, plus (2) what you choose to buy at supermarkets. Enterprise A few orchards, however, are still selling what they have left, on winter hours. If you get the chance, you might still be able to stockpile some good keepers for the month. Here's my report on how some of them fared last winter. Phil's, in Harvard, was still picking apples the week of Thanksgiving, though I don't imagine that will go on much longer. He will have his excellent unpasteurized cider, and crisp sturdy Enterprise apples, available through December. Ambrosia This time of year I extend my love affair with fragile Macoun at the supermarkets. The quality can be very good. In the past markets have...