Adam's Apples

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.