Just last Friday I executed my own plan to bring flavorful apples back into my life. I planted ten young apple trees, of six different varieties, all heirloom strains that used to be widely cultivated here in central Virginia. Winesap, black twig, winter banana, crispin, and Virginia gold. Perhaps in 4 to 5 years I will be enjoying flavorful apples once again.

In the meantime, I’ll struggle along with farmstand apples. No precut slices for me.

Currently there is a race on to develop the 12″ carrot, one that can take three cuts and produce four baby carrots from each mama carrot. The problem is making a 12″ carrot consistently straight enough for current machinery. So the baby carrot, born as a solution to Crooked Carrot Syndrome, has re-created the problem on a longer scale.

The other vital piece of carrot information is that the modern carrot has far more beta carotene than the carrots of a century ago. Consumers generally prefer orange carrots, so farmers have bred carrots that are more and more orange, and the orange is beta carotene. This is pretty unusual, in that modern consumer-driven engineering has generally produced fruits and vegetables that are less nutritious than their 19th century predecessors.

once you’ve started an apple, you’re sort of committed to eating the whole thing

It’s delightfully ironic that, after we’ve spent decades engineering them to be larger, the behemoth grocery store apple is suddenly too big to eat.

Delicious is most decidedly not. And Granny Smith’s become more palatable with a dash of salt.

Your post remineded me of an ad I saw in a bus, during my R & R in Austrailia, 1971.

An apple a day keeps the Doctor away.
And the picture shows a man throwing an apple at a Doctor, who is attempting to duck.

I like hot peppers, have since I first ate one in the early 90’s. Back then it was difficult to find fresh outside of large markets and the only pickled ones were jalapeno’s. You could get a jalapeno that would burn pretty good, even to those of us who ate truly hot foods.

Nowadays jalapenos are pretty much like bell peppers, don’t even need gloves to cut up. If I purchase american made chipotle peppers (smoked jalapeno’s in adobo sauce) I can eat it by the spoonfull. If I buy chipotle’s imported from mexico – back like they used to be. Heck, I can eat store bought habanero’s raw – no way I should be able to do so.

The fact that habanero salsa variants and sauces are served in wendy’s and sonic shows how much it’s been breed down. For many it’s like a badge of honor (and thus a market for not so hot ones so they can say they eat them) – though it’s amusing when they get a hold of a real one.

Even as late as 98-99 my hot sauce needed no more than 10 habaneros – usually around 5, now my last I made that was just them used over 30 and became more “paste” than sauce (and thus, not really acceptable). I either have to grow my own from specilised seed producers or use capsaicin extracts to get hot enough (which I also make myself).

The best part of the summer is the little garden I grow. A few hot peppers, cucumbers, and various other vegetables that are of poor quality in the anything but specialy grocery stores.

Price is cheap because you pick them yourself. It’s fun to work with your kids picking fruit.

Nice lyric posts today.