Not the green ones, nor the pale pink/yellow ones, but the red, red, red ones like Red Delicious.
I’ve loved apples since I was a little girl sitting in the crotch of a withered, old apple tree in the woods near my home, reading Nancy Drew books. In spring I sat there with my book and would examine the delicate pink and white blossoms, sniffing them, stroking them, and being amazed at the intricacy of each one. After the blossoms fell to the ground, I’d stare at the pink carpet beneath the tree and imagine walking on it with bare feet. When the buds formed, I lost interest and took my book somewhere else to read in solitude, happy to wait for the apples to form and ripen.
Red apples mean fall, colored leaves on the ground, half mushed apples mixed among the crackly undergrowth, all with the feel of autumn, and pumpkins dotting front porches in the neighborhood. It is the autumn smell of wholesomeness, of home, of sunny days and crisp evenings, of the underlying aroma of decomposing leaves before they turn to rot. It’s the sound of crunch and wispy winds. It’s fall in Pennsylvania.
Maybe I have a genetic link to Johnny Appleseed who allegedly walked west and planted apple seeds as he went. How else could I love red apples so much.
About 25 years ago, my niece Brooke and I went shopping for paper mache apples at craft stores. We found about a dozen and I took them to Australian to use as decoration in my new home, far, far away from Pennsylvania. They looked so real, my cleaning lady tried to take a bite out of one. The teeth marks are still visible and I keep that particular apple on top of the arrangement.
Now that I am back living in the States, those apples are special enough to me to have them shipped over, as part of my new home here.
Apples in the kitchen:
I made numerous apple pies from the old apple trees in the back yard.
Apple pie
Apple cobbler
Apple sauce
Apple butter – I watched this being made over an open fire in a copper pot in the mountains of West Virgina when I was tiny
Baked apples
Fried apples
Apples in salads
Apple martini – a Big Girl cocktail
Apple scented candles in my home
Red, perfect, crisp, sweet with juice squirting with that first bite—–It’s perfect.
I like to LOOK apples; I appreciate their color, their roundness, and their shape.
I just plain love apples.