When Exactly: Tuesday Jan. 20 - 5:30 pm
Cultivar: Granny Smith
Purchased From: Union Market (Brooklyn, NY)
Size: Medium
Color: I don’t know, I’m colorblind.
Eaten How: with Once Again Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter.
Review:
I wish I was a liar.
I was recently in an airport deli with one of my comrades when I began craving fruit. However, the apples were packed skintight in plastic wrap, inviting ethylene and disappointment. Thinking that I was seriously pondering the apples, he said they looked so mediocre that I could just eat one and forego a review.
Fact is, I was never considering purchasing one of those sad, doomed fruits. I’ve committed to reviewing every single apple I eat (unless it’s only a wedge and I’m unable to assay the entire fruit). I refuse to break. I won’t lie. So when I see apples that are surely sub-par, I just turn away. I buy an orange.
This Granny made me wish I could follow my friend’s suggestion and skip a review from time to time. It was pointless, doomed. But I had already bought it and apples don’t get thrown out in my house.
A mild, plummy outer aroma gave way to flesh that was, in a word, sub-crunchy. Not spoiled, just joyless. The fruit gave off a boring, lazy inner aroma of cider and overripe lemons with flavors to match. I halfheartedly hoped that a little PB could bring out something more, but there was no combinatory experience here to speak of. I could only taste the apple and PB as disparate elements, and after a few bites the apple retreated like an angry magnet, leaving only the taste of peanuts on the tongue. I was relieved.
No conlusion is really needed here, so I’ll take this photograph to thank my officemate Robert, who didn’t look at me sideways when I told him I’d forgotten my phone at home and asked if I could borrow his to photograph my apple in the hallway.
Grade: C-
