nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio
List archive
- From: haighal@aol.com
- To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: [NAFEX] Red Delicious Apple
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:56:00 -0400
To Nafex List Readers. I posted a similar message that somehow got a bit scrambled and sprinkled with a bunch of question marks not of my making. Made me sound even more ranting than normal so I'm re-posting this.
Since WW II at least, the U.S. has been the best fed but worst food leader- I mean we brought the world Wonder Bread and T.V. dinners. Of course our most popular apple would be Red Delicious- what better apple to clear out the remaining bits of the McDonalds burger from the palate? Like a lot of our foods R. D. is relatively cheap to produce, ship and store.
The overall cheapness of our food leaves us with more money to buy other things. Our food may taste bad but we spend less of our income on it than the citizens of any other industrialized country. It serves our economy well.
Since WW II at least, the U.S. has been the best fed but worst food leader- I mean we brought the world Wonder Bread and T.V. dinners. Of course our most popular apple would be Red Delicious- what better apple to clear out the remaining bits of the McDonalds burger from the palate? Like a lot of our foods R. D. is relatively cheap to produce, ship and store.
The overall cheapness of our food leaves us with more money to buy other things. Our food may taste bad but we spend less of our income on it than the citizens of any other industrialized country. It serves our economy well.
Old timers can wax poetic about the stripier strains of R. D. but I manage lots of very old Red Delicous trees of poor coloring strains. I bit into a couple of apples from one of these yesterday, and spit them out after finding them to be their usual bland insipid selves. The only improvment I can discern over newer strains is the skin is finer so you don't get that woody affect.
After testing that uninspiring variety I made my way to a century old Tompkins King on the same site and actually almost finished an excellent apple from that giant matri-patriarch (about the 20th variety I sampled that day). This tree had already been dropping apples for a month and was still loaded with ripening apples- it'd be a nightmare for a commercial grower. It would require at least 5 pickings to harvest good apples. The size of the apples ranged wildly as well-this wouldn't do at all for a commercial apple today, labor is much too expensive.
Now many Americans are rich enough to afford all the gadgets and gizmos deemed necessary to make modern life tolerable and still have enough left over to afford to pay a bit extra for food that actually tastes good. Many of the newer apples are more expensive to produce than good old Red Delicious and people are paying more for them, so maybe there is hope for us fruit snobs.
Alan Haigh, The Home Orchard Company, Carmel, NY
-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 6:56 am
Subject: nafex Digest, Vol 57, Issue 53
After testing that uninspiring variety I made my way to a century old Tompkins King on the same site and actually almost finished an excellent apple from that giant matri-patriarch (about the 20th variety I sampled that day). This tree had already been dropping apples for a month and was still loaded with ripening apples- it'd be a nightmare for a commercial grower. It would require at least 5 pickings to harvest good apples. The size of the apples ranged wildly as well-this wouldn't do at all for a commercial apple today, labor is much too expensive.
Now many Americans are rich enough to afford all the gadgets and gizmos deemed necessary to make modern life tolerable and still have enough left over to afford to pay a bit extra for food that actually tastes good. Many of the newer apples are more expensive to produce than good old Red Delicious and people are paying more for them, so maybe there is hope for us fruit snobs.
Alan Haigh, The Home Orchard Company, Carmel, NY
-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 6:56 am
Subject: nafex Digest, Vol 57, Issue 53
Send nafex mailing list submissions to
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org
- [NAFEX] Red Delicious Apple, haighal, 10/18/2007
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.