Reunited with eating apples the old fashioned way

There's nothing quite like biting into a crisp, firm, in-season apple. Got the picture in your mind? Sinking your teeth into that first bite, the satisfying snap as you commit and bite through, the slight tartness complimenting the candy-delicious flesh....  I just finished eating a delicious honeycrisp apple and all I can think about is going to get another.

I'm a big fan of eating apples raw, the old fashioned way. It brings you more in contact with the fruit as you consume it, and it's a more personal experience than eating slices off a plate. Maybe it's just the fact that I've missed biting into a solid juicy apple right off the counter- having braces for three and a half years prevented that for a while. But now that I finally have them off, it's a small joy in life that I can enjoy once again. As fall approaches, more and more delectable varieties of apples are coming into season, and in New York it's a wonderful thing to walk into a grocery store and see aisles of green, red, and yellow apples of all kinds and varieties. It's an even better thing to be able to taste them all.

You never really miss something until you can't have it. Apples seem like ordinary, plain fruit to New Yorkers, but in reality we should be enjoying them more than ever. We have the luxury of being able to go apple picking and to go to a store and select the freshest, ripest apples. I mean, I still enjoy eating the other fruit that I love- mangoes, kiwis, asian pear, strawberries.... but nothing beats a good apple.

KIWI!!!!.... and other fruit too

Kiwis are absolutely delicious. Who's with me?

Actually all fruit, when perfectly ripe, are perfectly delectable. I'm getting hungry imagining it all right now... that crisp, crunchy, sweet first bite of an apple, the summer, nectar-like flavor of peaches, the unmistakable aroma of ripe cantaloupe... I could go on and on describing my favorite fruits.

But I found out something cool just a few minutes when I ate that luscious kiwi. I found out that you get different experiences when you eat fruit in different ways. Sliced, whole, skinned, not skinned, on or off the rind (I much prefer holding onto a slice of watermelon and eating all the way to the rind, rather than eat pre-cut chunks).

Take kiwi as an example. That fuzzy brown covering presents a problem, as it's hard to get off using a normal apple or potato peeler. So normally our family serves kiwis sliced in half with a spoon. In this way you can gently scoop out spoonfuls of green flesh, savoring the taste and licking up any juice that drips down the spoon onto your hand. It's much different than eating those chunks of kiwi that come in a fruit bowl or in a fruit salad.

So today I took a different approach and spent that extra 5 minutes carefully using a knife to peel away the skin. I cut off the stubby end and marveled at the juicy green oval-orb in my hand. And then biting in... mmm the texture was so different from those chunks in fruit salad that I'm used to picking out and eating, and the taste- it was like a burst of pure kiwiness that surpassed any spoonful I've had using the cut-in-half method. I noticed there were sweet and tangy spots in the whole fruit. The seeds in the middle were slightly tangier but still sweet.

The entire fruit was pretty filling, and I felt I was eating some exotic fruit like they describe in those stories where an explorer picks a fruit off a tree and just bites in like they would an apple. But trust me, it's so much different from the scoop method of eating kiwis, and doesn't require too much extra effort. I bet you're thinking about going to a supermarket and getting some kiwis right now. Make sure they're ripe and try eating  one whole, after skinning it. Then come back and tell me what you think. =)