“At rural kitchen tables, apple pies and tarts were served as routinely as bread. For families on hardscrabble farms in the Northeast, suppers through the winter might consist of nothing but apple pie and milk, day after day. For those with means, the better city restaurants served dessert apples in little individual boxes, stem and two leaves attached, with a card noting variety and grower…Apples were so much a part of the public consciousness that people came to be described in pomological terms: crabs, bad apples, apple polishers, apples of one’s eye.” –Roger Yepsen, Apples

One of the best things about Autumn, aside from the brilliant colors of falling leaves, is apples. And with each new autumn, there seems to be a new variety of apple that I spot in the grocery store confirming that there is, in fact, an Apple Renaissance that has been taking place in the recent years.

This year I read about “Pink Pearl”, an apple that is, according to Roger Yepsun in his book Apples, “descended from Surprise, an old English variety named for the pink flesh that hides beneath its ordinary yellow exterior.”

Frances McDormand, in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, mentioned carrying the Pink Pearl and some cheese with her on a hike up a mountain, one of my favorite things to do with an apple – pairing it with some good Vermont cheddar for a snack after an autumn hike. Read more