“Reach me a apple” in Appalachian Vernacular means the same thing as “hand me an apple”.
Have you seen the slogan: Buy Local? I’m totally in favor of the thought behind the saying-most of the time. But sometimes the best apples you ever tasted come from far far away and are delivered right to the backseat of your car by people who look like Angels.
Favorite apples? Around here it’s Fujis and Mutsus for The Deer Hunter. For me it’s Honey Crisp and the old timey green apple you can often find growing in pastures and old fields. If you’re really really lucky the pastures and old fields are near your house with the apples free for the taking.
When I was a child, there were 2 such trees down the road in the big curve where Papaw Wade and Uncle Henry accidentally ran into each other one time. The trees are long gone-and so are the days when I could climb up in Papaw’s lap and kiss his busted lip before I went home.
Tipper
I like Rome and Winesaps. The biggest apple I ever saw was a Wolf River apple. It was huge
You struck a sweet note when you talked about apples today! Just look at all these great posts! My favorites are June apples for fried pie making( somebody tell me where there are June apples in Spartanburg County!) and winesaps in the fall . My mouth is droolin’ !!!!
What about Pippin’s and Alexanders, and Aldermans and Almatas with the red flesh, and Ananas Reisnette which tastes like pineapple. I love old time apples….however, they’ve bred the apples to keep longer in cold storage and not bruise so easy, so we’re losing a lot of the old time flavors it seems to me. What about Arkansas blacks? They keep a long time and turn really dark when you’ve kept them for a while….oh and Ashmead’s Kernel which tastes almost pear-like…yummm….love apples!!!
Has anybody ever heard of Rusty Coat Apples? Mitchell says they had a tree at the old house, but we can’t find one now. He remembers them being the best apple he ever tasted-
My favorite apples were the June apples that ripened on the tree beside my Granny’s house. For some reason it grew on about a 45 degree angle before it straightened up, I guess the wind blew it over when it was small. I could get a running start and run up the trunk far enough to reach a limb. If one of the apples fell off the old hens would run as fast as they could to try to beat me to it.
I love Honey Crisp and Early Harvest for canning.. This post brought back a lot of memories for me Tipper. We used to climb those apple trees and shake the tree so we could grab them for mama to can. We eat until our side about popped.. They used to have a sweet apple tree down below the bank at the Old Martins Creek School. At evening recess we’d shake that tree and grab those sweet apples. It was getting close to time to go home and we were getting hungry..lol.I think they may have cut it down years ago. It’s hard to find a good old timey apple tree anymore.
I really like Honeycrisp and I like Pink Lady, American Cameo, Ambrosia, anything that is crisp and sweet/tart.
When I used to travel often to Connecticut, there was a variety called McCowan that was unbelievable, but the shelf life was so bad that they got picked off the tree and I had about a week to eat them before they were worthless. That is why you don’t see them around.
I am a believer in the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” I eat one just about every day until they get mealy and bad tasting. Then I wait for the ones to come in from the Southern Hemisphere.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned the Cameo.
I got my first one at the Apple House in Balsam (near Waynesville). It is so sweet-I savor every bite!!! They also are good to cook with.
My favorite apples are the Mutsu and Honeycrisp but I’ll eat just about any kind. Any food with apples in it is a winner to me. I grew up in Ellijay and they procalim to be Georgia’s apple capital. I have picked apples for a grower and also worked in the packing house where the growers would bring their crops to be packaged and shipped. We had several apples trees at home too that we along with the deer enjoyed greatly! I have also been around the liquid variety that is made back in the hollers but I found out real fast that I did not have enough hair on my chest to handle it although I was told it would put hair on my chest I decided I would just take their word for it and be happy with what I had!
My mother would cook apples with butter and we would have them with hot bicuits, makes my mouth water just thinking about it! She also made fried pies,apple cake and apple dumplings.
Tipper,
Well, I’ll be dipped!
I love my apples, sliced thin and dipped in lots of things…I also love red hot cinnamon apples..
Mom used to make them at the holidays…melted redhots and apples cored and sliced in rings…Yummm, and so pretty at a Christmas table or Thanksgiving.
I like the marshmellow fluff and cream cheese dip, plain old peanut butter as a dip, honey and peanut butter mixed as a dip,
and one I made up…flax seed, peanut butter and honey. Sometimes I just slice some apples in a pan, add a drjp or so of water,sprinkle in some brown sugar and cinnamon..just a pat of butter…and we have apples as a side dish with ham and greens…yumm..
Do you have any different fruit dip recipes…for slightly tart apples?
Thanks Tipper,
Reach me a Fuji, please!
Tipper,
I agree with you “Honey Crisps”
are my favorite too. The other
night I noticed at my grocery
store they were $2.98 a pound.
I picked out a big one and it
was $1.70, shoot I remember when
you could buy a bag full cheaper
than that. But when I was growin’
up, my favorite was the June
Apple. We had one of those trees
just above our kitchen and a bunch
of us boys would shimmy up that
thing, pull us one and talk about
girls between bites…Ken
Tipper,
Ode To
The Apple of My Love
Oh pome, pupil of my eye,
how I love thee.
My apple of the
small green Summer tree.
Your branches spread
across the garden.
Sometimes enclosed by the metal warden.
Your arms stretched up high,
tied, so to ward off blight.
Your weary limbs hang with fruit of green and toil.
So moist with cool flesh, to bubble in suppers oil…
When red ripe, I drool, and nearly go blind until the taste of you, my Love Apple, is mine…
By
Beverly Ruth
Oh I’m sorry Tipper,
I thought you were talking of the
Love apple, “The Tomato” !!
I’ll try to get right on a “Ode to the Apple”! However, I suppose this ode of mine could apply to the Apple. My favorite apple right now is the Gala and Honey Crisp! Reach me one please!
Reach me a honeycrisp anytime! Sure wish they would lower the price of them at the supermarket though.
I love Honey Crisp. We make apple cider with them. It was the prettiest pink and so sweet. Lots of apple orchards here in Vermont. Most grow Cortlands and Macs. Barbara Gantt
A couple of years ago, I was over in Lancaster, PA at a Farmer’s Market and they had Mutsus apples cut up for you to taste. I thought they were fantastic. I was told they were an old timey apple. Right before Christmas we were going down south and I knew my Mother LOVED apples so I went to a southern PA apple orchard near us and they had MUTSUS in their cold storage area. I bought a 10lb bag and took it to my Mother who lived in MS. She thought that was the best apple she had ever eaten. Funny I had never heard of it until I happened to find it that year at the old farmer’s market and it brought back of lot of good memories when you mentioned it in your article. From that year on I always took Mutsus back home to Mother. I liked them too but I love most apples; probably prefer Golden Delicious and McIntosh. I did make a lot of applesauce this year with Golden Delicious. UMMMM Good!
Planted two Fujis two yrs ago & this year one had about 7 of the prettiest little apples you ever saw. The deer found it & stripped all the lower leaves and all my beautiful little apples. I love the deer but dang it I wanted those apples!
Granny always had an orchard until they moved to their last home. One tall old timey pear tree survived their last orchard for many years. One of my brothers would sneak in every year & get some of those pears–I’m sure the pasture owners didn’t care & would have given him all the pears. Think it was a holdover from watermelon patch robbing.
Best apples ever were given by a friend who was on a trip up north. Don’t know what kind–they were red & fairly small. She picked them herself & brought to friends.
We reached each other the salt, etc. all the time.
Thanks for your blog–it was good to think about Granny’s orchard this morning!!
I love most apples except the sour ones! Remember that little Indian Peach?
Also, that deal about climbing up on your Papaw Wades’s lap snagged me! You turned the replay button on in my mind to bring back those memories that have been dormant in my distant memory. Thanks.
Bill Burnett-Please splain Glassine. Is that what we called candy apples. Some of the apples had a clear, golden hued, super sweet center around the core that tasted like candy. We would eat the flesh of the apple then nibble around the seeds to get at that candy. I don’t see that any more in apples.
June apples getting ripe meant stack cakes made from the June apple sauce.
Then came drying apples (we had to put the slices in a screened-wire flat cage to keep the bugs off while they dried in the sun! In the wintertime it was still stack cakes and the sauce between layers was made from the coooked, sweetened to taste and spice-up dried apples. Yum!
There’s one old timey apple tree left in our pasture. It blew over but continues to grow with roots exposed at one end, producing a small yellow apple with a blush of red on the shoulders. It is worth dodging the bull and climbing up to reach the ones the cows didn’t get. They are sweet with a little tartness,crisp and just right for eating in hand or cooking. I tried to sprout the seeds from one I ate, but I think an apple tree is best grafted. I’ll give it a try. I really would like to know what the apple is. I found a drink called lamb’s wool that uses apples. The cooked apple pices rise to the top in the punch bowl, giving an appearance of lumpy wool. Appeals to me as a shepherd – only most of my sheep are black.
I love June apples. Up until a few years ago I had access to 2 different trees. They make the best apple sauce and my kids loved it when they were babies.
Reach me somethng and carry me somewhere are both old sayings that worked, even though proper english might not approve. If the objective of communication is to communicate, they work in spite of their flaws.
I have eaten many of what Tipper calls old timey apples too, having grown in the country here in New Brunswick, Canada. We have an apple here that is called “New Brunswicker” It is the very best for pies and apple sauce. Yellow Transparent is next in line for cooking but it’s season is very short. For eating from the hand, I like Golden Delicious or Honey Crisp. Our apple crop done very well here unlike your area and even Ontario. Wish we could send some down to you all!! Inez JOnes
We planted Fuji, Red Delicious and Gala apple trees this year. It will be a while before we have any fruit, but I am hoping that my apple orchard does well in the coming years. I probably need to go and see if you have any apple tree advise from former posts. When they start producing I’ll give you a shout! đŸ™‚
The favorite apples of my youth were June Apples which came off a tree beside Licklog Creek on the edge of my Uncle Pearson Dehart’s place as they ripened first and Horse Apples from my Grandpa Andy Dehart’s place up on High Lonesome as they turned Glassine with sugar when ripe and made the best Apple Sauce and Spiced Apple Cakes and Fried Pies I ever tasted. Sadly both of these trees are gone but their memory lives on.
Lest the apples are in t’other room then you’d have a young’un fetch one for you. Can’t beat a good old Arkansas Black
Tipper, I think the old green apples you used to find in the fields were Golden Delicious…..but they were the old variety of Golden Delicious not the variety usually called by that name today. They were a very fine apple with little to no resemblance to the apples in the grocery stores now with the label of Golden Delicious on them.
Is that pretty red apple one from a bunch given to you by a BP reader? And is that pretty, shiny ring one made by a BP reader just for you?
You know, Tipper, being part of the Blind Pig is just like living in the country, surrounded by good folks.
Reach me one of those apples!
Grammaw had an apple tree at the edge of the pasture next to the state road. We called it the June apple tree but she wouldn’t let us eat apples off it until after the 4th of July. None of her other trees or any trees in the whole community had ripe apples that early.
Apples are high this year but I am making a little apple butter anyway. The worst apples make the best apple butter. Bruises and blemishes don’t mean a thang after they are cooked 2 or 3 days.
Now please explain these angelic beings bearing apples. To us old people the sight of an angel could mean its time to go. Or at least we hope its angels.
I am with you – I really like the Honey Crisp. I had one the other day! I also like Pink Ladies. Granny Smith are also third on my list. However, a nice, fresh MacIntosh doesn’t hurt to sink my teeth into. I guess you might say, I am an apple person. There is nothing better than a tasty, old-fashioned apple pie. Yummy!
My favorite apples are golden delicious and encee but like about any of them except red delicious, just don’t like them at all but like the smell they produce when good and ripe. I’m like you apples found out in the fields are really the best but hard to beat the deer to them around here.
I like Henderson County winesaps. I had a half bushel basket of them this year. Each and every one of them weighed a pound.