An Apple Analysis

I am a huge apple-eater (I take "apple a day" very literally) and I've gotta say: lately these apples I've been buying suck big time. They are all such a mealy, disgusting mess. I always steer clear of apples with loose-feeling skin, or all of the Red Delicious variety (because good luck getting a satisfactory Red Delicious). But for the past several weeks I've been biting into my beloved Braeburns expecting the half-sweet, half-tart goodness that I've come to rely on from my apples, and I get a mouth full of tasteless sawdust. It's such a let-down... they are all mealy and it's driving me insane. I know Fall is apple season but this is 2011 and there are some very advanced preservation techniques that are used now; ergo, I'm really not thrilled about all my apples being half rotten when I try to shovel them into my gaping maw.


On top of that hideous texture they all seem to feature now, I've cut into four (count them: FOUR) apples in recent history wherein the seeds were ALREADY SPROUTING INTO APPLE TREES. Seriously, what the hell is going on with my fruit? There is probably some sort of weird, scientific explanation for it - maybe the extremely overripe apple releases some sort of chemical that makes these seeds think they are living in dirt instead of inside the fruit I'm trying to consume, but it makes me mad regardless. I just haven't been having good luck with produce. I never do, really. I usually never eat it fast enough. All my grapes go bad when I still have about 1/3 of the bag left to go (probably because I am busy dividing my time between them and my apples). I usually buy a good looking carton of berries only to bring them home and discover ONE moldy berry at the bottom (and my mind-over-matter isn't strong enough for that. They are considered collectively moldy from that point onward) and I can never go through a bag of salad mix before the edges start browning. I'm just a girl trying to eat healthy! I'm only one person! I can't possibly manage to eat all this fresh food in a timely fashion! (...carrots, however, rarely disappoint me).


In case you were curious: yes, I know I live with a boyfriend who also has a stomach. I know he could contribute to the consumption of all this produce, but his eating habits are so strange:

1. Never eats on a schedule. Some days he'll eat breakfast, other days he "forgets" to eat until I remind him at 3pm that he hasn't done so yet.
2. Tries to eat healthy foods but usually complains about how expensive healthy food is so he resorts to boxes of macaroni and cheese
3. He is not picky in what he eats, but is picky in how he eats it. He'll eat a salad, but only with THIS kind of dressing... 
4. The poor thing is a bad cook. He tries, and the fact I don't cook for him doesn't help much, but he really is terrible. One time he tried to make himself a balanced meal and what ended up on his plate was a filet mignon and Chef Boyardee ravioli. I love him. 

I tell him to help me go through the fruit I buy, but his irregular eating patterns result in him ignoring the fruit altogether for the first several days, then eating 900 grapes in one sitting or 6 Clementine oranges in one day... this results in him being all fruited-out and he doesn't want anymore fruit for several more days. We should really just resort to dried fruit and frozen vegetables from here on out.


In other news, a coworker of mine bought the Cookie Swap book and brought it to work! I have been eyeing (eying?) this book for months now and never purchased it just because I couldn't rationalize my way into buying another cookie book. Not until I justify the cake book I bought myself months ago that I have yet to make anything from. The pictures were so damn pretty I couldn't help myself - the fantasies of myself making such gorgeous cakes were too much for me to handle. Anyway: I'm very happy that she purchased this book and knows me well enough to know I'd appreciate flipping through it, so I went ahead and made myself color copies of all the recipes that jumped out at me. Surprisingly, I wound up with pages full of lots of yummy-looking bars (because I am trying to tell myself that there is a baking world beyond fancily-decorated cakes and sugar cookies). I am not sure if photocopying those pages is entirely legal, but I took my chances. I don't think I have anything going on this upcoming weekend (there are some up-in-the-air plans that may or may not happen), and if they don't happen, I am going to try making something from this new book. Some bars to share with the coworkers or something. We'll see.