The Great Apple Challenge of '08 - Day 4
Today's apple is, the
Braeburn. It is a rather small apple when compared to the Honeycrisp or even the Fuji. It's flesh is a very pale color, almost white and doesn't seem to turn too brown, unlike the Jazz. It has a decent flavor. Falling in that category between sweet and tart, however neither flavor stands out as being prominent, they're both subtle flavors. This isn't a crisp apple, it's actually rather soft feeling. There is no satisfying "crunch" when you bite into it, Also, it isn't overly juicy. All in all, it's okay, but that's about it. Nothing spectacular. I mean, if it were all I had, I would eat it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do so.
In completely unrelated food news, today I received the Chicago style deep dish pizza I ordered from
Lou Malnati's Tastes of Chicago. I've been saying to Shawn how we should just go to Chicago for one night and have some pizza. Sure it would be totally expensive and excessive, but it would be a lot of fun. In lieu of dropping a few hundred dollars on some plane tickets, I decided to give this website a try. So tomorrow we'll be indulging in Chicago style deep dish pizza, straight from the Windy City. Yum!
The Great Apple Challenge of '08 - Day 3
The apple of the day is
Jazz. Feel free to sing the name as though you were on a stage showing off your mad
jazz hand skills. That's how I do it, or at the very least how I think it in my head!
On most occasions I cut up apples for our lunches the night before. It's just much easier to have everything ready in the mornings instead of running around trying to get dressed and ready, have some breakfast and on top of it get lunches together. The first thing I noticed about the Jazz apple this morning when I took it out of the fridge to put in my lunchbag was that it had turned quite brown. I'm actually not used to my apples turning this brown over night. Sure, they get a little darker, but not by much. In fact the Honeycrisp barely changes color at all (it's the PERFECT apple, I tell ya).
Dark color aside the Jazz apple is a very lovely one. It has a very interesting taste that actually reminds me more of a pear or plum than an apple. It tastes fruity. Granted apples are fruit, but the Jazz tastes more like fruit than an apple. Go figure. Initially it has a very sweet taste, but eventually leaves you with a kiss of tart.
Shawn says they're "not as crisp" as he normally likes "but not as mealy as a Red Delicious", which I agree with completely. If only it were a little more crisp and crunchy it would be right up there with the Honesycrisp.
From both Shawn and I this apple gets two thumbs up!
The Great Apple Challenge of '08 - Day 2
Today the apple that emerged in my hand when I reached into the fruit drawer was a
Cameo. Actually it's what we believe to be a Cameo as there was no little sticker on the piece of fruit. I do recall picking up a Cameo that looked similar, so that's what we're going with.*
As for the apple, it's decent. It's very crunchy and juicy, but lacks in flavor. It's a little more on the tart side, not very sweet at all. I like the sound and feel when I bite into it, but in all honesty that's about all I like about this apple. For me, I don't think the Cameo has enough to replace the Honeycrisp in my "apple a day.." scenario. It is slightly better though than my orange today that tasted like a chewable vitamin C tablet (that's what I get for buying some fancy schmancy orange with a weird name instead of a staple like satsuma or navel). Back to the Cameo, I could see it being a decent applesauce apple, or one used in cooking/baking. I don't think I'd enjoy it much in a pie, but maybe some kind of apple topping?
Shawn hasn't tried the apple yet, but I will be sure to update with his opinion.
ETA Shawn's Opinion:
The Cameo apple... has no flavor but does have awesome crunch!
Very juicy.*Obviously this little "challenge" is severely lacking in 'control' but this isn't some professional scientific study or anything.
How Can You Not Love JV?
John Vanderslice sent out one of his quarterly e-mails updating everyone of his whereabouts. Unfortunately, he will not be coming here anytime soon as he will be in Europe and the East coast this spring. It's only a matter of time though before he makes it back this way. I swear, he ends up coming here at least a few times a year. Probably has something to do with how cool we Seattleites are and more probably because his record label
Barsuk is located here.
Anyway, in his e-mail he mentioned that he put up some slideshows of his Fall 2007 tours in both EU and the US. JV takes some amazing photos and while perusing his Fall 2007 US slideshow I came across
this photo. It was taken on the Fremont bridge back when he did a little acoustic set, including "Time To Go" to the warning bells. That just so happens to be
Shawn and I the second couple from the left (Shawn's got his arm up waving and I'm standing beside him with my sunglasses and a little half wave). It was a great time.
Can't wait for JV to come back to Seattle, and to see who he'll bring with him. He's always got some amazing opening act, from
St Vincent to
Bishop Allen. He's always got a whole lot of love for those he brings on tour with him. Hopefully he'll be back sooner than later.
The Great Apple Challenge of '08 - Day 1
Everyday for lunch Shawn and I share an apple. By far our favorite apple is the
Honeycrisp. We've been known to spend nearly $15.00 on apples for a week. The Honeycrisp is the perfect apple, it's crunchy, firm and sweet. The sad thing is, it's season is pretty much over now. It's actually a pretty short season, though we have seen them in stores this late (though the quality is not as good as at the beginning of the season).
Since the Honeycrisp season is over, we have to find an apple to take it's place until next season. Last week we tried Pink Lady apples, which are occasionally good, but the ones we had were pretty much horrible. This weekend while grocery shopping I decided to just get one of each apple that seemed decent and figured we could pick which one we liked the best.
Yesterday while getting our lunches ready I just stuck my hand into the fruit drawer and pulled out the first apple I came across. It happened to be a Fuji. I've had Fujis before and enjoyed them, but have found that they can be hit or miss. Sometimes they are wonderfully sweet and crunchy, other times they are just crunchy and have next to no taste. The apple we had today was on the sweet side. It was rather crunchy and juicy. Not mealy at all, in fact I don't think I've ever had a mealy Fuji. All in all I enjoyed the apple very much. It's no Honeycrisp, but it is definitely going to make it to the next round.
UPDATED:
As for what Shawn thought of the apple..
pretty tasty!
sweet, and good crunch
Meh
So this whole Heath Ledger death thing is kind of bugging me. I mean really, I was not a big fan of his at all. I think I've seen two movies that he's been in (10 Things I Hate About You & A Knight's Tale) and didn't like either of them very much. However, I think due to the fact that he was so young and it was so unexpected it just seems wrong. I mean we're all on Amy Winehouse death watch, just
waiting for her to OD. She's smoking crack, snorting E and doing a myriad of other things, refuses to go to rehab and still managed to fug up the streets of London daily. Yet Heath Ledger managed to take one too many sleeping pills and ends up dead. The logic behind that one escapes me.
I think the thing that has bothered me the most was last night watching our local news which had a story about his death and on screen flashes a shot of a sea of paparazzi/reporters/news cameras and his dead body being rolled out on a gurney in a bodybag. It struck me as a very unnecessary thing to see. I mean, why do we need to see that? We know he's dead, let him be now. It just really bothered me.
I'm not normally one to get bothered by celebrity deaths, and it's not like I'm crying over this one either, but I'm just kind of feeling "meh" about it. Probably for a number of reasons not limited to the fact that he's the same age as me and he wasn't a complete trainwreck like a number of other celebrities out there. I guess it's just another lesson in "life's too short" and a reminder to make the best of it while we can.
On a completely separate note, obviously this site has been lacking with the updates lately. I blame a lot of it on
Twitter where it's easy to post a little update and be connected to friends. Also partially to blame is the fact that running updates end up being pretty boring to probably everyone except me. So I've decided to try to bring this back to just a random everything goes kind of deal. See if that helps at all.
