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- [00:08]
A
This is all of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. In case you missed it this week, we spoke to Bobby Cannavale and director Scott Ellis about their new play art. Actor Rose Byrne discussed her intense role as a mother in if I Had Legs, I'd kick you. And we learned about the legendary label King Records through a documentary. You can listen to those conversations on demand online@wnyc.org all of it, or on your podcast platform of choice if you like what you hear. Leave us a great rating. Now let's get this hour started. Autumn is apple picking season in our area. This long weekend is a great chance to get out of the city and hit the orchards. We know lots of you out there have apples on the brain. We also know that some of you might be overwhelmed thinking about all the different variety varieties of apples out there. And being overwhelmed makes sense. Apples are among the most diverse family of food plants out there. Joining us now to talk about the wide world of apples. Yes, that is the most public radio thing I have ever said. Please welcome science and nature writer Rowan Jacobson, author of many books about food and agriculture, including Apples of Uncommon Character, Heirlooms, Modern Classics and Little Known Wonders. Rowan, welcome to all of it.
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B
Thanks, Alison. Good to be here, listeners.
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A
We want your apple opinions. What are the qualities you look for in your favorite apple? What do you like to take on your apple picking trips? What are your favorite varieties and why? Bonus points if you want to shout out a particularly rare, unsung variety. Our number is 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Or if you have any questions about the practical parts of harvesting apples yourself or questions about the science or the history of the blood fruit, we have here to answer your questions. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433-WNYC. What inspired you to get so involved with apples?
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B
You know, it wasn't a plan. Maybe 20 years ago, my wife and I bought an old farmhouse in Vermont and it came with a bunch of old apple trees. And before that, I hadn't thought more about apples than most people, but all these trees were completely different types of apples than I had ever seen in a normal grocery store. And this was kind of before this new explosion of varieties that we've seen in grocery stores. So they all had very different looks and very different flavors and different purposes. And so then I started researching more into apple history and realized that especially here in the Northeast, apples have played an incredible diversity of roles for hundreds of years, and that they had a lot more to say than we had been asking of them.
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A
You write that they have one of the largest genomes of any food plant. Can you walk us through the science that makes apple family so varied?
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B
Yeah. So the key detail to understand where all this apple craziness comes from is something that most people don't realize, which is that if you take a seed from an apple and plant that seed, the tree that grows will not have the same kind of apples as the apple that it came from. And the way they say this in the industry is apples do not come true from seed. This is true for some other fruits, too. But basically, Those seeds got 50% of their genes from the mother tree, which was responsible for making that fruit. But the other 50% came from the pollen from whatever the father tree was. So every single apple seed is a unique mix of genes, so it will produce a unique type of apple. And so then if you want to be a variety, like more than one tree, then you have to graft it. So you take cuttings of the tree and grow them, and they will have the exact same genetics as the original tree. So, like, every Macintosh in existence is exactly the same genetically as the original tree.
- [04:15]
A
So that's taken from a shaving, you said?
- [04:17]
B
Yeah. So if you take a little cutting, a little sprig from one of the branches and root it and plant it, and so you're basically cloning the original tree.
- [04:26]
A
There's a place you call the Hogwarts for apples, right here in New York at Cornell University. Tell us a little bit about Cornell Agritech, as it's called now.
- [04:36]
B
Yeah. So Cornell was the first breeding program in the country for apples. Cornell has a long history in agriculture, and in the late 1800s, they began purposefully breeding new varieties of apples. Before then, it had just been farmers kind of doing it on their own. Like, they would notice some tree in the corner of their farm that was producing really cool apples, and then they would make those cuttings and basically start cloning it, give it to their neighbors. And so varieties just came to be normally. But so Cornell started making that a focus in the 1890s and started releasing these apples to. To farmers throughout the 1900s, including very famous ones like Cortland's Liberty Empire. They all had kind of like fancy New York names. Right. And so that was, you know, that was where new apple varieties came from for people who were really producing apples on a big scale in the 20th century.
- [05:35]
A
This says Texas I'm at the apple orchard right now, Ramid Farms in Chester, New Jersey. I have a question. What is your favorite apple to eat that you can find at the orchard?
- [05:49]
B
I have a few favorites. One of them, which is actually, it's a original New York apple, is the Northern Spy, which a lot of people have probably heard of. It's originally from the Finger Lakes, but it's still a very popular apple in this part of the world. You never see it out west where most apples are grown, but Northern Spy is incredible. Big apple, good for pies and eating fresh, which is kind of rare.
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A
Okay, what's your second choice if he can't find a northern spy?
- [06:15]
B
All right, can I do two?
- [06:17]
A
Of course.
- [06:17]
B
One's weird and one's common good. So the weird one is Cox's Orange Pippin, which is like an apple that is highly sought after. Originally an English apple, it's what's known as a russet. The russet apples have. They almost look more like Asian pears. They have that brown sandpapery outside which can put people off. But they also come with these incredible, like, rich, citrusy, tropical flavors. Really complex flavors. So they are all those russets, especially Cox's Orange Pippin can be great for eating fresh, but they're really hard to find. The one that is really easy to find and is also, honestly, incredibly delicious is the honeycrisp.
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A
Big text here. It says, honeycrisp, accept no substitute.
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B
So HoneyCrisp is the apple that changed the world of apple growing and apple selling and apple eating, frankly.
- [07:10]
A
Why? Tell me the story.
- [07:12]
B
So that came out of University of Minnesota, which is kind of like the upstart competitor For Cornell in 1991, I think it was. And nobody had ever seen an apple with that kind of texture before. And so you've eaten honeycrisp.
- [07:25]
A
Yes.
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B
So you know they just explode in your mouth?
- [07:27]
A
Yes.
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B
No apple has ever done that before. And even though they've tried to capture that magic again, I don't think any apple since has done it either. Like honeycrisp. It's like an apple flavored Cheeto. It just goes like, kablooey in your mouth, and people love that. So it almost got canceled. It almost got killed in development because it was so weird compared to all the apples that had come before.
- [07:51]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [07:52]
B
But they let it through, and then they found that people just went crazy for it.
- [07:57]
A
My guest is Rowan Jacobson. He's a science and nature writer and authors of Apples of Uncommon Character Heirlooms, Modern classics And little known wonders. We've got calls ready to go. Let's talk to Yaisha online. One from Brooklyn. Hi. Thanks for making the time to call all of it.
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B
Hi.
- [08:15]
C
Thank you. I love your show and I love apples. And I just had to say, tell you that one of the best vendors of local apples at the farmers market is this little orchard called Treelicious. And they are at all the, like, green markets in Brooklyn and Manhattan and other places. And they have, I think what their specialty is is that they have really small apples. Like, they have all the varieties, right. And then some. And I have a terrible memories. I can't remember all of them. But, like, one of my favorites of theirs is Empire. Of course they have Northern Spy. I've seen them have. I've seen them have McIntosh and some like really lesser known varieties as well. But almost all their apples are really small. So, like, you could buy like one for each day of the week and have one with your lunch and be able to eat the whole apple. And they're like, super delicious. And I'm friends with the vendor at the local. I'm friends, like, you know, just friendly with the vendor at the local.
- [09:16]
B
Farmer'S.
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C
Market I go to. And like, I'm always, like telling people go there and go to that vendor because their apples are so delicious. It's like so much more personality in their apples. It's amazing.
- [09:28]
A
Thank you so much for calling in. Did you want to weigh in?
- [09:30]
B
Yeah. You know, that's one of my pet peeves is today the apples in the grocery store are ginormous. Like, I don't know why the growers think people want apples the size of their heads. Right. It's way more than you can mostly commit to. And that was not true back in the day. So if you go to some of these heirloom orchards, you see apples that are, you know, more normal sized and, you know, four or five bites and they're gone.
- [09:52]
A
Let's talk to Jacqueline, who's calling in from Bushwick, who has a question. Hi, Jacqueline. Thanks for calling all of it. You are on the air with Rowan Jacobson.
- [10:02]
C
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Apologize if there's some background noise, except outside of work. And I'm in Manhattan right now because I was excited to ask a question. But my question is about crabapples specifically. I feel like there are always crabapple trees around growing up, and I'm wondering, like, how edible are they? What's the history behind the name? Any info you have about crabapples specifically.
- [10:31]
B
Yeah. So crab apples are actually. Are a different species from regular apples, although sometimes just apple trees that produce really tiny apples are called crab apples. But most of the crab apples you see out there tend to. I think they have really great flavor. They have a lot of acid, and they often have a bit of bitterness, too. They make great cider, and I think they can be great mixed in with things. I use them all right. So actually, my favorite thing to do, and I started doing this when my son was a kid because it was his favorite thing. You just take the apples, toss them in a little tiny bit of oil to make them stick sticky, coat them in sugar and cinnamon, and bake them until soft, like, right. You don't have to do anything. Right. With the stems on. And then you can just, like, literally, like, lower it into your mouth by the stem and pull all the flesh off. And so it's like these little miniature baked apples that are, like, hand served. So that's a really fun thing to do with crab apples.
- [11:27]
A
Excellent. Here's a text that says, how long do apples really last? They're picked in the fall, but are they still worth eating in April?
- [11:38]
B
Yeah, you know, you can go deep on that one back in the day, you know, in the 1700s and 1800s, a lot of the most popular apple varieties were popular because they could keep in your root cellar all winter long, and they would still be good in April. So they tend to be super hard, and if you eat them this time of year, they're too hard and too acidic, but they mellow in the root cellar and would develop these, like, beautiful sort of pear and banana flavors by the spring. People don't tend to use root cellars as much anymore. And what the industry does is they store apples starting in the fall, they'll pick the apples and store them in these controlled atmosphere environments where there's no oxygen. They basically pump nitrogen gas in, and it kind of puts the apple into a state of arrested development. It doesn't decay at all. So in theory, you know, they're breaking them out in April and May, and they're just as good. But you can tell there's like. If that apple feels like it has no life in it, you know, there's like, there's a reason.
- [12:39]
A
This is a great text. It says, when I was at Cornell, 68 to 72, the Palmology Department had vending machines all over. You put in your nickel and got one of their new or experimental varieties to try. How great is that?
- [12:55]
B
I love that. I didn't know that. But maybe I can see those, like, up and down the streets of Manhattan easily.
- [13:02]
A
Let's talk to Brad, who's calling in from Rmonk. Hi, Brad, thanks so much for calling, all of it.
- [13:07]
D
Yes, hello.
- [13:09]
A
Yes, you're on the air.
- [13:12]
D
Okay. Yeah. I'm calling in because my family, my 12th grandfather, was the developer of the Harrison apple. His name was Samuel Harrison, and he brought the apple, developed it really, from England as a pippin. He brought it with him to Guilford, Connecticut in 1639. And then he and all the ended up being founders of Yale, founded the last city founded by the Puritans in America, which was Newark, New Jersey. And there he propagated the Harrison apple just outside of Newark. And it's interesting because first of all, George Washington always asked for this as his favorite cider raffle in New York City. It sold for four times the price of any other cider. And on top of that, one of my ancestors was a US senator, John Condit, when he was in Washington in 1803. I have letters from Thomas Jefferson asking him to bring more of that famous Newark Harrison cider with him when he returned to Washington in the fall. So one last piece. The apple was lost for 100 years, and the author, Annie Proulza, relative of mine, and she helped fund $10,000 to find the science in Milburn, New Jersey, where they were rediscovered in 1972 on the remains of an old cider mill.
- [14:31]
A
You are walking history story, Brad. Thank you so much for telling us that. It is kind of interesting. You can tell about history through apples just by listening to Brad.
- [14:42]
B
Yeah, they're like Forrest Gump. They go back and they've mixed it up with a lot of famous people through time in a funny way. And yeah, the Harrison was the storied apple that apparently made incredible cider in New Jersey. And you still find the old bottles, the old glass bottles that say Harrison on it, but then it was lost. And I don't know if anyone's tried to make cider with it again. But, yeah, there's like, these apples that have these mythical qualities about them from way back in the day. And there's a lot of apple sleuths out there who still try to find these lost varieties.
- [15:15]
A
Apple sleuth. Did not expect to hear that this morning. Let's talk to Kyle from Norwalk, Connecticut. Hi, Kyle. It says Kyle. He's driving, but his wife will ask the question. Hi, wife, are you there?
- [15:31]
C
Yeah, Kyle actually pulled over so he could ask the question himself.
- [15:34]
A
Okay.
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C
It's really? His story?
- [15:36]
D
Yeah. So I was actually wondering, obviously you kind of hear apples and orange is the difference there. I was wondering, has anyone ever crossed an apple and an orange and like, I don't know, is there a possibility, could that variety even happen? I know it's kind of off the box, but I was wondering.
- [15:51]
A
He pulled over for that. He wants an answer.
- [15:54]
B
You know, they're too far apart genetically to just like breed them naturally. You could probably, with genetic engineering, you could probably like slide a couple gen an orange into an apple. But maybe I actually have a recipe in my book for an apples and oranges galette where basically apples and orange marmalade mixed together. So maybe that's as close as you can get.
- [16:15]
A
Our guest is Rowan Jacobson. He's a science and nature writer. We are talking about apples. We want your apple opinions. What are the qualities you look for in your favorite apple? Do you have a question about apples? Rowan is here to take your call. 212-433-WNYC 21243. 9692. Maybe you want to tell us where you're going to go apple picking this weekend. We'll have more talking about apples after the break. You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Roam Jacobson. We are talking apples. All right, let's get into some practical picking advice. When you go to an orchard, what are you looking for when you pick an apple?
- [17:11]
B
I'm looking for variety. If you're gonna go to a pick your own orchard, part of the beauty of it is you can get a whole lot of apples that you're never gonna see in a grocery store. So I'm looking for a lot of different ones. I like the fact that I can try one before I commit to it. Right. And in terms of they're gonna tell you what's ripe or not, but you do you want an apple that doesn't, isn't green inside? Like, if you bite into it and you still see like some green in the flesh, that means it's not quite ripe.
- [17:43]
A
So you said, I believe you told my producer that you pick them up and you check on the weight of the apple when you're thinking about it.
- [17:52]
B
Yes. That's a, like, if it feels heavy in your hand for the size, that just means there's a lot of, you know, oomph in there. Like, and if it feels light, then it's probably going to be kind of airy and not have that nice texture. That you want.
- [18:06]
A
What about the trees themselves? Do I need to be looking at how the trees are faring?
- [18:10]
B
Not if you're just there to pick. That's definitely a concern for orchardists. And one thing people don't realize in the industry is that what we picture as an apple tree, like a big, beautiful, full tree, is not what they tend to use in most production orchards. Now it looks almost more like vineyards where the apple tree is literally like the trunk is like a broomstick with one tiny little 2 inch branch on either side. And there'll just be walls of them lined up and trellised and walls of fruit being produced on either side. So that makes it really easy for the pickers, but less romantic for us visitors.
- [18:47]
A
So it's a long weekend. People are going to go apple picking. It's going to be a big scene. And this is a little bit of a cynical question, but, you know, it's spooky season. It's the fall. It's sweater season. Is this actually the good time to harvest apples? Is fall the right time?
- [19:05]
B
Oh, it absolutely is. Like, this is when, well, the apples that are for straight up fresh eating, which they call them dessert apples in the industry, this is the time, like October, the peak. It's perfect. But like I said, a lot of apples that are really interesting flavors, those flavors come out a lot later, and they tend to be really hard. So ask whoever it is who's running the orchard, do you have some good keepers around or some good pie apples? And what you're going to pick for a pie is going to be totally different than what you're going to pick to eat fresh.
- [19:38]
A
All right, what am I picking for a pie?
- [19:39]
B
Well, you want a really hard apple in that case. And big is kind of nice because it's less work when you're cutting them up. But there are a lot of varieties that are specific for pies. But we tend to go wrong on our pies. The classic American pie is usually made with all granny Smiths or something. A really, really firm apple with a lot of acidity. But you know what happens when you get your slice of pie and you put your fork into it. All the slices, they're not really glued together very well. They all slide apart because they're so hard. So the best thing you can do in a pie is not just use one type of apple. You really want a mix of apples that have. They're adding different things to the mix. It's kind of like brick and mortar. When you're building a building The Granny Smiths can be the bricks, but then you need the mortar. So if you can find an apple that's going to actually have like, what they call melting flesh, like a Cortland or a Macintosh, then that can be the mortar that's going to stick all your bricks together and then you get a much more satisfactory piece.
- [20:41]
A
Talk to Joe, who's calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Joe, thanks for calling, all of it. You're on the air.
- [20:48]
D
Hi. Thank you. You know, I have two Honeycrisp apple trees that I planted maybe six or seven years ago, upstate New York. And I believe that they're not supposed to get much bigger than 6ft, so it'd be easy to pick the apples there. I haven't had much success at all in being able to get apples that are the kind of apples that you get on an orchard. And I spoke to someone and they told me that if I wanted to have, you know, apples that did not have fung, you know, that haven't been attacked by fungus and haven't been attacked by insects, that I would have to spray them six or seven times a season. And that kind of put me off to doing that. And I'm wondering if there's a somewhat simpler way to be able to harvest apples from those trees.
- [21:41]
A
How's Joe going to do in harvesting his apples?
- [21:44]
B
I don't think I have an easy answer on this one, but I have a few thoughts. Honeycrisps are notorious for being a little bit finicky to grow, so it's hard to do as a hobbyist. Joe, you're in the right part of the world. They do best in cold northern areas. They were bred in Minnesota. They do well in upstate New York for sure. But yeah, they're not going to look like the store Honeycrisps without either some spraying. Even the organic growers, they have different sprays that they can use and most of the modern apples don't have yet. They depend on some sort of sprays, whether organic or otherwise. But one of my answers to this is that maybe we've gotten too used to incredibly perfect cosmetic looking apples in stores. Like, you know, if you grow your own apples, you realize they never look like that. And you can get over that pretty quickly.
- [22:37]
A
Actually, we get a text that says, I assume apples are not native to North America. Do we know where they originated from?
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B
We do, and that's a great question. They originated in Kazakhstan, actually, and there are still wild apple forests in the mountains of Kazakhstan.
- [22:53]
A
That must be. Wow.
- [22:54]
B
Yeah, it's like A Mecca destination for apple nerds. So what happened basically, is the Silk Road came right through that area between China and Rome. And horses love apples. So the apples probably evolved to appeal to horses and bears and large animals like that. So the apples basically hitchhiked a ride with the traders and their mounts on the Silk Road, made it to Europe, Europe embraced it. And the ancient Romans, they had all their apple varieties with names just like we do today, and they've been a super part of European culture and cuisine ever since then. They did not exist in North America until the first sailors brought them over in the 1500s. And the apple took to North America beautifully. It has integrated itself incredibly well into this landscape. So it's kind of like the model citizen. And rather than an invasive species, it's a. It's a species that has played very nice in its new home.
- [23:56]
A
You just gave me the best Jeopardy. Answer that ever comes up. Thanks. Uh, let's talk to Marie, who is calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Marie. You're on all of it. Hi.
- [24:09]
C
Thank you so much. I wanted to tell you that my maternal grandmother came up with a recipe that. That we've had over the years, mostly at Thanksgiving, but she used to slice tart apples with sweet potatoes, alternating them, and we'd bake them in the oven until the potatoes and the apples were soft. Sprinkle a little lemon juice, butter if you want, and it is the most amazing dish. We had it every Thanksgiving along with our turkey.
- [24:45]
A
That sounds like a plan. Thank you so much for calling in. This is a text that says, we just tried the Snapdragon apple. Can you give me some info about it? We know it was created at Cornell.
- [24:57]
B
Yeah. So this is Cornell's answer to the Honeycrisp. Basically. Like I was saying, the Honeycrisp changed everything. People love the Honeycrisp so much. All the breeding programs were suddenly like, okay, how can we create the next Honeycrisp? So there's this whole new generation of apples that are all children of the Honeycrisp. The Honeycrisp was one of the two parents used to create these new ones. And so Cornell's is the Snapdragon. And so it has that pop that the Honeycrisp has. It's a little bit sweeter than the Honeycrisp. It's a pretty good apple, and they're banking on it big time. To me, it doesn't quite have the magic that the original Honeycrisp, but it's an excellent apple. So if you see it, it's one worth going for.
- [25:39]
A
We have another question about the Honeycrisp. This is Wendy calling from Maplewood, New Jersey. Hi, Wendy, what's your question?
- [25:47]
C
Yeah, you mentioned the original Honeycrisp and I was thinking that the original Honeycrisp, just like the original Granny Smith, they were both really amazing and exciting and tart and spicy. And nowadays you buy them in the supermarket and they're kind of lame and just not as zingy, almost as if they've been overbred. And I'm wondering why that is, if they're just stored improperly or if they sort of lose their excitement over time. But that doesn't happen to varieties like the Arkansas Black.
- [26:29]
A
What do you think?
- [26:31]
B
Yeah. So real quick, Arkansas Black is an apple that was developed in the south that is one of those keepers I was talking about. Its skin is thick and purple, bordering on black. It's a stunning looking apple. If you ate it this time of year, it's horrible. But after four or five months in the root cellar, it softens up and gets great. So I think that's a very perceptive point. On the Honeycrisp, many people say that they're not quite what they used to be and it's. I don't think it's the breeding, it's where they're being grown and how they're being grown. We have an enemy that we can play here and that's Washington State, which is kind of the 800 pound gorilla in the apple world. Washington State produces, I don't know, like 60 to 70% of the apples in the US and just a huge, huge scale and obviously an extremely different climate than Minnesota or upstate New York. So a Honeycrisp, it really wants to have cold conditions and that's when it's going to be really snappy and it's going to keep its acidity. And that happens in New York, Minnesota, places like that. Washington State, it gets a ton more sun. It gets really hot summers. And that's when you get that slightly wimpy character. It's like life is just too easy out there and you see it in the apples. So Washington State wanted to get in on the Honeycrisp game because they're so popular. But really that should be an apple that's grown on this side of the country.
- [27:54]
A
This text says, is there any truth to the legend of Johnny Appleseed?
- [27:58]
B
Full on, yeah. He was a super kooky guy who, when the settlers were heading west in Ohio, he would get ahead of the settlers and he wore just like a sack. He was an unusual fellow. And he would get lots of seeds from cider mills and go out to the frontier and plant whole seed orchards because he knew that as the settlers were coming west, they would need trees to plant their 40 acres. With that they were settling, so he would be ready to sell them five year old trees. So he went paddled up and down the Ohio river and that whole part of the Midwest, proselytizing the joy of apples to the settlers.
- [28:44]
A
A lot of your books look at a particular piece of food culture and you take deep dives, honeybees, chocolates, oysters, truffles. Why do you think it's important or interesting to take a look, a holistic look at a food group?
- [28:59]
B
To me, food has always been a really interesting way to connect us to the natural world and to other cultures and places because we all have a built in interest in eating, obviously, and food plays such a key role in all of those things and it's right there on your plate. So I've always found it a really fascinating way to sort of organically dive into relationships.
- [29:25]
A
For people who don't have a car aren't going to an orchard, they might be able to take the subway to the farmer's market this weekend. What would you suggest they pick up?
- [29:34]
B
Do it. The farmer's market this weekend is going to be just like bursting with varieties. One that people in New York should really look for is the Newtown Pippin, the only apple that's native to New York City and it's grown by a bunch of local growers. It's a bright green apple. It was Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple. It was Benjamin Franklin's favorite apple. And it is really, it's one of the original flavors of New York. There's actually a whole little orchard of them growing on Randall's Island, I believe that was planted, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, but it was born in Queens and so that's a really fun local one to look for. Also, Usopa Spitzenberg, another classic New York apple, Barack Obama's favorite apple. I heard it's a Hudson river apple and considered one of the great fresh eating apples of all time.
- [30:27]
A
My guest has been Rowan Jacobson. We've been talking apples. Rowan, thank you so much for coming in.
- [30:33]
B
Thanks. It was a pleasure.
- [30:34]
A
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