The Boy Who Loved Apples

[Edilma Howard]

Thisparticular batch of apple butter was made as to accompany a batch of sharp cheddar gougres (cheese puffs), apples and cheese being an entirely under-appreciated combination. In that same respect it also makes a great addition to your holiday cheese board, and would be astounding paired with melty white cheddar and brie inside a grilled cheese sandwich.

Since this is a small batch preparation method, it takes significantly less time than a larger batch (more surface area = quicker evaporation; yay maths!) Needless to say, this apple butter only needs about an hour to cook, whereas a bigger batch would easily take twice that.

Just made this, what an awesome small batch of apple butter! So delicious, the only thing I did different was add some fresh ground nutmeg to the spices. I used Honeycrisp and Courtland apples (fresh picked from the market ;) This recipe rocks, what flavor!

So glad you enjoyed! You were correct to leave it uncovered (as you want the excess liquid to boil off allowing the mixture to thicken). Generally with recipes uncovered is the default state of the pot, if it should be covered that would be stated specifically in the recipe.

So good! This was easy and delicious. I used the full 1/2 cup of brown sugar and I love the way it turned out. I originally decided to make this because I was going to bake a cake that called for 1 cup of apple butter, but decided to scrap the cake and just use the apple butter for something else like crepes or scones!

Used this recipe as a base. Put the apples in my magic bullet and added a bit more cinnamon and cloves along with a half cup brown sugar. Hubs loves it! Definitely will be tweaking the recipe a bit next go round

Great easy recipe. I added a bit of nutmeg to mine and it was quite tasty. Tried it on toast right after I made it. Used 4 apples since they were going soft, diced and cored before cooking vs cooking them whole. My husband was pleased with the result too. Thanks for sharing!

Welcome to Love & Olive Oil, the culinary adventures of Lindsay and Taylor. We're all about food that is approachable but still impressive, unique and creative yet still true to its culinary roots. (More about us...)

October is the Oscar season of cookbooks, and there are many beautiful ones strewn about the fetid patch of carpet I jokingly call my office. But the book I've spent the most time reading this month is not what you (or I) might have expected: It's essentially a 313-page encyclopedia of apples.

True, there are some recipes in the back, and I am very into the idea of apple pakoras with yogurt-mint chutney, as well as sausage-apple-cheddar pot pie. But the most gripping aspect of James Beard Award winner Rowan Jacobsen's Apples of Uncommon Character is the author's loving, quirky, and so-vivid-it's-like-you're-eating-one-right-now descriptions of 123 different apples. In what may have been an exploitation of my professional affiliation, I called Jacobsen to ask him a few questions.

I know the correct statement is "He likes neither apples nor oranges", but I also know that we can say "He does not like apples or oranges" and this puts the negation before the verb and it sounds better to me like that, with a negation before the verb. Therefore, for me, "He neither likes apples nor oranges" sounds better than "He likes neither apples nor oranges". Logically, I see it as a shortcut for "He neither likes apples nor likes oranges", the second "likes" being implicit.

My question is: in day to day usage among native English speakers does putting neither before the verb in this sentence sound OK or does it sound weird? I don't care about rules. I care about how it sounds and that ordinary people can understand.

Firstly, both of your constructs will be correctly understood by your audience. With that in mind, I would not use incorrect to describe either of them. This answer is directed at determining which construct is pedantically better.

Neither/Nor is negation (neither) coupled with the associated negative conjunction (nor). The location of Neither in relationship to the sentence's subject or verb determines what is being negated and both sides of the Nor must balance (i.e. describe the same thing).

In sentence #1, He likes neither apples nor oranges, neither comes before apples and negates apples. The nor must then also apply to negating something similar, in this case any noun will do (oranges, onions, buzzards).

In sentence #2, He neither likes apples nor dislikes apples, neither comes before likes and negates likes. It does not negate apples. Since we have negated like we need to balance our Nor statement with something that can be compared to likes (i.e. dislikes, loves, hates). You could technically use any verb, He neither likes apples nor swims rivers, but such usage would apply to specific, contextually understood situations.

Neither/nor is generally associated with somewhat formal speech and writing in standard speech or grammar. Generally, a speaker who is not trying to be formally emphatic, will use a negative verb and forgo neither/nor in favor of either/or.

When I moved to England many years ago I learned that the British lay claim to the apple as their own in a way as elemental to them as my childhood ownership of apples was to me. The apple runs deep in the national psyche, and while most of the world has a claim to the apple, Britain can make a convincing case for a distinctive, if not exclusive, relationship with this immensely varied fruit.

With all this magnificent abundance, its industrialised cultivation has consigned most varieties to gardens, community orchards, and extinction. Of the 17,000 varieties once known worldwide, 80% are believed to have been lost. Of the 3,000 known to have been grown in Britain, and the 2,200 currently held in the national fruit collection at Brogdale in Kent, only a handful are cultivated widely enough to be generally recognised, and the wonderfully varied tastes of lesser-known varieties has fallen out of common knowledge.

Around 3,000 acres of new orchards were planted each year during the 1880s and 90s, in the traditional fruit growing areas of Kent and Evesham, and also in new areas of eastern England, including the Cambridge area.

In the past two decades, concern over the loss of orchards prompted a number of organisations, including the East of England Apple and Orchard Project, whose knowledgeable members are to be found at Apple Days around the region, to undertake comprehensive studies of traditional orchards. These have found that around 90% of the orchards existing in 1950 have since disappeared, with those surviving still being vulnerable to neglect, conversion to arable land, or redevelopment for housing and paddocks.

There has been a groundswell of public interest in orchards, and in my home county of Cambridgeshire, community orchards in Trumpington, Reach, Cambourne, Impington and Histon, and Misdummer Common in the city, to name a few, are reviving threatened apple varieties and working to reinstate orchard habitats.

The health of orchards and apple biodiversity is so important to our food security, so embedded in our history, culture and national identity, and so critical to our environment, that it should be integrated into the way our food is produced, and securely underpinned by stewardship at every level.

Perhaps one of the achievements of the grassroots movement to revive the orchard will be to encourage large retailers and growers to look beyond the presumed consumer demand for uniform red and samey sweetness, and give more space to older varieties worth preserving for their range of flavours.

Also known as involuntary memory, precious fragments, mind pops or a host of other names, ghost memories occur when the sight, smell or sound of something takes you back to a past memory or experience.

There were two roads to reach the hill, including one that went through the cattle pasture, following the valley as it climbed and narrowed until it reached a steep incline that led up to the fields. The other road was steeper and both were inclined to washouts.

It was the summer of 1974 and we were haying on the hill, which in those days meant stacking small square bales on the hay wagon as they came from the baler. The loads were hauled back to the farm and stacked in the barn.

My brother Kevin was driving the tractor and the hired hand Wayne and I were riding on the wagon as we descended the steep hill. A cousin was coming up the valley with an empty wagon so Kevin pulled over to the side of the road under the shade of a tree to make room for the oncoming tractor.

The shade was welcome under the hot late July sun. Then I noticed that the tree was heavy with green apples. I climbed to the top of the hay wagon and picked a few. I polished one up on my shirt and took a bite.

Wayne may not have known the physiological reason as to why eating green apples can make you sick, but he was right. Eating too many unripe apples can cause stomach pain because of an excess of ethylene gas.

Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor and publisher. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won dozens of state and national journalism awards. He is a former president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Contact him at chard...@gmail.com.

As for my post workout or afternoon snack, I love apples and natural peanut butter. A medium size apple and one level tbsp of natural peanut butter give or take is 200 calories. One tbsp of natural peanut butter is only 95 calories. I try to stick to only eating between 150-200 calories per snack.

Granny Smith have typically been my go-to baking apple in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the Golden Delicious apples worked in the Flour Bakery recipe. Adding those into the mix is a new favorite for me!

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