The other day the husband and I were back in my home state of New York driving around the rural area that we lived in while he completed his undergrad studies. There are always a couple of places that we love to stop at if we can. We ate lunch at the bakery. Popped into the Starbucks he used to work at. Took a short walk down the rail trail. And we stopped at Dressel's for honey crisp apples. OMG, as the kids say. O.M.G.
You can taste the Catskill sun and the neighboring Shawnagunk rock climber's sweet sweet sweat in them (Too much? Fill in your own adjective clump here). You can hear the perfect crunch snap when you bite into it and feel the smooth firm texture of the skin against your teeth. I have traveled many hours to score a bag of these apples, so abundant during the season that you can still buy them from cold storage at the farm in February when our local farms ran out in October at the latest.
We have apples in Massachusetts. In the fall, I love to go picking at a neighboring farm because they have such diverse species, some of which I've never heard of before, which says a lot since I was raised on a tree farm. I am not anti-New England fruit but I have yet to find a honey crisp apple to match what we have in New York. I'm sorry. It's a fact.
In most other states, I think that they would take my opinion in stride. It isn't terribly polite for me to go around spouting negativity about local produce in general. But it is produce. A minor infraction of ethics, maybe. In the anti-New York area though, you would think I burned the tree down and used it to write racial slurs with the ashes on your grandmother's front door. Yes. I know. Yankees suck. Whatever. But our honey crisp apples make all of the world smile with their eyes close when they bite into them, not just nod and go, "It's an apple."
There are somethings that actually are better in some states than others. I will concede to your damn clam chowder, okay? Massachusetts, no one is going to take away your Pilgrims and no one can touch your drunks for sheer gusto during a sporting event. But your honey crisp apples aren't Dressel's honey crisp apples and Dressel's is in Gardiner, NY. Unless you plan on uprooting their trees in the dead of night and transplanting them in Lowell, this is, like I said, a fact. Our honey crisps are better than your honey crisps. Boom. Let the egging of my house commence.
