Apple grower here. I still don't understand Honeycrisps. I'm on the younger side, so I haven't seen that many years of Honeycrisp, but I feel I have never had a good one. My experience of Honeycrisp is that it is super crunchy, almost too much so, but completely devoid of flavor. To me, it's like eating crunchy water.
As others have pointed out, this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse. One thing I will add to this discussion, though I don't know if it is true in the case of Honeycrisp, is that it is definitely not a matter of breeding (nor selective breeding, breeding for storage, etc): in order to produce more apple trees, Honeycrisps (or any other variety) aren't bred, they are asexually propagated through grafting. That means all Honeycrisp trees are more-or-less genetically identical.
That said, just like any organism, as trees grow and produce new cells at the tips of branches, there is always a chance for a mutation. Sometimes these branch mutations (called "sports") have visible genetic differences: stronger coloration, earlier ripening, or perhaps earlier storage (though this is harder to notice). This is how Red Delicious went from a wonderful apple to tasteless, mealy cardboard: sports were selected over time that prioritized storage and color over texture and flavor.
As an apple grower, I have had the opportunity to taste Honeycrisps straight off the tree, and to me, they taste just as flavorless as the ones I get from the store. I grow almost all heirloom varieties, and I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab. If you are in California, I recommend marking your calendar for September to search this variety out at the farmers markets (or better, plant a tree yourself!). There are many other wonderful varieties that stand out from grocery store apples. In a pinch, I'll get a Pink Lady from the store, as I find it's the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars, so the higher starch content may be harder to digest.
Hint: any apple with an "apple green" undercoat is underripe; to pick a ripe apple, wait for that bright green to mellow out or change colors. For redder apples, it can be harder to see, but most apples have some green visible under the red (Pink Lady is again a great example of this). And yes, Granny Smith apples are so sour precisely because they are picked and sold underripe; a ripe Granny Smith is yellow and sweet.
> I find [Pink Lady to be] the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars.
I’m not an apple expert, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of “supermarket varieties” like Pink Lady have higher cellulose which helps them withstand relatively rough handling. (For those who don’t know: Apples are extremely easy to bruise, you should handle them carefully and never ever press on them to test for ripeness!)
Please tell me that people don't actually do this. If you have seen it, let me know and I'll reach out to some of the major grocers to maybe add some signage in their produce section about evaluating apple ripeness.
I will, maybe, spin the apple in my hand lightly to determine if there's some notable damage, but I'd never press into the flesh and dent it on purpose. Maybe that's what you're seen people do?
Then again, in our zero consequences society, I wouldn't be surprised if people took the IDGAF attitude about damaging produce they don't intend on purchasing.
I wonder if your "taste" for an apple is just so completely drowned out by your experience and exposure to the apple industry. Like, if I had the opportunity to taste every apple variety all the time, maybe the Honeycrisp starts to trend towards crispy water (amusing analogy by the way).
But for the average consumer, maybe a strong tasting apple is a put off. I personally choose and eat Honeycrisp consistently every time and I'm completely 100% satisfied with every apple I've had of it. There have been some better than others, of course, but still satisfied with the quality, taste and crispness regardless.
I have no doubt that maybe Honeycrisp just has such a mass appeal that apple experts might not actually prefer its taste. Maybe I'm just a "boring" white bread kind of apple consumer. I'm fine with this, honestly, because Honeycrisps make me happy. And when they are on sale for $1 / pound, they make me even happier.
It's possibly like wine this way too, where the very best wines are those that only the experts can really taste and appreciate. For me, the differences between varieties of wine is completely lost.
I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab.
+1 to Wickson Crab. It's my favorite apple as well. I grew them in California, but my tree here in Vermont isn't bearing yet, so I'm not sure they'll be the same.
Dmitri, where are you growing them? And who is selling them at Farmer's Markets in California? I worked a lot of markets in the Bay Area, and I don't remember ever seeing them for sale (although that was 10 years ago).
> this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse
Is no mystery at all what is happening here.
One of the things that I loved from plant physiology is how futuristic it is. Bordering black magic sometimes. For example. Do you knew that potions of eternal youth exist... for apples?.
You just need to apply some commercial product and this apple will kept brilliant skin, no wrinkles, and bright color for weeks. Fantastic, right? The sellers and the supermarkets will love that.
The only problem is that it cost sugar to keep it alive in this state of white-snow suspended animation. As long as there is sugar remaining it works. After a while you have a good-looking apple with a disappointing bland watery taste.
This is half of the explanation that the writer was looking for. The other half is a camera storage time too extended.
This is interesting. Could you provide any information about this commercial product? As far as I understand, the most sophisticated treatment happening is low oxygen storage. But neither of these things explain why apples straight off the tree are also bland.
Presto and SparkSQL are SQL interfaces to many different datasources, including Hive and Impala, but also any SQL database such as Postgres/Redis/etc, and many other types of databases, such as Cassandra and Redis; the SQL tools can query all these different types of databases with a unified SQL interface, and even do joins across them.
The difference between Presto and SparkSQL is that Presto is run on a multi-tenant cluster with automatic resource allocation. SparkSQL jobs tend to have to be allocated with a specific resource allocation ahead of time. This makes Presto is (in my experience) a little more user-friendly. On the other hand, SparkSQL has better support for writing data to different datasources, whereas Presto pretty much only supports collecting results from a client or writing data into Hive.
I know Hive can definitely query other datasources like traditional SQL databases, redis, cassandra, hbase, elasticsearch, etc, etc. I thought Impala had some bit of support for this as well, though I'm less familiar with it.
And SparkSQL can be run on a multi-tenant cluster with automatic resource allocation - Mesos, YARN, or Kubernetes.
In CA, we didn’t have even one case of citrus greening breakout . Basically, we just put quarantines in place for citrus between counties.
That’s one way. Having said that, citrus is a minor crop in CA. Only about 250k acres. That’s tiny compared to almonds and pistachios etc.
Home gardens have citrus and when they don’t spray, disease spreads. County extensions simply sent people out to detect spread and quarantined counties and restricted nursery sales between regions. This is one of the times that I am very proud of CA as USA’s highest grossing Ag state.
Having said that, it’s still a concern. No known remedy so far
> Because Facebook is battling Google for engineers. So you've got a big fight between two companies over which company is the coolest place to work, and both of them are companies that your grandparents love. How are you going to win this fight? One way is to have the hippest Web framework.
And who ends up winning? Web developers everywhere. I don't see why this is a bad thing.
Yes, web developers end up winning. But be honest: web developers already are winning. We're freakin wizards. What we need is to cooperate upon and use standards that can be used by generations after us. React is a patch for profit, not an earnest attempt to make a piece of the web that will be used in more than a few years.
Very interesting concept, and I agree completely. One thing I've noticed in myself – and I'm curious if others have noticed this as well – is that the "million-dollar idea", as he puts it, never really turns out to be quite as good as I had imagined. Especially once it's been stored away for some time, under the pretense that I don't have the ability to explore it, it seems to be dramatically worse than what I had it made out to be.
Taking this further, as a developer, I find I have even less patience for slow loading times than a 'regular end-user'.
I don't know exactly, but I assume this is because I know what goes on behind the scenes, and 99% of the time, the website is doing way more work than it really needs to in order to deliver the experience that I'm asking for.
This is great. All complaints about Mongo's durability aside, it wins out over many other databases because of its ease-of-use -- its small DSL certainly beats out having to learn a whole new language (SQL, etc.). Now, combine that with real durability, real transactions, etc. If this isn't the database for the 80%... I don't know what is.
(My one open question, and something this page doesn't touch on, is how easy is it to get ToroDB up and running? Mongo makes that part easy as well!)
