October is the most popular month for being nationally recognized by the food industry. The other months have obtained recognition for five to eight edibles each, but October has 14. Listing a few, this is National Caramel Month, Cookie Month, Dessert Month, Pasta Month, Pizza Month, Seafood Month and the list goes on. This brings us to National Apple Month.
Apples grew in central Asia and western China beginning possibly 10 million years ago, around the time the first humans were evolving. They were certainly not the apples we enjoy today, but they were apples, hard, small and bitter.
Crabapples, the only native apple to the United States, preceded European colonists to America but were not very edible. The colonists soon requested seeds and cuttings from England where apples had been cultivated since 100 A.D. The early settlers referred to them as “winter bananas” or “melt-in-the-mouth.”
The first orchards in the New World produced few apples as there were no ...