How ’bout Them Apples?

Apples were left over from a kids’ meal (the fast food franchise isn’t the topic today) and it seemed WRONG to just leave them.  Maybe the kid would be starving later and this little bag of apple slices could make the difference between life and death. So, I slipped them into my purse and we headed out to the good times ahead. And forgot about them.

About a month later, as I clean my purse out to make another long trek, I find this beautifully sealed bag of mushed apples. Thank goodness for good seals because old apple moosh in purses is NEVER appreciated.

Now, the apple slices will go to the worms who in their pin-head brain wisdom prefer microbes from sweet stuff.  I admit I didn’t test the moosh to see if it was sweet. The slices never ever looked sweet!  They looked green, like extremely TART apples.  Which is another surprise because I see this beautiful commercial about the apple grower for fast food apples and those aren’t sour looking apples.  Is it time to doubt commercials?

I’ve avoided eating these apples myself, finding some chocolate mashed in its wrapper in my purse more desirable in the face of starvation. I’ve left an apple in a lunch bag and cooler for too long a few times.  The ripening gases that are trapped in the bag are about enough to make me swear off apples forever. The gases result in the stink that never ends till I bleach out the lunch container.  So, what happens to apple slices more seriously trapped in a sealed plastic bag.  Yech.

I began to wonder if any body eats these apples.  I found a blog post from August in Yahoo Contributor Network by Tavia Fuller Armstrong with more issues and concerns that I had missed.  She says those apple slices are sour, partly because of the Vitamin C dip that helps preserve them till they get to the little box that the kids love.  She wrote of some issues with listeria that cause additional concern.

I’m convinced that the apple slices met their highest and best use.  They became food for worms who will turn that food into rich, black soil in their cold composting activity.

Now, how about them apples?  How long has it been since anyone said that?  I haven’t heard it for years till the phrase occurred to me as a title for this post.  It used to just be something we said — but I wondered who said it first.  According to the Internet, which we do not doubt, the first use was in the movie, Rio Bravo in 1959.  I think that if I saw Rio Bravo in 1959, much of it went right over my head even though I might have been watching anything where Ricky Nelson appeared.  I’ve viewed it since because a couple years after that, I married someone who later revealed being a fanatical John Wayne fan and avid collector of VHS and DVD movies featuring The Duke.

The original Rio Bravo phrase was “How do ya like them apples?” and more appropriate for this article, because it appears we DO NOT LIKE them apples very much.