an apple a day makes the dad's day

We have been on an apple spree these days. There has been a general uproar in India about apples and the fact that the foreign imported ones come coated with wax etc. if any one has ever seen and felt a Washington apple then they would completely agree. The beautiful red cherry of an apple. I have opened the bowling attack a few times while playing cricket in the past and the apple sure feels like a rand new ball. I just want to run hard in and bowl an apple at the batsman at full pace. The idea is not to bowl it short and make it bounce but just short of full length so that it gives ample time for the bowl to swing. In this case the apple. Sorry... I think I got carried away, but the apples do look lovely red and shiny. Much like the wax fruits we played with as kids.
So we haven’t been eating those. The good Indian ones aren’t to be seen around. I hate the ones that aren’t hard and crunchy. The Indian ones we get seem to be soft and soggy types. At home we call them rava apples. Like the rava upma we eat at udipi restaurants, with all grainy grainy inside. Somebody in office called them phus phus apples.
So no desi apples and no Washington apples. Enter the Chinese apples. Like all idiotic patriotic Indians we are and will be wary of anything Chinese. Even their apples will be fake. Jasmine once bought them nevertheless. These are the pinkish ones and rounder than the Washington ones. We tested for wax. The nail test - in which you try and scrape the wax away. Negative. So picked them and washed then and one bite later we were hooked. Nice and sweet and crunchy. The last word is the key. A crunchy juicy apple that you have to take care while eating in front of someone lest you spill or actually spurt a few drops on their face. Hmmmm.
I love cutting apples for Jispa. In my earlier posts I have blogged about loving to do for Jispa what I loved my dad doing for me. Cutting apples is a vivid memory. He used to love cutting fruits for us and somehow I remember the apple cutting the best. Outside home he used to beautifully cut off the skin. I wondered how he could do that. Now when we are outside I love doing that for Jispa. At home I love slicing these apples for her. So that she can take a plate full of them and eat and read, slowly slowly. After she recovered from typhoid, she ate like a horse and everyday in the evening after a heavy dinner she would get hungry and I would cut an apple for her.
But what my dad did I do it, better. or rather funnier, or lets just plain different. No qualitative description, just ‘different’ will do. What’s the point of cutting an apple if you cant do it differently and interestingly.
So while doing it differently I chanced upon this style which I think is pretty cool. I take an apple and slice it from the side. Slowly and thin wafer slices of apples. The crunchy apples remain so and they feel quite awesome. Eating round thin slices of apples. You cut from the side till you hit the middle and then from the other side. The closer you got o the middle the wafer begins to resemble a heart. Awwwwwww. Aw come one. Have a heart. hehehehe. See the heart shaped slice.

The rest of the apple cuts look like this.

The apple thins…

After the cuts done from all four sides you have the inner core. That was always a pain to remove once you dice them the normal way. This way the core comes out pretty cool and that’s what the dad typically has to finish off as his reward. :)

I know it’s pretty trivial but I love it. It just makes my being a dad more fun. More complete … I dunno. I loved cutting it this way and Jispa loves it when I cut it this way. Who else is there to see?