After 39 years* of carefully cutting apples into wedges, I recently decided that I’m done cutting apples the way society expects me to.
It’s autumn in St. Louis, so it seems like the time to eat apples. I recently stocked up with big bags of gala and fuji apples from Trader Joe’s. Each time I prepared an apple for a meal, I cut in half, then I cut each half into 3 wedges. That’s how I’ve always done it.
But then last week, I tried something different. I plopped an apple down on the cutting board, hacked at it for a few seconds, and was done. No precision, no uniform wedges–just a variety of apple chunks ready to eat.
And you know what? The variation in sizes turned out to be WAY better than uniform wedges. Because sometimes during a meal I only want a little nibble of apple, while other times I want to gnaw away at a bigger chunk. I get the best of all worlds this way.
So I’ve decided that this is how I’m cutting apples from now on. It ain’t pretty, but the results are exactly what I want.
Have you ever tried cutting a food in a completely different way than you were taught? Any recommendations?
*This is a bit of an exaggeration, as I wasn’t exposed to sharp knives until I was of age.
As a kid, I always ate my bread, toast, and sandwiches crust first. My friends in grade school would call me “star-sandwich-eater” because after taking chomps out of the rim of the sandwich I’d be left with a ninja-star-shaped sandwich or piece of toast.
One day I tried doing it differently and found the sandwich tasted the same way. I felt like a TV character eating a sandwich from one side to the other.
Not necessarily cutting a food, but it’s something I’ve always done, and doing it differently felt good- almost rebellious. I wasn’t taught it, I think it was self-taught. I still catch myself doing it so I can “save the best part for last”.
If you’re making an apple pie for Thanksgiving, stay with the even cuts for uniform cooking.
I could never really get into Apples. When I would eat them, I enjoyed them hoever I found they made me feel hungry, almost hungrier than before I ate them. This is counter productive when you’re trying to eat to satiety.