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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak to the grocery stores, but I did briefly work on an apple farm in Calvados. They had two dozen different kinds of apples, not one of which I'd ever heard of.

(I did once get a very lame baguette at a Monoprix once. Blew my mind that the French tolerated it.)

One possibility is that you were there out of season. We've gotten very good at preserving apples for all year, but they are harvested only for a month or so. It takes industrial climate control to make them taste good after about December.

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I understand that this probably refers to a French grocery store of some sort, but I can't get the image out of my head of you ordering a baguette off of the localized French version of https://www.monoprice.com/.

Monoprix is a strange store that sells Food, Clothes, Household Items etc...

Kind of like Target.

Isn't that most supermarkets?

Nope, at least in the other supermarkets it's more like 80-90% Food the rest is the other stuff, in Monoprix it's the other way around

> I did once get a very lame baguette at a Monoprix once. Blew my mind that the French tolerated it.

We tend to buy bread in supermarkets only in case of dire emergency. Statistically, there probably was a much better bakery around the corner from that Monoprix.

> It takes industrial climate control to make them taste good after about December.

I remember my grand mother keeping apples in her cellar (cold but not freezing, dry, close to constant temperature year round). The apple she put there were fantastic long into winter. They would not look great, slightly shrunk and with wrinkles, but the taste was excellent. Industrial climate control is to keep them look good, not to keep them taste good.

> Calvados

As in, where the brandy comes from? I never knew it was eponymous. Booze is of course the original technology for preserving apples and fruit in general. My understanding is that was the original intended purpose for our older orchards included those planted by Johnny Appleseed.

The calvados beverage is not only made in the Calvados departement. There are 3 different appelations: - regular calvados made from cider from different parts of Normandy - calvados Pays d'Auge which must be made from cider of that eponymous Pays d'Auge area (which is within the Calvados departement) - calvados du Domfrontais which is made from cider of the Domfront area in the Orne departement.

Since he didn't graft, the fruit from the trees he planted would have mostly been unpleasant to eat. But still fit to ferment alcohol from, or feed to livestock.

>Johnny Appleseed

Reminds me of Luther Burbank:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank

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