Granny Smith apple: three and a half stars for what is usually a three star fruit. I consider apples to be highly variable. In this case, one of the seeds had started to sprout.

Ah, milk and apples: a staple breakfast. For the young and infirm, the apples can be stewed and mashed in the milk, to serve as a highly nutritious convalescence food. My own nephew (the eldest one) subsisted on stewed milk apples for many years of his infant life. At age ten was the first time he felt the crisp, fresh crack of a solid green apple. Tears streamed down his face. He demanded to know why he had been withheld this simple yet sublime pleasure for so long. I couldn’t bear to tell him.