Happy Halloween…
Goat Cheese/ Cream Cheese Eyeballs:
Take stuffed olives and wrap goat cheese or cream cheese around them, and shape into a ball. The goat cheese is perhaps easier to work with, but the cream cheese would likely have a more familiar flavor profile.
You spot her well before you talk to her. She’s wearing a slinky (red) dress, and she has an amazing figure, knockout gorgeous, and you stare at her, even though you don’t mean to.
She notices, across the crowded room, that your eyes follow her wherever she goes, and she pussyfoots over to you in that tight little number and introduces herself in a husky voice, “Hi, I’m Red… Red Delicious.” You realize that you’re practically drooling, and you don’t even mind that when she shook your hand, she only gave your fingers a nerveless little squeeze.
You’ve already heard of her, she gets around, she has a reputation as a bit of a limp fish. She just looks so darned good, you don’t want to believe the spiteful things that others have said. You can scarcely believe your good luck when you hear her suggesting, “Why don’t you take me home with you?” The next thing you know, you’re clambering into her convertible with the top down, heading for your home. You think it cute that she drives 25 mph, no matter the posted speed limit.
Once you arrive, you only make it as far as the kitchen before you’re clutching at her, stripping away that shiny, sequined number to reveal milky white skin, and it excites you so much that you don’t even notice, at least not at first, that she is completely devoid of muscle tone, soft, mushy, almost doughy to the touch.
You run her through her paces with vigor and excitement, trying all the positions you can think of. You eat her on a plate, you toss her in a salad, you bake her in a pie, and mash her into sauce. And in between those experiments, you still love to look at her. You admire her figure, wrapped away in that tight little dress, and enjoy her sleek exterior.
But when it comes time to sit at the table, you always know something is missing and your mind flits back to the good times you had with Pippin, Mutsu, and even that old sourpuss Granny Smith. Every meal you ate with them had flair. Sure, they weren’t much to look at, but they had personality! They had something to say.
So you ask Red her thoughts on politics, on the environment, on the state of education today. She just giggles and says in that rasping voice you thought was so sexy when you first met, “Try me, I’m Delicious!” And at that moment you realize, it’s all a show, it’s all a front, she has no depth of character. She doesn’t even really taste good, she just hides behind that name and her svelte appearance and uses them as a disguise.
So you tell her it’s just not working out, she doesn’t have what you’re looking for. She doesn’t understand at first, or at least pretends not to. “I’m Delicious!” She protests, “You’ll never find another who looks as good as I do. I’m Red Delicious!” But you stand firm and she leaves eventually, tears staining her mascara.
You see her sometimes, in movies and on TV. You even ran into her at the store once and she tried to climb into your cart, saying, “Remember those good times we had?” But you’ve moved on, you’re over her. You’re visiting the orchards and entertaining Lodi, Empire, Grimes Golden, and Gala. You even flirted with Arkansas Black for a while, and had a brief affair with a Northern Spy. They might not look so sleek or so slender, but when it comes down to it, they’ve got taste, which is more than you can say for that little hussy of a temptress who took you for a bland, boring ride.
