Top Ten Reasons to Love Apples

1. You can transport a loved one just by sending them apples. They won't expect this gift, but its aroma will
flood out of the package. Elderly relatives will appreciate your thoughtfulness if they can't travel. A gift box of
prime, ripe fruit will take them back to their childhood. All the places where they climbed and dreamed of a
world made of edible flowers will belong to them again.

2. You can count on apples for amazing, vitamin-filled energy. Interesting Facts website claims: "Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings!" You won't have to worry about grounds, boiling water, stained teeth, or clean cups anymore, either.

3. You can play games that draw participants back to nature. The Source for Youth Ministry: Holiday Ideas website recommends bobbing for caramel apples, along with caramel apples on a stick and on a string, too. The caramel, of course, is optional. Apple purists just need a tub of water and a dozen: They're ready to go!

4. You can use a mouth-freshener that works while you eat it. The University of Illinois Extension website Apples & More recommends apples for this purpose and notes that "they are still very inexpensive." Why accumulate chlorine-blue bottles at home when you can use a food that disappears to accomplish the same purpose?

5. You can practice sound nutrition and preventive medicine. Whfoods.org has announced: "Now, Eric Gershwin and colleagues from the University of California, Davis, US, have discovered a new way in which flavonoid-rich apples help protect against heart disease and cancers that goes beyond their flavonoids' antioxidant effects.... The apple flavonoids were able [to] protect the cells from the effects of TNF by inhibiting the signals in this pathway that would otherwise damage or kill cells."

6. You can chew the juice right out of the fruit-no squeezers! Tired of carting a water bottle everywhere with you? Just wrap your mitt around a solid that metamorphoses to liquid as you crunch your way to staying hydrated between water coolers and refreshment stands. Did you know that apples were made to fit in pockets?

7. You can store them until you need them-not black bananas! Are you one of those people who buy five bananas and only eat three? Save your money, and consume the fruit that doesn't come with fruit flies in the wings! You don't have to peel it. You can have your choice of colors, too.

8. You can bake pies to die for-and freeze them for holidays! Create a whole new image of YOU. Bake the pies for holidays, and let everybody else bring the stuff that's no fun to prepare. After all, the gravy may be lumpy, and the meat may be tough as rhinoceros hide, but, with just pies on your mind, you'll be rolling in dough.

9. You can bake them all by themselves-and add a la mode! Apples like company-sometimes. The crème de la crème means a hat of French Vanilla, stuffed with nuts or raisins. Add the frozen ice cream while the baked apples are hot right out of the oven. This can be your version of Apple Alaska.

10. You can carry them to meetings-and consume every drop! No more rushing to find concession machines down strange corridors. You're the one so smart that you thought of everything. You can bring extras to make friends, who will die with envy. You will hear them muttering under their breath: "Why didn't I think of getting more for less?"