Apples of Your Eye (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler.

We started out our apple month with this little book from the library. There’s not much to it: a little discussion of how tasty apples are, a few pictures of apple growing and of grafting an apple tree, some information on the most common varieties of apples. Nevertheless, the book got us “in the mood” for apples, and this afternoon I bought this bowl full of apples at the grocery store. (Yes, that’s a peach that insinuated itself into the apple bowl. How did that happen?)

We have these muffins for breakfast about once a month, and they’re yummy. My only problem is keeping my young sugar monsters from eating the tops off the muffins and leaving the bottom part lying on the plate. Does anyone else have children who do such things?

Yield: about six large or twelve miniature muffins

Ingredients;
1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened
1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
3/4 c. applesauce
1 3/4 c. flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
In a large bowl, cream softened butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time until light and fluffy.
Beat in applesauce. Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to butter mixture; stir just enough to moisten. Spoon into mufin cups. Bake in preheated oven about 15 minutes or until golden brown. While still warm, dip into melted butter, then into cinnamon and sugar combined.

Deuteronomy 32:10
In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye . . .

Psalm 17:8
Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.

Proverbs 7:2
Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.

Song of Solomon 2:3
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

Joel 1:12
The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree– all the trees of the field–are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away.

Zechariah 2:8-9
For this is what the Lord Almighty says: “After he has honored me and has sent me against the nations that have plundered you–for whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye–I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me.”

That phrase “apple of my eye” actually has nothing to do with apples. In Old English, the apple of the eye was the center or pupil of the eye, so the KJV translators translated the Hebrew phrase which meant “pupil of his eye” as “apple of his eye.” In other words Israel was the center of God’s love and attention.

On the other hand, Solomon’s love in the verse from Song of Solomon may have been comparing her husband to an actual apple tree since the apple trees we know today are descended from a genus of trees that still grow in Kazakhstan.

The wild ancestor of Malus domestica is Malus sieversii. It has no common name in English, but is known in Kazakhstan, where it is native, as ‘alma’; in fact, the region where it is thought to originate is called Alma-Ata, or ‘father of the apples’. This tree is still found wild in the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Xinjiang, China. —Wikipedia

As for the verse in Joel, surely the lack of fruit (apples and others) is a symbol of the withdrawal of the presence and joy of the Lord. May we find ourselves the apple of His eye in joy everlasting.

Oh, and by the way, there’s nothing at all to indicate that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in disobedience was an apple. Nevertheless, the apple has come to symbolize original sin and temptation and all that’s wrong with the world. Even if it was an apple, it certainly wasn’t the apple’s fault.