Cutting Apples

2026-03-13

I only have a few minutes before I gotta pick up kids but I thought of a topic yesterday and do not have the mental capacity to do work right now. I did get a root canal today, but that will be the story for another blog perhaps.

But yesterday my lovely wife Sneha was cutting apples for our kids. And the way she cuts apples is to take a knife, and make four cuts to the apple, all outside the core, leaving four semicircle pieces of edible apple and one core piece. She cut it up pretty finely for the kids and then give it to them. I ate up the sides of the core pieces.

And this is different than how I was raised to cut apples. Mostly from my Dad, and Grandmother and Grandfather on his side, I learned to cut apples and it is mostly for pie, but even if I am eating them I will cut them this other way. I cut through the apple in half and then cut that into half to make a quarter. Then I take the knife and try to cut out the core. Then if I am feeding it to kids I will cut it more finely.

But I realize that this is how I go about lots of my tasks. I am pretty slow, I am slower than my wife at most things, washing dishes, cooking, cutting apples. But I take my time to try to be careful. For dishes I get them mostly clean and then put them in the dish washer, for cooking I take my time in general, and for cutting apples I try to minimize core wastage.

And that is my entire story, there isn’t a super thrilling ending, but I just realized that my wife optimizes for speed a lot and she is quicker than I am at cutting apples for sure.

-Gary