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My husband is a Honeycrisp snob.

If you're not familiar with this, Honeycrisp is a kind of apple, and according to him, it is a superior apple. All other apples are lesser apples. He will not eat a Fuji, Gala or Pink Lady. Only Honeycrisp will do. My son will also only eat Honeycrisp apples. So, I guess in this case, the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree.

Since I am not an apple connoisseur, I can't really taste the difference between most of these apples. Yes, I can distinguish between the tartness of a Granny Smith and the sweetness of a Red Delicious, but all the other ones that fall in between taste pretty much the same to me. They taste like apples. I'm sure if I compared them side by side, I might notice a difference, but if I brought one kind home, I couldn't tell you what it was or how it was different than the other ones on the grocery shelves.

But my husband could.

"Did you get any Honeycrisp apples?" he asked me as he perused the fruit drawer in the fridge.

"Those are Honeycrisp," I said, not really knowing if they were Honeycrisp or not.

"No, they're not," he said looking at one in his hand. "This is a McIntosh."

I rolled my eyes. "How do you know? You didn't even taste it."

"I can tell by looking at it," he said defiantly.

"I'm sure it's as good as a Honeycrisp," I said.

"No. It's not," he said. "It's not nearly as good."

At this point I thought my husband may have picked the wrong career. He might have been better off working for the CIA to keep bad apples out of the country. As I watched him sniff the Honeycrisp imposter, it seemed he clearly had missed his calling.

"Listen, Johnny Appleseed," I said to him. "These are the only apples they had at the market, so take 'em or leave 'em."

He harrumphed, tossed the apple back in the drawer and left the room to find greener pastures, or maybe orchards, as the case may be.

Having been married to this man for over 30 years, it was no surprise to me that he'd rather go appleless than eat a lesser apple. There was only one kind of ice cream he liked, one brand of ketchup he'd put on his french fries, and one brand of chocolate worthy of his approval. Not that he's picky or anything. After all, he chose me to be his wife.

A short time later he came back in the kitchen, reluctantly took one of the lesser apples out of the drawer and pulled out a knife to cut it up.

"I'm going to have this apple, but it's not going to be as good as a Honeycrisp," he assured me.

"Well, the good news is, I know you like to have peanut butter with your apples, and I saw you were out, so I got some more," I said, whisking the jar of peanut butter out of the pantry.

He took the jar of peanut butter, looked at it and sighed.

"It's the wrong kind of peanut butter."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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