I spent a good part of my youth in the province of Nizhny Novgorod, which happens to be the world capital of the apple. In Nizhny Novgorod, there are not simply apple trees scattered about the country-side; there are forests of apple trees - forests as wild and ancient as Russia itself - in which apples grow in every color of the rainbow and in sizes ranging from a walnut to a cannonball. Oh, we'd find them ticked in our omelets at breakfast,...