It ' s handy if you want to make apple sauce , apple butter , Apple pie . Especially if making large quantities . The skins don ' t always cook well . <| sep |> Yes and no , speaking strictly about northern Mexico , some states suffer more than others . Nuevo Leon is fairly safe for travel and strict safety programs are in place , my city , Monterrey , which is in NL , was hit pretty hard during the violence spike going from an ultra peaceful city to a city of chaos and dead , but now is all in the past , Monterrey safety is just as you would expect from any big city , you know , don ' t wander into low districts , be mindful of where you walk alone at night etc , but as soon as you pass state border to Tamaulipas thats another story . Tamaulipas has been struggling a lot with insecurity lately , but the norm is that as long as you travel by day you ' re good , from what I heard , if you get stopped by cartels most of the times is for revision I actually have a fun story which I will put at the bottom and if you act calm nothing bad will come your way . Other states like Chihuahua and Coahuila which also had a lot of insecurity are clear now , and Ciudad Juarez a frontier city which was a particular violence hotspot is now peaceful again . Others states like Sonora are better off avoided if possible and there ' s nothing interesting there to top it off . So , point being , frontier does not equal violence , but the whole north is not absolutely safe is although most is . Fun story My dad works for John Deere industries , which produces and sells agriculture and to a lesser extent , construction machinery . This is a story from a friend of his from the company from when the situation was ugly . His friend , who also works in Mty , because of his job , he was tasked with the duty of going to a dealership store don ' t really know how to call it in english , like , where you go to buy new cars directly from the manufacturer , ieford in another city in another state . For company travel employees are presented with the option of traveling with a company car , which he took . On his way to the city , almost before arriving he noted that there was a horse racing event going on , being curious and because he likes horse races he decided to check it out . Once he arrived the gates were opened immediately for him , which was odd , but he entered , and then proceeded to take a seat . He was offered multiple times the chance to place a bid , which he rejected every time as he was only there to watch , but he noticed somethings . First , everyone talked to him with respect , and second , all the bids where extremely high bids . The situation rubbed him in a bad way and decided to leave . On his way to the dealership he noticed he was being followed every since he leaved the site . Once he arrived he went directly with the manager to inform him of the situation , when they came to the front of the store the manager was asked in a friendly way if he knew the man , to which he said he did , that he was a delegate from Mty . The men then leaved and the manager explained everything to him . Turns out that that was a private cartel event and that he was allowed to pass because he had a John Deere car because they deal a lot with the company it was common for everyone to know who the narcos were but still do nothing , they thought he was an executive or something , and after his odd behavior and his early leave they checked him out to make sure he was not a spy . In reality , only enemies of the cartels are killed , and most of the casualties during the harder years of the drug war were people form an opposing cartel . Hope this was informative , also , sorry for my writing , I am on mobile atm .