Ok, just what is the deal here? I strategically planted on tables, pick-pocketed them on to people but they just don't seem to use them. Waited an entire (oblivion) day, trailing npc's around tables. What exactly am I doing wrong?
What I eventually noticed was that NPCs take food from barrels and eat it, so what I did was took all the food out of the barrels and replaced it all with a poison apple and it worked. So to recap, try putting the poison apple in a barrel that normally contains food.