Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Nova Scotia Goodies

When possible, I like to buy local. With that said, I do take ‘local’ to mean Maritime. The closer to home, the better is my rule. So, there’s local and then there’s local. In some cases, “Canadian” will do. Last week in Nova Scotia ended in the Annapolis Valley, across the bay from Saint John, and a virtual cornucopia of food. It’s a collection of small towns laced together with fields and farms, and more farmers’ markets then grocery stores. I picked up a lot of goodies.

The Annapolis Valley is famous for its apples, and I could hardly restrain myself from buying a dozen different kinds of apples. Luckily, I’ll have plenty more opportunities this fall, so I’m just going to stretch out the fun. On this trip, I bought my favourite honey crisps- almost as sweet as a pink lady but more flavourful. The cox orange apple is a new one to me. Apparently it’s a cross between an apple and an orange- how cool is that? The flavour is OK, but it is quite pretty, and small to fit completely in my hand. The third variety I purchased is the kestrel, a new variety described as ‘melt in your mouth’. I haven’t tried it yet, but it smells good, and is the reddest apple red. This might be the apple Eve ate.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks and sounds like a good haul!
Here every one is familiar with Norther Spies, and apple I had not previously been familiar with, excellent for baking. On the other hand these folks have never heard of Transparent apples - they just have no idea what they are missing but I know what I'm missing!

Nerine said...

i've never heard of transparent apples...

Shayo said...

Yum, those look good. I tried honey crisps for the first time a few weeks ago and was very impressed. Not so much by the flavor but by the texture which was crispier than the apples I usually eat. Never tried a pink lady though...

Anonymous said...

Transparents - the little apple tree in Hampton! As well, a tree back In St. Albans where I grew up though no one knew what it was called. It was the exact same type as the Hampton apples, unfortunately damaged from road work and shortly after cut down. Not good for cooking so much (they go soft) but a wonderful eating apple!