
Category: Pick of the Week
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Go, Go Gold Rush!
There may not be much more to be said about Gold Rush that you don’t know already, but we’ll give it a try with a bit of interesting apple history… Gold Rush is a variety out of the Purdue Rutgers apple breeding program (using natural plant sex methods, NOT GMOs!). The breeder decided to discard Gold…
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Go for the Gold: Golden Supreme
If the closest you’ll ever get to Olympic Gold is by handling your TV remote, then here’s an easier way to feel you’ve won that special gold….by crunching into a Golden Supreme apple! This bright apple is a delight to the tastebuds at this time of year, when you’re still thinking peaches, but there’s (finally)…
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Pick of the Week: Winecrisp!
Winecrisp is a complex, crunchy, sweet, and very hard apple with a fruity sweet flavor (with hints of berry!) and a beautiful dusky red skin. When we planted this new variety, it was simply known as Co-op 31 (the poor nameless thing). We only planted one tree, just to try it out. There’s nothing too…
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“Florina Flo” Comic Strip??
Shall we take a journey down memory lane to our childhood today? Back in the day, when we all chewed gum, Bazooka was quite a thing. Pink, perfumy, rock-hard at first (usually), we dug in anyway and then attempted to blow bubbles with it. At least for this chewer, bubble-blowing seemed rather tricky with Bazooka. But then Bubble…
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Aw, Snap!
Sugar Snap that is…and not the peas – the apples! The name says it all: they are not too sweet and not too tart, have a great flavor and crunch, and they’re quite juicy. We think they have the quintessential apple flavor and texture when your brain thinks of the word ‘apple’. Most everyone just…
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The Sansa Sensation!
Sansa is a delightfully fruity and sweet early apple. Not commercially ‘pretty’, perhaps, with its non-solid pinkishyellowish/lightly russet-y color scheme, but it certainly looks beautiful to us! And you know we at North Star do not care much about looks anyway – it’s flavor that counts! Every year when the Sansa start coming in, I…
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Sansa: Your Pick of the Week!
You are in for a real treat this week and next as you discover (or re-discover!) the Sansa apple. Don’t let the unassuming, “unattractive” appearance of this gem fool you. Remember the old adage, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. Here at North Star, you are wise to do likewise with fruit appearance. We…
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These are Not Your (Grand)Mother’s Concords!
Seedy snotballs of goo with thick unchewable skin. Sounds gross, eh? Well, that, if you think about it, is how you might describe the texture of a Concord grape. Oh my, yuck. Sure, the flavor can be outstanding, but I’d rather it in juice or jelly form, thank you. For those of us who grew…
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Pick of the Week: Garlic!
Garlic has the reputation of keeping vampires at bay. I wonder if that’s because WE love it so much we can’t bear the notion that vampires would. Or maybe it’s all an excuse to drape ourselves in ropes of amazing garlic? Or maybe vampires are really sensitive to garlic breath? In any case, everyone knows…