Kitchen Garden Update & Fruit Finds of the Weekend

Check out this photo of the progress of my herbs that I'm trying to grow in my kitchen! 

At first - the Basil was the one to sprout and I was afraid the Chives and Parsley weren't going to do anything BUT then the Parsley REALLY took off and there are a few sprouts for the chives now, too! 
As of this morning the Parsley is in first place!  Not that it's a race but I LOVE seeing the progress of each one!

Speaking of progress in the Kitchen Garden Department...here is the Celery I have been attempting.  I ended up cutting it right after I took the photo.  I had been removing the not-so-good parts from the bottom for a while not and it looked like it was at it's peak of growing.  So I grabbed it and gnawed on it.  It was a more intense flavor of celery and I really want to do more of this soon!  I think next time I will try and transplant it...but I will keep you posted on that - if I do it or not.  I really thought it would get taller but - again - it was only my first time trying it.

Now...on to some Fun Fruit Finds for the weekend! 

First up...OPAL APPLES.  I was drawn to these because of the unusual YELLOW color as well as their enormous size!  They are bigger than a good sized grapefruit!  THEN...I saw the name and could help but think of my blogging buddy OPAL. 

What a wonderful surprise to come across these apples!  We bought TWO of them to try.  Last night hubby and I had them for "snack" and neither one of us was able to eat the whole thing!  While reading up on these apples they are one (of the few) apples that never turn brown.  So after cutting them up I covered the slices and took them out the of frig this morning to bring with me for a snack today and this is what they looked like!  They stood up to the claim of NOT turning brown!  How COOL is that!  (No Lemon Juice needed)  I have to say I DO like these apples!  They might be my 3rd favorite at the moment!  I still like the Pink Ladies and Kiku Apples better than the Opal as far as flavor and personal preference is concerned.  But I wanted to mention them on my blog here because it was an interesting find for me...I don't see a lot of the produce that they may see in California, for example.  I know the variety of many produce items is stronger out there!  Oh!  By the way...I purchased these apples at Wegman's.

Another great Fruit Find of the weekend were these grapes!    I couldn't find too much info about them, really.  I see that some of the Wholefood Markets have sold them on occasion.  I ended up getting them at Sam Club.  I think they were like $6 or so for 3 pounds!  It was CRAZY!  It has Gioia as the brand/name and they are Extremely Sweet Pinkish Green Color Grapes that are supposed to be seedless.  Eventho I have only had a few handfuls so far - I have found about half of them to have seeds and the other half of them to be seedless.  I think they might be similar to these grapes but they look a tad different.  Each grape seems like half is a pale and fading green that morphs into a pale and fading pink.  They are really interesting!  At first I thought they might be the Cotton Candy Grapes that Christine blogged about a while back but they aren't.  They don't fit the taste profile.  These grapes taste more like a cross between an orange, grapefruit, and grape.  So...if anyone has seen or ate these grapes before let me know your thoughts and if you can find them online - I wasn't able to find a website for them, specifically.  Since this post was a little long winded I think I will stop there but I do have a lot more to blog about from the weekend so swing by again soon!