Yes you can do it, but its hackery. I used the same hackery on EF4 to be able to use enums, though i stored as int (somewhat easier).
public enum Quantity : int
{
None = 0,
Few = 1 << 0,
Some = 1 << 1,
Bunch = 1 << 2
}
public class SomeClass
{
protected internal string AppleQuantity { get; set; }
[NotMapped]
public Quantity Apples
{
get
{
var val = (Quantity)Enum.Parse(typeof(Quantity), AppleQuantity);
return val;
}
set
{
AppleQuantity = value.ToString();
}
}
}