Bargain Produce!
Dear God...


I came back to the studio after grocery shopping the other day completely freaking out!
I was ranting hysterically to everyone at work at the amazing grocery store experience I had just had.
and truly it was amazing.
Normally I get my groceries from the Berkeley bowl.
It's a large kind of hippy dippy supermarket where you can get lots of unusual produce
and they have a huge bulk foods section, are reasonably priced, and carry lots of really great stuff.
But it's primarily the produce and bulk foods sections I shop at.
I can get honey made from bees who live on an exclusive diet of black berry flowers,
red quinoa, tropical fruits, weird freak sized eggplants etc.

But a friend revealed to me that a new Berkeley bowl had just opened closer to me
and that she had heard mixed reviews from her friends but it seemed like something worth checking out.
I had just gone grocery shopping a few days earlier and only needed more produce
so I told myself that this was going to be a surgical strike, in and out,
no being seduced by esoteric superfluous things like Bolivian vanilla pods or marinated plums from Madagascar.

So I started perusing the produce isles being quit impressed by the variety and overall clean open space,
when I asked the guy working if there was a bargain produce section like at the other Berkley bowl.
I usually buy my produce from such a section because i don't have any produce prejudice whatsoever
and am just as happy cooking any vegetable really.
The bargain section usually has good and often unusual produce at greatly reduced prices,
and introduces a delightfully random quality to my cooking,
as it forces me to cook with produce that I may have otherwise not considered.

The guy directed me around the corner to a bunch of large wooden shelves covered with bags of produce,
being prodded at here and there by old hunched over Chinese women.
(A good sign in the bay area, as old Chinese women are the best at sniffing out good deals on produce,
whether it be a farmers market, fruit stand, or whatever)

... I don't remember much of the next fifteen minutes.
It was a blur of drunken produce intoxication.
Before me lay countless huge bags all marked a dollar or less
of amazing and often very expensive produce.
One bag was full of about fifteen avocados, another with four huge mango's,
another had two giant bunches of asparagus, another had two huge eggplants,
bags of artichokes, zuchinni, mushrooms
still others were full of peaches, strawberries, black berries etc.
I couldn't believe my eyes, and greedily snatched at the bags
only to find that the bag of avocados was only one of many such bags,
and that there seemed an endless supply of obscenely cheap high quality produce ready for the grabbing.
So I piled the bags into my hand basket far above it's rim,
(until one of the Chinese women couldn't resist pointing at me and laughing)
and made my way to the register.
The following picture shows the fruits of my labor (ba-dum chee!).
That entire table of produce much of which is being obscured from view cost me only fifteen dollars!
Crazy times!