Unique Date Idea-Produce Picking

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

My husband and I both had the day off today-a rare phenomenon because our schedules never align. Due to business demand being ultra-slow  (thanks a lot COVID-19), my work asked if we would take a day off each week for the next four weeks. To me, this is a blessing in disguise as I get to spend more quality time with my sweet hubby!

So onto the topic of this blog post: unique date idea! Today we were thinking of what are we going to do with our day off? Well, my husband is in the restaurant industry, so he has some tricks up his sleeve where to find the best produce.

We went to Specialty Produce in San Diego-a hidden gem where they are essentially a farmers market type warehouse. Check out their website here.

Anyone can shop here-you don’t have to have a restaurant license to shop here like some other restaurant suppliers.

First, it was relieving to be able to buy groceries without seeing a 1-2 hour line out the door. I went to Walmart last night around 9 pm to skip the crowd and there were aisles and aisles of bare shelves. Sad that everyone is so worked up over this virus, and grocery stores can’t keep up with the demand.

Luckily, I was able to buy one case of water, orange juice, sparkling ice flavored water, tuna steak, and 4 cornish hen. Everything else was pretty much pantry goods, ice cream, soda, beer, and wine.

When you walk into Speciality Produce, you have to check in on an iPad with a store representative and put on latex gloves. We also were required to use hand sanitizer before putting on the gloves.

They explained that the gloves are a normal store policy, but the hand sanitizer is a recent addition because of the virus. I am a bit of a germaphobe so I loved the idea of having gloves on to pick up the produce-because people are going in and touching the fruit and vegetables.

Specialty Produce has an incredible array of fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, seasonings, oils, sauces, pantry goods, and dairy.

If you want only organic produce, they have a section for that too. Naturally, organic items will cost more than their common sections.

The bulk of their fruits and veggies are in large walk-in freezers-I was in a skirt and I was super cold, so I rushed through those areas. If you go and aren’t like Elsa where the cold doesn’t bother her, make sure to wear thick warm clothes so you can really enjoy looking through the produce.

I saw foods I never knew existed before: Check out BLACK corn on the cob and PURPLE cauliflower, LIME GREEN cauliflower, and ORANGE cauliflower!

The produce is luscious and large. We found large tomatoes, lemons, oranges, yams, potatoes! Even Sprouts could not hold a candle to their selections.

I am hosting Easter at our home this year (our first Easter as a married couple!!) and I want to add beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables to our table as decor, and we can eat later.

This trip to the grocery store had my husband and I nerding out over the possibilities for our Easter table. So many gorgeous colors! I’ll make sure to share pics next month.

We checked out without having to wait in line-thank God-and surprisingly our bill came to $25.85! I compared to Sprouts with the same items, and we definitely came under. The Sprouts equivalent would have cost us $27.14.

Now you may think that difference is not significant, however, the number of options, variety, and size compared to most grocery stores is far superior.

At the end, they have a fruit and vegetable museum where they have all sorts of different types of fruits and vegetables listed on the wall, with interesting facts about them!

One fact I enjoyed reading was that back in the day, Avocados were known as “poor man’s butter”! If they only knew how we Millenials love our Avocado toast! Lol