In the last year of pandemic isolation, my one and only excursion in contact with other people has been my weekly grocery shopping excursion to Berkeley Bowl, aka The Temple of Produce. It has been here since 1977, when I was an undergraduate, and was originally in a former bowling alley, hence the name. You can get everything there, but the main attraction is the huge produce section which has just about every variety of fruit and vegetable you can imagine.
I live walking distance away, but for the past several months my sister has been driving over from Daly City. We get to see each other, and and I don't have to schlep heavy bags back from the store now that I don't have a car any more.
I feel comfortable shopping there because they are observing the most sensible hygiene and social distancing measures: they only let a certain amount of people into the store at a time; they wipe down the carts between use; there are markings on the floor to regulate how people line up to check out so that everyone stays a good distance away from each other; masks are mandatory and for a long time they provided gloves at the entrance. If we bring our own bags, we put our stuff into the cart and take it outside to bag on tables, to prevent cross-contamination and bottlenecks. In the early months, there were often long lines (although they moved quickly) to get in, but we haven't had to wait in a line for months now. I can get almost everything I need there. The only thing haven't been able to find lately is compact flourescent lightbulbs so I'll have to go to Ace Hardware for those.
Here's a demo of a recipe for lemonade using the shiso leaf, from the wonderful Berkeley Bowl Cookbook:
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