Yet another downside to life in the desert

Produce.

I am getting soooooooo tired of the sad little produce we get here. I made a casserole for us last night, and it called for layers of tomatoes, zucchini, and then we added a layer of yellow squash, to make it good and veggie-ful. It came out really nicely, actually (the casserole, I mean)... but that's besides the point. We had to run to the store to get the last of the ingredients we needed (like the tomatoes, zucchini, and squash). At the store, they were the saddest little zucchini I've ever seen!!! A zucchini's 12 or 14 inches or so, usually, right? At least be the time you see them in the store, I mean. These were maybe 6 or 8, and tiny! (See the picture below as proof, just in case you think I'm exaggerating - that's a pen and my cell phone for scale) And as Zach pointed out, they were bendable! They were so small, they just kinda flopped around. And the yellow squash weren't much better. About as big, proportionately, and still kinda floppy. It was like someone picked them as soon as they were big enough to be recognizable as squash, and then shipped them over to us. It was very depressing.

And it's not just the squashes! Everything in the produce department is like that. The bananas are always BRIGHT green (I actually heard from someone at the grocery store 'in town' that people around here prefer them that way). But if you get them green and try to let them ripen a little, they'll start getting brown spots before they're even yellow! The berries are the same way, too. Zach would have to make sure he ate the whole thing of strawberries within a day of buying them, because they'd start getting reeeeeally soft if he let them go longer than that. Granted, that's not hard for him to do (man can eat his weight in strawberries in an afternoon!), but he shouldn't HAVE to make a concerted effort to eat it all in a day. And the lettuce, too. I haven't been able to buy just a head of lettuce in about a month. Now, I don't buy iceberg (not as good for you, and not as good tasting, either, at least in my opinion), so I'm looking at green leaf or red leaf or romaine. No other options around here, really. Anyway, none of those options has looked remotely good recently. Already wilting noticeably, and still on the store shelf! I'm having to buy bagged lettuce for Joey and me. Nothing against the bagged stuff (I actually like it for salads, nice and easy) but it's not so good for sandwiches. Being already chopped up as it is, the bagged lettuce just doesn't stay in a sandwich very well. Very frustrating.

Yes, I realize other towns in the desert aren't this bad, and I suppose this would be better if we were in an actual town and not just a tiny outpost on the furthest edges of civilization, but still! We only have one option for groceries here on post (the commissary), and as we don't have a nearby town, it's pretty much the only grocery store within a 45+ minute radius. Pretty sad. I guess they figure they can give us whatever is cheapest in the way of meats and produce, since (technically) the commissary's a privilege, and besides, it's not like we can just go next door to the competing grocery store and have some healthy competition going to ensure we get good service.

Yeah, just another reason I'm not gonna miss this place...