Really fresh vegetables

Buying salad greens and herbs is a different experience here. To make sure they are fresh, many items (including lettuce, and basil which is far more common and cheap here than back home) are sold still growing in their own cute little plastic pots, complete with dirt and roots.

I would have thought this was a gimmick and a little ridiculous, but the truth is that back home we end up throwing out a fair amount of salad greens because they don't get eaten fast enough. Two weeks ago I bought too many greens for a dinner party I was hosting, and yesterday the remaining greens (still with pot and dirt) were doing just fine in my fridge. Some gimmicks work.