California is fruity.

California is a fruit show off. Lemon trees in parking lots, orange trees lining the highways, nectarine trees in neighbors' yards... and then the fruit selling guys, who cut up mangoes and pineapples and canteloupes and watermelon and coconut and cram it all into a giant bag for $5.

Those fruit guys should win Top Chef honors for what they do on sunny days.

Mack's dad is a bit of a fruit junkie, so their house is always stocked with fruit. There are, of course, bananas and oranges and apples, but thanks to the Iranian store Elat, there's also cherries and blackberries and sweet lemons. Elat sells fruit for half of what it is at the regular grocery store, so even if you have to park your cart and then scramble around the store collecting your goodies, it's worth it.
Just before we got to LA, they'd stocked up on fruit from Elat, including baskets of strawberries. Or some steroidal version of strawberries.

That is a strawberry next to a Gala apple... a strawberry so large that only it and about six of its giant friends fit in the normal-sized strawberry basket. Now that's almost as impressive as a pluot.

[An apple aside, since we're on the subject, my mom and dad discovered these apples called Honey Crisps that are the best apples on the planet. Sprinkle a touch of cinnamon on them and it's like dessert. Honey Crisps put other apples to shame.]