A CPM Field Trip – Larry’s Produce, Manas Ranch and the Whopperito

Sometimes CPM gets to carve out a day to have a field trip. We talk about taking field trips all the time, places we’d like to go, things we’d like to see. A nice portion of these field trips never happen, but it was time to squeeze one in.

Since kicking off CPM Delivers, we have needed an abundance of good food to cook. We started the day with a plan: hit Larry’s Produce in Suisun and pick $0.29 per pound tomatoes, find a local butcher from which to source meat, then can tomatoes to leave us with fresh sauces and tomatoes all winter long.

Unfortunately, the u-pick tomatoes weren’t ready yet. We picked up a haul of fresh produce at Larry’s, attempted a bad selfie with a giant chicken, and changed the plan.

The gas station where we stopped had an attached Burger King. We’re not big (or even small) on fast food and Burger King is at the bottom of the fast food barrel (their sides are awful, burger buns always dry, and seriously – if you can sell me 10 chicken nuggets for $1.49… did you put any chicken in them??).

Trish: “Want to try a Whopperrito?”
Amelia: “Ha, no, that sounds awful. You’re going to go get one anyway, aren’t you?”
Trish: “Yep. I gotta see this. We can blog about it.”

Yep, it was awful. It was HUGE, too. It had whopper items like burger, lettuce, pickle, mayo, and the addition of some weird Whopperrito mystery sauce that tasted vaguely burrito-esque. The worst part? The tortilla. One bite had me picking tortilla off my teeth for a few minutes. We each had one bite and disposed of said Whopperrito.

Our next stop was Esparto, California. Esparto is a very small farming community located north of Vacaville. There is an abundance of produce stands, local honey stands and other great places to stop. Right outside of Esparto we hit a produce stand right off Putah Creek Road and picked up some very fresh and tasty corn. We continued on to one of our favorites, Manas Ranch who claims to have “The Best Peaches in the West”. And they are really good! If you’ve ever been treated to some of Trish’s peach jam, there’s a good chance those peaches came from Manas. We got a box of August Flame peaches, and picked up an organic watermelon that was so fresh it still had the vine attached. We also found some perfectly ripe figs growing on the side of the road and stopped to pick some.

We headed a little further down the road to another farm called Motroni Ranch which had fresh zucchini, figs, tomatoes, and olive oil. The stand owner told us all about how he grew and picked 1,000 pounds of olives to make his own olive oil.

Finally, we headed to Manas alter ego, Manas Custom Meats. Manas has very high quality, local meats and we love to use their stuff whenever we can. We picked up some chuck roast, sausage, bones for stock, a couple BBQ’d tri-tips to feed our families, some fresh made turnovers, and shared an awesome tri-tip sandwich. If we had needed fresh peach pies, they have those, too!