Produce useful?

Fish: Cooking poke bowl, fish grand meal, fish tacos or other fish dishes
Fruits and vegetables: Cooking fruit salad, garden salad or other fruit/vegetable dishes
You can see the options better if you click on "Cook..." on the fridge or stove instead of "Have dinner..." or "Serve dinner...". There is a checkbox to show whether you want it to make use of fresh ingredients. The ingredients you have in your personal inventory (not household inventory) will automatically show up.

Fruits and vegetables can also be replanted
Both produce and fish can be used as fertilizer for other plants.

Fruits and vegetables can be eaten as is and depending on quality you will get stronger moodlets. They can be replanted, they can be sold, they can be used in cooking to reduce cooking costs. Curtain mods make it so cooking REQUIRES you to have certain fruits or vegetables in inventory to cook. You know, INGEDIENTS. Plasma Fruit can be used as a full grown (No pun intended) food source for vampires, making your garden into farm.

Fish can be sold for money, can be used as decoration, can be kept in fish bowls, one specific fish is needed to make Ambrosia.

Both Fish and fruits/vegetables can be used as a fertilizer, with fish in general being better one.

SO yeah. A LOT of uses.

Thank you both! Didn't know about the 'cook' thing. Does produce/fish in fridge count? Have noticed fish in inventory goes bad very quickly.

You might have to take it out of the fridge and put it into your personal inventory before clicking on "cook". But just like in real life, fresh fish is best eaten as soon as possible.

Another use that I forgot-- fresh fruits and vegetables are a great instant food source for toddlers. Toddler can carry a bunch of fruit around in her pocket, it never goes bad, and she doesn't need an adult to help her with it (other than give it to her in the first place).

Thank you! Will have to test it out. I seldom bother with rug rats, but that's helpful as well for the couple of families that have them.

To add to this, some plants will also give off moodlets when your Sims are around them, such as Roses are romantic and I believe Tulips for Energy. If you place a crocus plant or a flower arrangement scented with crocuses near a bee hive, it will keep them calm. You can also use plants to scent other flower arrangements. Bluebells will keep the arrangement fresh forever. Plants can also be used to scent laundry and candles and be used to make Fizzy juice drinks.

EDIT: A couple more things. There's a berry tree in JA that the berries give your Sims different emotions depending on what kind they eat. The plants grown in Granite Falls are needed to make various useful Wellness ointments for that skill and for the Outdoor Explorer aspiration as well.

Some are needed for Scientist serums and some for Spellcaster potions. Noxious Elderberry is the only one I have my Sims plant from Outdoor Retreat so they can craft insect repellent for use in Granite Falls and Selvadorada.

When doing a Rags to Riches game my sims are only allowed to eat whatever fruit or veggies are seasonal in their neighborhood. So, I'd say the produce is pretty valuable as Im sure would my sims, lol.

You can stack different produce moodlets for a nice handful of happy points. For example, eating a nice apple gives a +1 moodlet, a perfect one gives +3, some quality in the middle gives +2, now you have +6 happy if you eat all three.