I was at Tokyo Express for lunch and the lady in front of me placed her order:
Lady: “I’d like the teriyaki chicken bowl but I don’t want any of that orange or green stuff that comes with it”
Server: “wha?”
Lady: “you know that orange and green stuff that always comes with it”
Server: “Do you mean the carrots and cucumber?”
Lady: “yeah that”
I’ve had their rice bowls, it comes with shredded carrots and sliced cucumbers. They aren’t all mashed up or anything, it’s extremely obvious what it is.
I worked with some kids once who had been abused & were malnourished. They didn’t know the words for lots of foods (incl. the word “breakfast”). This seems more like a case of vegetable-phobia though… What was her age, and what did her accent tell you?
She was just a regular middle aged white lady. I live in western Canada and she just seemed like a local lady who lives near by.
The store is next to the Safeway and both of us ended up there afterwards. I should have looked in their trolley to see if there were any vegetables in it.
I’m sure she knows what cucumbers and carrots are…she likely hadn’t looked closely at what was shredded but knew she didn’t want it. Is it marinated?
Of course, I once brought clementines to a Cub Scout meeting, and most of the kids were unfamiliar with them…anything’s possible.
I was just in line at Chipotle behind a guy who didn’t know what brown rice was.
Server (making burrito): Would you like white or brown rice?
Guy: Brown rice? What’s that?
Server: Uh. . .it’s like rice. . .that’s brown. . .and tastes a little different. Here points.
Guy: Oh. Okay, I’ll try that.
He looked and sounded like a regular American dude maybe 25-30 years old. Maybe it’s possible he’d never encountered the stuff, but it was pretty strange.
Had some fish tacos in SanFran a few weeks back that had some odd cubed item in them that was the texture of diced apples or potatoes. Tasted bland and was more of a filler. I had no idea what it was.
Checked the restaurants website later and found it to be jicama. Didn’t care for it.
I have conclusive proof there are aliens living amongst us. I witnessed the following scene in a small takeaway in an inner Sydney suburb, this would have been in the 80s some time. A young woman walks in and asks for a takeaway coffee. Sure, says the guy behind the counter, how do you like your coffee?
Her eyes darted around as if this was some huge trick question, and after several seconds’ hesitation she blurted out “… medium … ?”.
Who, living in western society, and being a coffee-drinker, would not understand that he was asking “Milk? Sugar?” ? An alien who had undergone insufficient cultural training (a la Third Rock), that’s who.
There was an episode of “Honey, We’re Killing the Kids” on which the newly educated parent dutifully heads to the grocery store with a nutritionist-provided shopping list. She was bewildered and clearly a little indignant at having to buy unfamiliar foods. I wish I could remember just which vegetable had her asking “______? What is a _____?” It was something more “exotic” than carrots or peas, but less so than, say, arugula.
I DO clearly remember being in the produce section of a standard American supermarket, watching a little old lady (who did not sound like she had been raised elsewhere) get surprised that the produce guy wouldn’t let her buy a single stalk of celery. How could anyone expect that at the supermarket? (I might try it a the food co-op or the farmer’s market - but not at Safeway.)
I had an engineering professor who had never seen or tasted an eggplant.
My sister in law has never eaten a green pepper simply on principle (looks wierd).
I’ve found zuccini to be completely foriegn to a bunch of folks.
A lady I know helped out at her grandkid’s school camp, and was horrified by the number of children who didn’t know the names of common vegetables, who were trying them for the first time or who had never tried them and wouldn’t because they were vegetables. She said her own grandchildren would have been among them if she hadn’t regularly had them to dinner at her house and made sure they were fed properly.
Really? I buy single stalks all the time. I don’t much like celery and buying a whole bundle means they go to waste if I don’t chop and freeze in time. There is always a bin of loose stalks usually by the loose carrots and such.
Kinda boggles that someone doesn’t recognize carrots and cucumber but who knows.
Huh. Since so many places seem to rank splitting a carton of eggs or taking a can out of a pack as felonies, it never occurred to me they would treat produce as frangible.
My supermarket sells celery by the bunch, half bunch and single stalk which is good, as we only really need 1-2 stalks a week and wouldn’t use a whole bunch.
I once had to identity zucchini and mangetout peas for the girl at the checkout.