That’s as may be, and I’m familiar with the smaller cotter pins because most brake jobs involve a few of those, at least on old cars. But those trailer hitch pins I’ve never heard called anything BUT a cotter pin. Left coast thing maybe?
Apple butter has been hard to find for about a year.
Maybe. I’m from CA and “cotter pin” only brings to mind the hair pin type. While I’ve seen the straight kind, they’re rare enough in my experience that I’m not sure I ever had a name for them.
beowulff’s own link lists “Hair Pin Cotter Pins” under “Types of Cotter Pins”.
On the plus side, it’s dead easy to make, especially if you can find some really hard, sour apples and use some brown sugar to make it. Comes out ambrosial.
What, nobody mentioned matzoh yet (however one might spell that)?
Away out here in the yonder boonies (yeah, just a 90 minute drive from San Francisco), just try finding it in any grocery store around here. Or at least, find a clerk who has any idea what that is. With a little searching, one might find it somewhere around Passover time, maybe. The rest of the year, fugeddaboutit. One clerk thought maybe I was asking for masa.
At work I’ve become known as the person your hold up the “weird vegetable” in front of for identification. Some of the young’uns really struggle with that.
We also sometimes with an issue with something having two different names, like pak choi/bok choi, or anise/fennel. Then we have folks from abroad who will call a zucchini a “courgette” (which, I believe, is the more common term in Europe) or an eggplant an “aubergine”. This confuses most of my co-workers who have never been out of the US Midwest.
Yep, I’ve run into that - young adults who are unfamilar with unprocessed food.
When we hire folks we run them through a course that makes sure they have some notion of the more common things we sell (defined as those we sell the most of in our area) but if you have never cooked it can be a struggle. Which is why we also let them know who they can ask if they have a problem.
It gets even more fun with items swathed in plastic. At this point I can distinguish between beets and plums most of the time they’re behind plastic, but if a customer used multiple bags I might say “these are beets, right?” just to confirm. Then there is cilantro/coriander (another case of dual terminology!) and Italian/flat-leaf (again!) parsley - those I always doublecheck because even for the experienced they can be confused for each other unless you can get a sniff of them.
[nitpick] Kohlrabi is not a root vegetable. It’s a stem vegetable, although they leaves are also edible [/nitpick]
Peppers is an area where I am weak. It doesn’t help that apparently a lot of our customers who use peppers also don’t know what they’re called, they just grab them at random. I occasionally ask the abeulas coming through my line, but often they only know the Spanish and my look-up table for peppers is only in English. I once had someone say “why don’t you just look at the picture on that thing?” but my check out doesn’t provide pictures - the self checkout does, but they pictures are so tiny that it’s hard to distinguish jalapeños from serranos. I wish I knew my peppers better. The guys who inventory must having fits because I’m sure what they’re getting from the registers isn’t matching what they had in stock.
It’s the little stickers with the four (for conventional) or five (for organic) numbers on them. Some of our organics have different packaging than conventional. As for apple varieties - after awhile the color, size, and scent starts to tip you off though I’m sure some of the customers cheat with the red varieties that look very similar.
No, a grass whip is a light tool shaped like a golf club with a serrated straight blade instead of the head, and you swing it more or less the same. A sling blade is much heavier and has a wide blade that sticks straight out the end of a heavier straight handle more like an axe handle. The blade tapers down to a hook pointed off to the side. It’s also known as a ditch bank blade or a kaiser blade.
Lysol Concentrate, in the Brown bottle.
They were baffled.
He was probably looking for dried blood, sold as deer and rabbit repellant.
I remember these being called thumb drives: I have one of the early ones and it is the size of my thumb.
I’m surprised that the person didn’t send you to the bakery. Wikipedia states: “The Long John is a bar-shaped, yeast risen pastry like a doughnut either coated entirely with glaze or top-coated with cake icing. They may be filled with custard or creme. The term Long John is used in the Midwestern U.S. and Canada, and has been used in Texas.” (I wonder if that outlier Texas usage is the result of the internal migration many years ago when the Midwest economy tanked and people there moved to Texas. Texans called the people from Michigan “black tags” because at the time the Michigan license plate had a black background.)
A few years ago my wife sent me to the local Hannaford to get some lard for her Christmas pies. I had assumed it would be refrigerated (it isn’t) and so wasn’t finding it. I saw a kid, late teens maybe early 20s. It went like this:
Excuse me. I’m looking for the lard.
Lard? What’s that?
Pig fat. Used in cooking
[looked grossed out] We don’t sell that.
Yes you do. Get me someone older than 30
[He brings over a manager]
Lard? It’s in aisle such and such.
Well, I’ve never seen, used, nor heard the names of grass whips and sling blades until reading this thread. I have used a hoe with a somewhat similar design, but it was used by running the blade just below the surface of the ground, cutting off the tops of weeds.
And while i know what dried mushrooms are, I’ve never cooked with them (my dad used them when making certain Chinese dishes i don’t make) and wouldn’t know which aisle to look for them in.
Malt powder. I told the store clerk “it’s a sweet powdered milk product that you put in ice cream to make milk shakes” and she shook her head slowly like I was trying to summon demons. Same thing with capers.
I don’t mind people not knowing stuff, but for chrissakes, ask a manager. It can’t be that often that people will waste their own time schlepping to the grocery store for an item that can’t possibly in a million be found in a grocery store.
Yeah, I have found that sometimes when the [usually young] store employee never heard of the item I’m looking for they get this self-righteous attitude of if they never heard of it then it cannot possibly exist.
I’m not surprised - when there are multiple names for a product ( that article says they are also called “eclairs” and “bar doughnuts” in other areas) or multiple products with the same name (“long johns” to me would be long underwear ) , you can’t really know if the person has never heard of the product ( I’ve never heard of or seen a “grass whip” or “sling blade” by any name) or if they know the product by a different name/know a different product by that name and that’s why they can’t tell you where to find the “long johns”
Underwear or doughnuts?
Whoa! My hat is off to you! 
This post will self-destruct in 5…4…3…2… sssss 
It’s practically impossible to get a handle on all the peppers there are. I watch a lot of cooking shows, and the TV chef will say, “Chop up a chili pepper,” and won’t specify what kind. There are a ZILLION different kinds! In my south Texas neighborhood grocery store alone there are a dozen different fresh ones and about the same number of dried ones.
Even so, Rachael Ray used to talk about “Italian frying peppers” that her mom used in upstate New York. I could never find anything by that name around here. Did she mean cubanelles? I dunno. Pati Jinich is pretty good about naming the specific peppers she is using, and so is Chris Kimball. Jamie Oliver is not-- apparently, to him a chili is a chili is a chili.
BTW, jalapenos turn red when they’re ripe.
Or bicycle 
Try a search on “corno di capra”, AKA goathorn peppers.
The grocery store we shop at categorizes bulk peppers as “miscellaneous hot peppers” all the same price per pound. Makes it easy.
Did you look near the peanut butter? That’s where I’ve seen it.