SPEAKING OF WORD USE. People at college will call like, a sweatshirt with a zipper a jacket, and my Minnesotan brain is like nooo only things you put on for outdoor use only for warmth or rain protection are jackets. That's a sweatshirt. but apparently to them the only the sweatshirts without zippers are sweatshirts and this is so confusing to me
This thread has made me miss Houston so much. The Taco Cabana was on my way to work, there was a 24 hour place called Chacho's down the street where I ate many a taco at 2am while I was a grad student who didn't sleep, and I haven't thought about Taco Bueno in over a year but now I am legitimately upset that the are none in Maryland. :(
Hey speaking of fast food places-- Chik-Fil-A and Krispy Kreme. I know Krispy Kreme expanded (and then fell flat on their face because they expanded right before the 'donuts will kill you with one bite' health frenzy) but I still run into people who say things like "Oh yeah I've never tried one of theirs, it's like Dunkin Donuts, right?" Which no!! No they are RADICALLY DIFFERENT. I want to go to a Tim Hortons just to round out my Donut Experience and have proper data for all three of them. (Funny note about Chik-Fil-A and the boycotts that were running around for a while: it's always a bit of a surprise to me when people go "CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT THEY WOULD--" because yes?? They are a very overtly Mormon company. I got a little book about jesus in my kids meal every time we went. Still buying their food tho, idc if the CEO wants me to burn in hell or whatever, their chicken is GOOD and their fries & tea are to die for) Oh, and that's the other thing. Most miserable part of living in Cali was ordering sweet tea and getting just.... iced tea with lemon and................. packets of sugar on the side.........................................
... Ok I find the sweetness of iced tea in the southern USA, so I like getting iced tea with no sugar, but if someone orders sweet tea I would not have expected what you got.
There are a lot of people who think "sweet tea" means "I want iced tea with some sugar to sweeten it myself", especially if they don't have brewed sweet tea in their area. On that note: lemonade. I'm not a fan of the lemon-sugar-water mix, but hearing that lemonade generally nets you a lemon-lime soda in Ireland was weird.
I have a weird hang up about lemonade... In that I keep getting surprised it's made from lemons and not limes. But limes are called limon in Spanish, and I like having limonada. But it is not made out of lemons. But limeade, in my experience, is something pretty different, sometimes a soda, sometimes a weird... Not quite lime drink. And I love limonada, really strong limonada with little sugar, so basically anytime I live in the USA I have the weird mind loop of "oh right this is something different". Limas, in Spanish, or at least in Bolivia (there are regional differences in fruit names along most South America) is s special soft sweet citrus that we can just eat. It's really nice and if we use it for -ade making, it's usually a washed whole lima that gets whisked for a couple of seconds in the blender with water and sugar (preferably with ice too) and then strained. And it is not a lemonade either.
@PRelations yeah chick fil a actually uses peanut oil to make their chicken instead of what everyone else uses, it's part of their distinct taste. also kinda weird considering peanuts are such a huge allergen for a lot of people. @Raire lemonade from limes sounds way better than lemons. i don't really get limeade either because it almost tastes like someone made a lime syrup and injected it into fizzy water. also this reminds me that coca cola used to make this limon flavor that i loved as a kid, but i can only ever find it in diet now :(
Statusbox on the main page has temporarily become "how many different names for craneflies are there?" Spoiler: these big bugs I didn't even know they were actually craneflies 'til... tenth or eleventh grade? We call 'em 'mosquito-hawks' in my area (southeast Pennsylvania), and I've straight-up never heard the 'gollywhoppers' someone else mentioned.
we call them skeeter eaters, which is slang for mosquito eaters. just learned today they don't eat mosquitoes. i also know some people who call them daddy long legs like the spider of the same name.
here in new york we call those "abominations" :P also, wrt food: i pity all those who have never had a new york bagel, they r to die for
@Deresto Lox is brined salmon according to Google. I remember it being a topping option at a Fancy Hotel breakfast bar once, maybe in Maryland or DC? (It's been a few years, I don't really remember, all the cons I went to with a certain person just kind of blurred together into one amalgamate horror-memory.) No idea if New York bagels are A Thing down here in PA because I am a filthy heathen who eats her bagels plain and usually untoasted, maaaybe warmed with honey and/or butter if I want warm bread-y thing.
i cant eat untoasted bagels unless they're Certified Bagels(tm), like from a bagel place. if they're generic costco bagels i have to toast them bc otherwise they taste limp and sad to me :vv
Maybe a little bit less of a 'culture' thing and more of a dialect thing but: ahl-mond or am-mond peh-cahn or pee-can car-mal or care-ah-mel (And what comes to mind when I say "farmer's fields"? Could be a vague image, or could be a specific crop in question. Something I was wondering while eating walnuts.)
ahl-mond, peh-cahn (though usually people say it fast enough that it's hard to tell which pronunciation), car-mal and my immediate thought is corn or wheat.
All-mund or all-mun. Pee-cahn. Care-uh-mell or car-mull depending on the context. Like caramels are the first pronunciation, but caramel apples are the second.
