This is really confusing me.  If anyone can put in easy terms I’d be very happy!

For me a supermarket is any store that sells foods and things to eat. Alcohol as well as daily life things.
Is a grocery store different.

In japan everything is just super スーパー　meaning supermarket. I thought grocery was the same but maybe only England people used it. That both words were the same meaning just for different countries.

Some say Walmart is a supermarket.

In japan it’s all separate!!! Home goods, super, pet shops, and so on.

It’s a silly question but I really and VERY VERY curious.

Am I allows to ask this?

In reply to Mika (msg # 1):

A grocery store is a store that sells food and things, usually including beer and wine, and, depending on state law, distilled spirits. What you are calling a supermarket.

A Supermarket is a BIG grocery store.

Not all grocery stores are supermarkets. Some of them are corner groceries, especially in Urban settings, rather than suburban. And sometimes in Rural settings, where the big store is a bit of a distance away.

Selection is usually much better in a supermarket. More brands, simply because there is more shelf space. Variety (flavor, rather than manufacturer) of items, as well, is better in a supermarket for the same reason: more shelf space for more choices.

In reply to tmagann (msg # 2):

Anything smaller for me is called a コンビニ　or convenience store. We have vegetable only abs meat only shipped but something of that small is just a store!!!!

This is why I probably hated visiting America nothing made sense!

Oh..and Walmart? That's a Department tore. They only added grocery sections a few years ago. Walmart was first, as I recall, but several others have done it since. At least one in my rural town actually has a supermarket inside the department store, but most I've seen are usually just basic grocery stores.

Yeah, well, a few things didn't make sense  to me when I visited Japan, either, like speed boats attacking an air craft carrier, or whiskey in vending machines where children could buy it.. Different cultures have different ways of doing things.

In reply to tmagann (msg # 5):

Kids can’t buy it you need a special card called TASPO so no children can’t get it. THOUGH any age can look through the naughty 7-11 magazines if the workers were busy.

Japan is strict and maybe because you could not read Japanese you couldn’t read the vending machine rules no child can buy. I think you just didn’t understand kanji

In reply to tmagann (msg # 5):

I found enblush for you! It should help you understand not everyone is elegible to purchase the item for many reasons abs so on

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Sh...refecture_Kanto.html

Oh, It's quite possible. All we bought from the machine was batteries. But that's my point: Our stores are varied, and our vending machines are not. Your stores are rather specific but your vending machines have batteries and whiskey in the same machine. Rather varied.

And that's my point: different cultures do things differently, and they don't always make sense to strangers. Accepting and adapting makes for a much more pleasant travel experience.

Having spent an embarassing amount of my life in American big box retail I am about to get really, really nerdy about this and yet also not really define anything either.

Grocery store and supermarket are mostly interchangeable terms.  It's one of those things like Coke vs. soda vs. pop, the preferred term depends on where you are.  Whichever word you use, people will generally not be confused.  Again this is from U.S. perspective.

However, it's also one of those situations where every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square.  There are "grocery stores" which are not supermarkets.  They tend to be smaller stores, are more likely to be independent stores or part of a small regional chain (not part of a large chain like a supermarket typically is), and often, but not always, specialize in a particular kind of food or cuisine and often sell products you can't typically get in a regular store.  Two examples:

• Near where I live, there's an organic grocery store that specializes in locally produced foods and organic convenience foods.  But this store is very small, they only sell a few products and you couldn't go there and buy all your food for a week unless your eating habits are very peculiar.
• Where my extended family lives, in a small rural town, there's only one store that sells food, and it's relatively small, and it sells very basic staple foods, and no one calls it a supermarket.  But you can buy a week's worth of food there easily enough.

Wal-Mart, at least when I worked there, called itself a discount retailer and saw groceries as one of several "lines", each composed of different departments.  The store I worked at considered itself a Wal-Mart store, but it considered the grocery departments (freezer, bakery, meat, produce etc.) together to be the store's "supermarket".  So per Wal-Mart, the store it was not a supermarket but it had a supermarket.

I would think most people would call Wal-Mart a discount retailer, a general retailer, or a discount department store, but some people would call it a supermarket and none of those people are wrong honestly.

This is, I think, the basic underlying premise of "culture shock".  You (not the OP, necessarily...this is a more collective "you") are so indoctrinated in how your culture does it that seeing someone else do it another way feels alien and you reject it.  And that fan color your whole experience.  And it's not just other countries...it can be different regions of the same country--if you grew up in NYC, visiting a part of the US that doesn't have public transit within walking distance can be very foreign.  Living in a suburban town that largely closes shop at 9PM can set you up for culture shock if you visit Las Vegas, where half the city is just hitting its stride at 9 pm.

It's all about how you process the difference.  If you keep saying "That's not right, it doesn't make sense, I don't understand, I don't like it", you suffer significant culture shock.  If you just kind of roll with it and try to adjust and adapt, you'll still get some culture shock, but your overall experience will be far more enjoyable.

I mean, I got lucky when I visited Sweden.  I grew up in a pretty conservative area of the United States, so I was mentally braced to see a lot of things I wasn't used to seeing.  And one of the first things I saw, walking out of my apartment to the bus stop on my first day in the country, was the front page of a tabloid paper, with an article about a popular American televangelist who'd been busted in a big sex scandal, begging for his congregation to forgive him.  And I realized, "Okay...they're not so different here, after all..."

If I hadn't seen that first, the twenty-foot-tall condom advertising billboard I saw right next to the bus stop would have had a far more severe impact on my perception of the country...

In reply to drewalt (msg # 9):

I thought super and grocery meant the same thing and got screamed at because I thought it was!!!!! I feel happy knowing I’m not stupid there.

I will say my home is strangers too! They sell novelty things that make us go why are they being a shame to us all. We all have that group. I know most hear strange about my home but we all do not have  panty vending machines everywhere but drink machines are everywhere!

That's very strange to me anyone would actually care which term you used.  The only situation where I can imagine someone wanting to correct you is if you had one of those examples I used where you had a grocery store that was clearly not a supermarket.

But even that's really touchy.  There's a store in the city I live in that specializes in foods from Mexico and to a lesser degree Latin America in general that some people might call a grocery store because it's specialized and doesn't sell all the things a typical American supermarket might.  But the store calls itself a supermarket, which makes sense to be because you could easily buy a week's worth of nutritious food there, it's just the food of a different culture.

I’m now scared to me STI on anything becarse it might be wrong to them! I hope they never visit japan because people will tell thrum they are wrong too!

Supermarket = big store
Grocery store = small store
This message was last edited by the user at 04:26, Sat 28 Nov 2020.

I think I need to be careful saying trash can, trash bin, garbage can, garbage bin, trash and garbage unless those are all different things too!

If they are the same things you buy food how can anyone say differently?

I was scolded strongly and warned to use grocery but I still can’t get the difference. They both sell foods and things to live >.<

Supermarkets tend to be bigger, though some grocery stores are pretty big.  BTW Walmart is neither, though I think there are some that specialise more in groceries that might qualify.  Our local one has a couple of aisles of grocery type things, and unless you live on TV dinner type things, you'd be hard pressed to buy all your groceries, and forget about fresh meat, fruit, or vegetables.

Our local store that I would consider a grocery store, rather than a supermarket, is a small chain that started as a farmer's market based on its proximity to a nearby large farming area.  Its three branches are all still close enough to there to source a lot locally, and they don't have clothing, housewares etc.

Some supermarkets get ridiculous with what else they sell.  At one time, our local one had a huge clothing section, especially baby and children's right in the middle of the store!  it was very annoying because I was already having mobility issues, and of course a lot of the necessities were past that area.  I also heard the employees make comments about how mothers would actually bring their children there to shop after work and let them make a mess, run around, and stay past closing time.  Personally I rarely took my kids grocery shopping, I can't imagine taking them into a store like that one to shop for their clothes!  They have since remodelled and now the clothing section, not sure how much baby stuff they have, but mostly older children and adults, is in the far corner of the store, not in the road.

I'm not sure if there's anything formal in this, but my uncle owned a grocery store (long ago, prior to the Reagan years, if you must know). The difference between my uncle's store and the supermarkets I get my food in were all size. BUT, when I contrast the terms 'grocery store' and 'supermarket' there's a little voice suggesting part of the difference is how well you know the butcher in the back of the store and whether you can call the cashier by name when she's NOT wearing her nametag.

My super sells Christmas stockings from popular anime but all places do because it sells. It’s just one of those things I won’t get unless I time travel or live with Harry Potter I don’t know both will feed me.

We don’t have Walmart here but seriya is it’s sister and it carries everything. Way too much! Going there was overwhelming. I stick to yokybenimaru and itoyokado super

Man...where did you go that they scolded you?  Pretty much everyone I know uses the two terms interchangeably, unless they're specifically talking about going to Walmart or Target or something similar to buy something that is very definitely not groceries.  But even then, they'll usually refer to the store explicitly by name.

But, yeah...sounds like you just ran afoul of someone who's hyper-picky about word choice.  I don't know anyone that would even comment on using one over the other.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 20):

I honestly thought there was no different

Honestly I thought grocery was a word from England since we get taught that I’m school but it was the same meaning as supermarket. The only reason I was asking was because I was not sure why they got angry when they mean the same

In the States, a convenience store is a very small store, typically attached to a gas station.  It will sell a lot of things that you could need at any time, day or night. Snack foods, aspirin and other common over-the-counter medications, cereal, milk, coffee, bread, eggs, fountain drinks, tobacco, toiletries, periodicals (newspapers/magazines), and even some car fixes (gas cans, oil, etc.).  Generally no produce or deli items.  Prices are usually higher than a larger store, for the saved time.

In reply to DaCuseFrog (msg # 22):

I was told not to eat the food there. I can buy sushi at my combini abs other things. I could even eat my finger from there. I miss slurpies though

In reply to Mika (msg # 21):

In the UK, historically a greengrocer would sell fruit and vegetables, while a grocer would sell other foods and household items. You would go to the butcher for meat, the fishmonger for fish and the baker for breads and cakes. Plus the off licence for alcohol and the chemist for medicines, cosmetics and personal hygiene, and the newsagent for newspapers, magazines and comics. Not to mention the tobacconist...

Then supermarkets arrived, selling everything.

Nowadays all the former categories still exist, but you also have convenience stores (often called corner shops) that are basically mini-supermarkets that sell a range of goods but just with smaller selections and usually higher prices. And supermarkets now sell clothes, books, toys, games and electrical items, pretty much anything you can think off, hell, I once saw a Ford dealership inside the store!

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 24):

A corner shop? That’s a new one!  I wish English made more sense but learning new terms helps for when I travel more

Next time someone gives you a hard time for using the wrong term, ask them why it's wrong.  Either they'll teach you some nuances of English or you'll teach them that they're ridiculously pedantic...(I'm guessing the latter, in this case, because there's no good argument for being upset by someone calling a supermarket a grocery store or vice versa...)

In reply to Mika (msg # 25):

Lol! It’s called a corner shop because it would often be on the corner of a residential street.

If you’ve ever seen the Ronnie Barker comedy ‘Open All Hours’ then his character runs a 1970s corner shop. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POMMoEuwvtY

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 27):

I have not seen it! Thank you for the video! I grew up between a few countries with America lagging on any long term stay. THANK YOU

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 26):

To explain the ridiculousness of the English language:

Read rhymes with lead
and read rhymes with lead
but read doesn't rhyme with lead
and read doesn't rhyme with lead

In reply to Mika (msg # 28):

Enjoy, it’s a British classic!

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 29):

This is why I cried trying to study it in university!

And Britain or England I’ve never been to!

Everyone wishes English were a deliberately constructed language rather than the stolen hodge-podge of Latin, German, Norse, Gaelic, etc.

I mean, the beauty of English is that words enter the common lexicon from any source making it an adaptive language, the ugly of it is that words enter the common lexicon from any source making it an adaptive language...

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 32):

 Speaking it is hard. Writing it is even harder. Why can’t it be easy and have spelling easy. Both are hard but writing is very differences! I still

And yet, for all it's complexity, over two billion people speak English worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken language in the world.  Probably because it does borrow words from other languages (then "forgets" to give them back).

See...I would have always said that a grocery store just sells foodstuffs and household goods (what I consider 'groceries') and that a supermarket sells other things alongside foodstuffs and household goods, like the giant Harris Teeters that are selling patio furniture and grills and plants alongside their groceries. I'd consider selling foodstuffs to be a requisite to be considered either, however - Best Buy would never be a supermarket, for instance, but Walmart (if it happens to be one of the ones with a grocery section) might.

In reply to Mika (msg # 33):

To make matters worse, UK English and US English aren’t even the same.

We have shopping centres, they have malls.
We have pavements, they have sidewalks.
We have aluminium, they have aluminum.
We have armour, they have armor.
We have trousers, they have pants.
We have pants, they have underwear.

We could make it easy for you foreign types, but we don’t!!! :)

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 36):

That's before you even get into things like US chips, which aren't the same as UK chips, but are the same as UK crisps...  :\

You could call Best Buy a 'department store', they have departments, but honestly it's a 'specialty big-box store'.

The funny thing is, Walmart is also a 'big-box store' ('big-box' refers to the shape and size of the building, not what it carries), however many (myself included) prefer to use 'big-box' to only refer to the specialty stores like Best Buy, Staples, etc.




Yes, the UK is hopelessly mired in the olde world.  Get with the times old man, eh what!


The USA also has shopping centers, pavement, and trousers.  Many here do spell it armour (just to be archaic.  I also like to spell it 'shopping centre', though I use theatre to differentiate between movies [theater] and stage [theatre]).  You are completely correct that the UK is wrong with aluminium and 'pants' for underpants.  Y'all need to update.  :P

My favorite explanation of it is:

Almost all languages borrow some words from other languages.  English follows other languages down alleys and mugs them for everything in their pockets.  *grin*

And we both put chips in computers!
This message was last edited by the user at 18:39, Sat 28 Nov 2020.

Yeah, in the US, we dropped the extra "u" and other letters considered extraneous (such as humour to humor, neighbour to neighbor, etc) because printed advertisements are charged by the character/letter/numeral.
Pringles are called crisps on the package, though we still call them chips.  What you Brits call chips, we call fries, as in French fries (or Liberty fries during World War 2).  It does make sense, since they are FRIED cut potatoes, though I don't see how they are French.  Unless no one was expected to actually like them

Because, as appropriate to the rest of this conversation, they're Belgian.

Reading this makes me scarder to talk!

I can’t remember it all! Why so many words for the same thing!!!!?????
How can Americans abs English people understand each other?
We borrow words too but this is too many and what if you mix them?

'French' came from them being 'french' cut.  As in thin and regular (literally batonnet or julienne).  From what I gather british chips are thick and irregular, much like what we USAins would call 'home fries', so no, they aren't the same things.  It's also why most restaurants that serve home fries, call them home fries and not 'french' fries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._culinary_knife_cuts


OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!  And there's the burn.

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 44):

I’ll keep French fries lol

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 44):

And who said RPoL wasn’t educational!

In reply to Mika (msg # 43):

For what it's worth, most of us don't remember them all, either.  It usually comes down to what's in common use in the area where you live, or lived the longest.  Most people can figure out what you mean, by the context, and it's typically only the really snooty types who get upset if you use a different term than what they're used to...like, my best friend in high school moved to Utah from California.  A lot of the kids I went to school with were jerks, so they gave him a hard time because he asked for soda, instead of pop...but they knew what he meant.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 47):

It’s so difficult. I think I heard someone call a pizza a pie and I was confused because pies are sweet in nature. I’m so happy you say English is hard it’s hard to remember every word and meaning!

Pizza is not a pie, it's more like an open sandwich, with a topping on bread.  Pies are not necessarily sweet... while some can be, there are also pies that are savoury, containing meat, potato, cheese, and other fillings.

In reply to Mika (msg # 48):

Taken from another site: Pizza was first called pie when Italian immigrants arrived in the United States in the late 1800s. Pizza had similarities to a pie – with a crust, sliced triangle portions and its circular shape. Italian-Americans sold and popularized the pizzas, and the exotic dish picked up the English name “tomato pie”. Sometime thereafter the languages met in the middle to give us the term “pizza pie”.  It might be common phrase to you, or you may only have just seen it used… But I bet you can recall the use of pizza pie by Dean Martin in his 1953 hit “Amore” – “When a moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore”.

In the UK we call pizza, pizza. We call pie, pie. Nice and easy, right? But we have sweet pies, savoury pies and pasties, not to be confused with pastries. Traditionally a Pasty is meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry with a crimped edge, and they originate from Cornwall in the SW of England. A variant would have a savoury filling at one end and then a sweet filling (like apple or blackberry) at the other, all in the one pasty. That way you get your main course and pudding all in one! They were eaten by miners who couldn’t clean their hands, so the crimped edge was the handle. Nowadays you get a variety of savoury fillings, including meat and vegetarian options.

If you ever come to England you have to try a pasty, they are gert lush as the locals would say!

In reply to Mika (msg # 48):

I second English being hard even as a native speaker. I understand the whole being afraid to talk (I didn’t speak much Turkish in Turkey even though that was the point of going there because I was terrified), but I hope you don’t let this person colour your perception of everyone. I swear a good deal of us are nice!

With some sets of words it all comes down to nuance, and at least where I am people tend to understand that a second language speaker may not have that down pat. If you’re ever confused feel free to ask, most people are happy to at least try to explain what they can! (Mind you, I do live in a major city, so I may be biased on that front).

My hometown has one actual super market.

Brooklyn Superhero Supply.   Costumes, equipment, everything for the superhero.


https://www.superherosupplies.com/

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 52):

That’s crazy!!!!! How is that a supermarket!?!?

They market stuff for supers.

In reply to Mika (msg # 53):
look up some pictures of it.
it is a super market.  A market where superheroes buy super things.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:50, Sun 29 Nov 2020.

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 55):

I don’t want to run into Homelander!

In reply to Mika (msg # 56):

Ok, now its time for the real story of supermarkets.

They are not *exactly* big grocery stores.

When I was young, we did not have supermarkets in my neighborhood.  Most people were immigrants or children of immigrants, and we did things Old Country style- shopping meant a trip to bakery, butcher, Mario's fruit and vegetable store, and grocery store.

Milk came by delivery.  Cookies came from my grandfather's truck.

The Grocery store was the "other things" store.  Canned goods, sauces, sugar, coffee, all the goods that the specialty stores- butcher, baker, etc- did not carry.

A supermarket has a butcher department, a dairy department, a produce department, etc.  A grocery store does not, it just has shelves.  TODAY a grocery store may have these things, thanks to refrigeration and packaging, but still, it will have no butcher shop or bakery on the premises.  That's a supermarket.

Mika,
I also live in Japan. In the US (regardless of the origins of the words), I think we use supermarket and grocery store rather interchangeably depending primarily on where you live. On the west coast, we primarily say "grocery store." Costco and Sam's Club are "big box stores," and we just say "Wal Mart" or "Target" for those stores, instead of "Department Store." We usually use department store for mall anchor stores like Macy's, Sears, etc. In other words, although I agree with Eur512's description, I don't think anyone consciously separates "grocery store" and "supermarket" in normal discussion; they just use whatever is used in their area. Being from California, I never use the term "supermarket" in normal discussion.

"Suupaa" in Japanese would basically be a grocery store. "Kombini" would be a convenience store--or we might generically say "7-11."
This message was last edited by the user at 23:36, Sun 29 Nov 2020.

In reply to Heath (msg # 58):

I’m a Hokkaido baby!

That’s why I was confused it’s all スーパー　to me or コンビニ but we do make a difference like  seven, famimart and so on.

Why do you have so many words???

Not a huge selection.  I am a little disappointed by their costuming stock.

In reply to Mika (msg # 59):

I think the issue is that English, like some other languages, is an organic language. By this I mean that nobody sat down and created it all in one go, it has evolved over centuries into the language we use today. As it has evolved in different places then regional variance has affected how we use certain words and phrases. Now we live in a far more cosmopolitan world and it is now common for people to meet other speakers of their same language from different parts of the world and so encounter greater variance in how the language has developed.

You could compare it to cooking, which can see great regional variation based on a few common ingredients.

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 61):

That just makes my English tests Even harder!!!

Speaking as one who has hopped across the pond for good, the USA 'shopping center' that spells it with 'centre' has upcharged all of their goods by several dollars.  Ditto, 'shop' will be far cheaper than 'shoppe'.  Last place to eat a sandwich is anywhere with the words 'fusion bistro' in the description. Crisps are chips in the USA.  Chips are Fries - and if they are cut as per American 'steak fries', you almost have proper chips.   Home fries are sliced or shredded potato with onion bits fried on a greasy surface in the more American style diners. You cannot get good Fries in the USA for the most part.  Very few Americans know about vinegar.  You couldn't get decent tea in the USA for many years.  I had to beg for care packages to be sent.  BUT - they do have Oreos here, and decent beer, you just have to let it warm up a bit.  And there is no half-day closing on High Street nor bank holidays every two days.  There is also much less holiday time (aka 'vacation') for workers and your worker's rights will be different from State to State.

In reply to Silverlock (msg # 63):

Where in the USA are you?  I know secret places where expatriates go to find the things "you cannot find in the United States".  NYC is great for that.

Myers of Keswick, for example, has been keeping British expats alive for about half a century.

http://www.myersofkeswick.com/

And for tea see Harney and sons, or Ten Ren.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:12, Mon 30 Nov 2020.

In reply to Silverlock (msg # 63):

I hear you. In Japan, foreign goods are generally upcharged by 30%-50%--or more. I have found some items double to triple the cost in the US.

In reply to Heath (msg # 65):

It’s so expensive so I miss many foreign foods! I flew to Okinawa and bought so much A1 steak sauce since it was cheaper

Amazon (the ultimate "supermarket") sometimes has them cheaper as well.

In reply to Heath (msg # 67):

Nope. I’ve paid over ¥3000 for pop tarts shipped from America lol

A box of 36 pop tarts is only 1299 yen on Amazon. :)

In reply to Mika (msg # 68):

Now, see...what you need to do is make some American friends, and have THEM buy stuff and ship it to you...*grin*

In reply to Heath (msg # 69):

You do realize the shipping is from America to Japan plus fees and tariffs on sugar and things too. >.<

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 70):

I’m trying lol

Yen....how much is that in American dollars? might be cheaper to send you some from here
btw...how ya been Mika?

One US dollar is a little over 104 yen, currently.

In reply to pitademon (msg # 73):

You’re STILL HERE! I love you!!!! I didn’t know you were here!!!! I missed you!

For the Pop Tarts, it's about $12 to buy plus about $9 to ship from Amazon--totaling about $21 total. We often compare amazon.co.jp and amazon.com to see which is cheaper to buy and ship. (Amazon Prime saves you a lot on much of the shipping for domestic purchases; I am a member of Prime in both US and Japan.)

In reply to Heath (msg # 76):

Are you going to argue with availability of print in country japan don’t argue with me there I have too many goats I can send to defend myself those prices aren’t mine

In reply to Heath (msg # 76):

Am I the only one here thinking “people still eat pop tarts?! Those things are nasty!!!”

Just me, okay.... :)

In reply to Heath (msg # 76):

How do I post photo of my prime. Lol

37 USD is bad

Want to mail me things I got a lost and covid isn’t helping shipping

Jatodrmo I like them and no need to be mean.

I’m sure you like Japanese backs that I would find you disgusting for even saying lol

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 78):

Hey, I practically lived on pop tarts and granola bars at several times in my  life...my metabolism has shifted as I've gotten older, and now they have too much sugar and not enough protein to take the edge off my appetite for long.  But they did a pretty awesome job 10-15 years ago.

Yeah, Pop Tarts were great when I was kid (up till about 25), but yeah, sugar and carbs don't make for a good brekkie.  And now?  Now they just give me headaches (diabetic) if I don't eat them with a proper meal, and if I'm having a proper meal I really don't want Pop Tarts.

I wasn't eating them for breakfast...*grin*  I never ate them growing up, my last couple of years of college I had a job that required me to leave as soon as class was over and drive an hour to work, where I was busy for several hours, and then another hour drive back home.  Pop Tarts were something vaguely filling and nutritious that I could eat while I drove, so I didn't have to try and shoehorn food stops into an already over-crowded schedule.

When I was a kid, i never ate breakfast or lunch, I'd have a brunch, and then dinner.  But sometiems you need a little somethign in the morning... adn Pop Tarts or a small bowl of cereal was 'good enough'.  Now I actually eat breakfast (and lunch) so...



I would not describe Pop Tarts as nutritious.  "Vaguely filling" is a reasonable description though.  ;)

Well...I had intended 'vaguely' as a modifier for both...*grin*

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 64):

I'm a stone's throw from New York, so I've been well supplied for decades. I do recall begging for tea to be sent back in the 90's, though.  I also remember having to translate The Full Monty for my spouse, so the English and American English are still far apart in some ways. I also recall the first time I saw the 7-11 and had it explained to me that the store was always open...always !  Magical.

Imagine learning  when a s’more is abs finding a pop tart like it. MAGICAL

LOL Some of this thread is reminding me of when my daughter was first in the UK.  We used to send her maple syrup because she couldn't find it there, just something watered down.  Eventually the UK caught up and started importing it.  Another thing they didn't have was pumpkin pie; I think they considered pumpkin a vegetable.  She did her best to introduce it to them, not sure how she made out.  Perhaps someone currently in the UK can tell me.  ;-)

In reply to Brianna (msg # 87):

Pumpkins are very popular in the UK. Every year we buy lots, cut the top off, scoop out the innards and make lanterns... great fun!

What, you eat the inside bit!?!

Lol! Pumpkin is definitely seen as a vegetable here. Personally I don’t like it but it you might find it alongside other veggies in a stew, a curry or a soup. Quite popular with vegans I suspect. Pumpkin pie is not common here, I’ve never seen it on a menu or in a store, but I guess people might make them at home, especially around Halloween when a lot of pumpkins are in shops. Rest of the year they aren’t common in supermarkets.

My Canadian cousins first introduced me to maple syrup when they brought some over on a visit. We had it on pancakes and I fell in love with it. Before we only had sugar and lemon juice on pancakes. Oddly, after years of trying alternatives including Nutella, blueberries, etc. I now find I prefer sugar and lemon juice. Maybe it’s a childhood nostalgia thing...

Note for Americans...
If you are curious about the possibilities of pumpkin as a savory vegetable and not a pie filling, visit an Afghan restaurant and ask for Kadu.

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 89):

Or a Japanese one. So many pumpkin soups or grilled pumpkin or pumpkin curry

Pumpkin pie is my favorite pie.  But, I've never really seen it as a fruit, or a vegetable.  It's a gourd, like squash and zucchini.  Here, in the US, we also make a sweet potato pie, so pie's not just for fruit.  I have had a pumpkin soup, on a cruise to the Bahamas.  My wife and I liked it