I Think There's a Difference

[Pimp Chickens]

I was working the Make-Your-Own-Pasta station at the food court (or rather the You-Tell-Me-And-I-Put-It-In-A-Bowl-For-The-Chefs-To-Cook-For-You station) because it's pretty fun. Going through orders, this one person comes up.

Quick note: All of the ingredients customers can choose are either sliced or diced and there is no printed menu, so mistakes can be made.

C- Customer
PC- Me

PC: "Hello, sir! What can I get for you today?"
C: "Uh... yeah, let's see. I'll have some chicken... Some tomatoes..."
PC: [as I'm filling his order] "Chicken... tomatoes..."
C: "Can I get some of that cucumber?"
(This is a pretty common mistake. It is not sliced cucumber, it is sliced zucchini.)
PC: "I'm sorry, sir, but that it actually zucchini, not cucumber."
C: "Oh. Well, what's the difference?"
PC: "..." [shrug]
(I start loading up the bowl with zucchini so maybe he'll see that there's a difference when he eats it.)
C: "Okay... can I get some olives... and that celery?"
PC: "I'm afraid those are green peppers, sir."
C: "Whatever."
(I start loading up the bowl...)

I've never had zucchini before and maybe it tastes like cucumber, I don't know. The green peppers, though. No excuse.

[Aethian]

major different sweets

[wolfie]

Reminds me of something I saw in an article about small-scale high-value farming. One distributor had delivered a load of peppers to a grocery store, along with signs identifying the varieties, but when they got back to their base they realized they'd supplied n varieties of peppers but n-1 signs. First thing the next day, they went back with the missing sign, only to find that the store personnel had made up their own for the miniature bell peppers. At least that's what they thought they were, based on appearance - the proper name for those peppers was "Habanero".

[Barracuda]

MAJOR difference between zucchini and cucumber. Zucchini tastes a lot like squash. (also, zucchini can make an nice tasty sweet bread. When's the last time you had "cucumber bread"/)

[Shalom]

MAJOR difference between zucchini and cucumber. Zucchini tastes a lot like squash.

Zucchini is squash. It's the same species (Cucurbita pepo) as butternut squash. Even though it's a different color, shape, taste, different distribution of seeds, and so on.

I thought this was weird, until I reflected that a chihuahua, a poodle, a great dane and a grey wolf are all the same species (Canis lupus) as well.

[wolfie]

Zucchini is squash. It's the same species (Cucurbita pepo) as butternut squash. Even though it's a different color, shape, taste, different distribution of seeds, and so on.

Just like Hopi Pale Grey and your standard Haloween pumpkin are the same species (C. Maximus).

For gardeners growing open-pollinated varieties and saving seeds, this means you need to stagger your plantings so only 1 C. Maximus and 1 C. Pepo are flowering at any time to avoid cross-pollination. CM and CP won't cross with each other, but within the same species they will crossbreed readily.

One difference between breeding "mongrel" squash and mongrel dogs - for squash, you don't need to make sure that certain crosses are only done one way (i.e. variety "A" is always the father). If you want to cross a Chihuahua with a Great Dane, you need a male Chihuahua and a female Great Dane, since the puppies (at birth) will be somewhere in size between purebred puppies of the 2 breeds.

[Mnemjian]

To be fair, zucchini and cucumber do look a lot alike, though they taste supremely different. I love zucchini and hate cucumber. When I'm at the supermarket, I often get excited when I see cucumbers on sale (thinking its zucchini), only to be disappointed that it is, in fact, cucumber

But bell pepper/celery? Hmm. No. From his blase attitude about it, sounds like he doesn't much care what the final product is going to taste like!