Dinner or Supper?

[HanauMan]

Yes to these sentiments!
I'm the same, best time for me is long after the main family meals. Sitting in front of the TV and having a turkey sandwich late in the evening. Bliss.....

 

[Edward]

Ginger Ale used to be a much more varied product than it is now -- "Golden" ginger ale was a much stronger version, popular in the 1910s, with a heavier ginger flavor and leaning toward the sweet side, while "Pale Dry" was the Canada Dry/Schweppes type of product that modern folk think of when somebody mentions "ginger ale." Evidently the popularity of "pale dry" as a cocktail mixer eclipsed the idea of ginger ale as a flavorful stand-alone beverage.

In New England we grew up with Cott and Clicquot Club, which offered both varieties -- but today the Golden variety is very hard to find. The only regional company that still makes it is Polar Beverages in Massachusetts, which offers "Old Fashioned Golden" in quart bottles only. While I don't normally like heavy-sweet drinks, the strong ginger flavor counteracts the sugar and makes it quite satisfying.

We used to have a kid here who had the idea that mixing Sprite and Coke at a 50-50 ratio at the fountain made "ginger ale," but I'm inclined to disagree with this theory.

Over here, we tend to get two things - the ginger ale, which is more commonly sold in smaller bottles among the mixers in the alcohol aisle, and ginger beer, which is invariably more aggressive in fizz and taste, and much sweeter. I prefer the latter as my mixer of choice. It's typically a cloudy-white colour, like you've dibbled a brush with white emulsion on it into a jar of water and left it to mix.... I remember Canada Dry years ago being widely advertised as a soft drink ,but you rarely see it now other than as a mixer. The other thing is alcoholic ginger beer, like Crabbie's. Same thing, just without the alcohol burned out (or whatever they do with it).

We do -- it's very popular here, and is in fact the Official State Beverage. The Moxie Museum is just up the road from here, and we always stop in when we go to the county fair.

View attachment 88178
The taste is sort of like root beer mixed with cough syrup -- the active ingredient is gentian root, which is also the active ingredient in angostura bitters, so unless you're prepared for it it will take you by surprise.

Ha, I read about this in Stephen King's 11/22/63 - I thought it was fictional!

Never liked, thus never drank, the likes of root beer or ginger ale. As a kid the only sodas I regularly drank were Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola (preferred the taste of Coke but drank both) or Fanta / Sprite. When younger I had Kool-Aid or Tang to add to water. When we lived in West Germany I loved the German carbonated orange or lime juices they had in one liter bottles or German Florida Boy juice. When I moved to the UK I found most of their sodas, such as Iru Bru, way too sweet though the natives drink the stuff like water (which is probably why most Brits my age (52) wear dentures). I love their Twinings iced tea juices, though.

Diet drinks / sugar free / no added sugar have been hugely popular in the UK for twenty years now. You must have been in Scotland if Irn Bru was commonly available locally? It's gotten easier to find in England in the last fifteen years or so, but for a long time it was almost impossible to buy down here (still is, in some parts).

I remember a rumor going around at some point during the 1970s that prune juice was one of the ingredients, and because of Dr. Pepper's "unusual" flavor a lot of people around here believed it. I never thought it tasted like prune juice myself, but could never quite identify what it did taste like...other than Dr. Pepper, that is.

It's just so misunderstood.

We had a spare refrigerator in the garage when I was growing up, mostly used for beer and soft drinks. I had my preferences like everyone else, but it was usually stocked with whichever soft drinks Mom liked, or whichever was cheapest when we went shopping. At one point Mom decided she needed to lose weight, so I had to endure drinking Fresca and Tab for several months until Mom decided they weren't doing the trick; funny thing is that I had grown to like them by then.

I used to love both of those. Fresca disappeared from the UK sometime in the early 80s, alas, as did Tab. Tab had a brief comeback in the mid 90s as 'Tab Clear' - the gimmick being that it was a clear cola, looked like clear lemonade, tasted like cola - but it didn't last more than a couple of years.

Another thought:
Does anyone think people spend extreme amounts just to "eat out", or eat out way too often? What I call"Sport eating" trying new restaurants all the time,etc?

I guess it depends what you mean by extreme and how often. I think that will vary a lot. Here in London, most people of working age eat out a couple of times a week: it's a very common option for catching up with friends, especially as more and more people live in shared accommodation well into their thirties. For many it has replaced the pub as a default social space.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I used to love both of those. Fresca disappeared from the UK sometime in the early 80s, alas, as did Tab. Tab had a brief comeback in the mid 90s as 'Tab Clear' - the gimmick being that it was a clear cola, looked like clear lemonade, tasted like cola - but it didn't last more than a couple of years...

According to the 'Net, Fresca is still available in 15-20 countries, including the U.S.; I wasn't overly fond of it, so I haven't looked. Tab is apparently also still available in some form in a few countries, but I haven't seen it around here for quite some time. Diet Coke has all but replaced it, and based on the stock (or lack of) on the shelves at the local supermarket Diet Coke is clearly Coca-Cola's best selling soft drink. To me Coca-Cola Zero tastes almost exactly like Tab, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they simply altered the recipe slightly and re-named it.

 

[Fading Fast]

According to the 'Net, Fresca is still available in 15-20 countries, including the U.S.; I wasn't overly fond of it, so I haven't looked. Tab is apparently also still available in some form in a few countries, but I haven't seen it around here for quite some time. Diet Coke has all but replaced it, and based on the stock (or lack of) on the shelves at the local supermarket Diet Coke is clearly Coca-Cola's best selling soft drink. To me Coca-Cola Zero tastes almost exactly like Tab, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they simply altered the recipe slightly and re-named it.

I never enjoyed Tab and had my last one the same day I had my first Diet Coke (being facetious, but you get it). I loved Diet Coke from day one.

I bet Lizzie knows if Coke Zero is just tweaked Tab? (I think she might have a mole inside the Coca-Cola company .)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Tab had a different flavor concentrate than Coke -- this was by order of Robert Woodruff, who was still the Grand Panjandrum of the company at the time it was being developed. He felt very very strongly that Only Coca-Cola Is Coke, and that extending that brand in any way would cheapen it. The hapless Boy who suggested calling it "Diet Coca-Cola" was picking his head up off the floor within seconds of uttering the blasphemy.

I haven't had a Tab in probably forty years, but what I remember of it most strongly is that it had a distinctly metallic flavor, even if you had it out of a bottle. If you take a nickel, put it in your mouth, and then take a swig of Coke, that's what Tab tasted like to me. It was clearly Not Coke, but I could tolerate it if there was nothing else to drink in the machine.

I believe Coke Zero uses a variation on the Diet Coke formula, which is basically a no-calorie version of New Coke from the '80s. Both Diet Coke and New Coke were formulated to omit what the company calls "Merchandise No. 5," which is Coke-speak for a decoction of spent coca leaves in alcohol. And there seems to me a much stronger streak of vanilla in these products than in the real stuff. I don't remember that vanilla note in Tab, but it might have been overwhelmed by the metallic taste.

 

[Fading Fast]

Tab, you nailed it and dragged a 30+ year old taste memory out of the deep recesses of my brain - metallic taste, yup, that's it and it was not good in anyway.

Tab, in a weird way helped Diet Coke as Diet Coke tasted so much better than Tab - and like soda not a wet nickel - that it was probably embraced more as a massive improvement over Tab than as a poor relative of real Coke. Tab lowered the bar and obviated negative comparisons to real Coke - all Diet Coke had was a well-lit runway and clear skies.

And, clearly, Coke got over its brand-extension fears (as did Oreos).

 

[PeterGunnLives]

I live a couple hours from Canada, and occasionally speak with people from the other side of the border. We call the evening meal "dinner" down here, and up there they call it "supper."

 

[2jakes]

I live a couple hours from Canada, and occasionally speak with people from the other side of the border. We call the evening meal "dinner" down here, and up there they call it "supper."

I've noticed that there's a split where I live. Some use Lunch/Dinner and others use Dinner/Supper. These differences have tended to mix up and get confused as people from different regions have mixed, and I've noticed "lunch" used for noonday meals much more unilaterally by today's young generations.

 

[Bugguy]

We'd go out for dinner, but always eat supper at home. If I was late for supper without calling, it'd be cold leftovers if I was lucky. Any dinner earlier than 5:00 was solely for the purpose of a senior special.

Are the senior specials gone or just on the back of the menu or on Wednesdays?

Sunday brunch was exclusively for Mother's Day or special occasions.

 

[Seb Lucas]

I have not heard the word supper since the late 1970's - some Australians saw themselves as quasi British and used old words like this back then. They also called Britain 'home' even when they had never been there. Australians also used to call dinner, tea. As in, we're having tea at 7pm sharp.

I remember seeing Tab and RC years ago but I never had them. I was not allowed soft drinks as a child and have never drunk them as an adult. For a few months in the 1980's I had ice cream sodas (before I discovered booze) I think this was the last time I had Coke.