Culture in the Blender

My local grocery store recently carried 油菜 (yóucài), which translates literally to oil vegetable. I have no idea what their English name is, if they even have one. I seized the opportunity and bought about half of them. Here, it is not uncommon that the checkout personnel do not know what various vegetables are, including ones used or eaten frequently in Western cooking, like leeks, mangoes, and kale. (Which, I think, is an interesting insight into what they must eat.) Of course, they didn’t know what the 油菜 were. The checkout clerk asked what they were, and although I realized that saying “油菜” wouldn’t work, I was well on my way to saying “Oil vegetables” when I realized that would not likely be what they were listed under in the computer system. I just had to say I didn’t know.