Real English Conversations: Weird food

Posted on July 12, 2007
Filed under Intermediate, Listening, Real English conversations, Weird stuff |

 
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Hi! Lori here, welcoming you to a new episode of Real English conversations from betteratenglish.com. I hope you’re all enjoying the summer. One of the typical summer pastimes in the USA is playing baseball. There’s even a saying that goes something like this: “It’s as American as baseball and apple pie.” But today’s show isn’t about baseball or apple pie. It is about food, though. Weird food combinations, to be precise. And after listening to today’s episode, you might want to change the saying to “It’s as American as donuts and peanut butter and jelly!”

Before getting into the conversation, I want to thank the anonymous listener who sent us three books from our Amazon wish list last week. Whoever you are, I hope you hear this message so that you will know how happy the books made me. Thanks so much!
I’d also like to encourage our listeners to visit our friends at China232. China232 is a free conversational English podcast similar to ours and I really think you’ll like it. That’s www.china232.com.

OK, let’s get on with today’s conversation.

Conversation transcript

Lori: When I was over in the States recently, I was reading one of my mom’s magazines. And in that magazine I read about a new hamburger.
Michael: OK.
Lori: That…it really takes the cake, this new hamburger. You know, we’ve talked about junk food before, but this is amazing. It’s a big beef burger, and they put sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon…
Michael: What… Can I just stop you there? What is sharp cheddar cheese?
Lori: Sharp cheddar cheese? A sharp cheese is a cheese that has a strong flavor.
Michael: Ooh, OK.
Lori: So cheese can be mild or sharp.
Michael: Right.
Lori: You’d think that the opposite would be “dull,” but you don’t talk about a dull cheese.
Michael: Or “blunt” cheese.
Lori: Yeah, a blunt cheese, right, exactly. Exactly. So sharp cheddar cheese. But anyway, back to the burger, it’s got…yeah, a big beef patty, sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. And now here is the key.
Michael: Mmm, the bacon sounds good.
Lori: Yeah, but the key ingredient…the bun is actually a KrispyKreme glazed donut.Baseball's best burger?
Michael: Uh huh.
Lori: Can you believe that? And it’s actually a baseball team, I think, the Gateway Grizzlies, it’s what they’re calling “Baseball’s Best Burger,” and they’re serving it at their baseball games.
Michael: Baseball’s weirdest burger, maybe!
Lori: Baseball’s most artery-clogging burger.
Michael: So you said that it was, the burger bun is a donut,
Lori: Mmm hmm. A donut, yes.
Michael: Is that, um, I mean, donuts are sweet though, aren’t they?
Lori: Yeah, it’s a glazed donut so it would be sweet. And apparently they cut it in half and toast it and use that as the bun on this burger.
Michael: That sounds horrendous.
Lori: It..I couldn’t…I thought it was a joke when I first read about it. I thought it must be a joke but apparently it’s true.
Michael: It really makes me wonder, you know, they have this, um this kind of, stereotype of American people being fat.
Lori: Right.
Michael: And I guess if, you know, they’re eating things like that whilst sitting down at the baseball game.Baseball's best burger?
Lori: Yeah, sitting down watching other people do sports.
Michael: Exactly…that’s what I’m thinking, yeah!
Lori: Right.I just wonder, how would someone even come up with that, the idea of using a donut as a hamburger bun.
Michael: Well, there is something that you can, I mean, being an American you can tell me if this is true or not, I remember hearing about sandwiches that Americans like, and it’s peanut butter and jelly.
Lori: Well, that’s, yeah, that’s a classic kid’s sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly or even peanut butter and honey, you can have…
Michael: Well, what you call jelly, isn’t that what we [British English speakers] would call jam?
Lori: Yeah, jam.
Michael: So peanut butter and jam. So it’s the savory peanut butter, salty, peanutty tasting butter and something like sweet strawberry jam.
Lori: Yeah, but I guess it’s kind of like putting pineapple on your pizza. You know, some people think that’s just an aberration. But there’s something about the sweet, tart pineapple combined with the salty, savory ingredients of a pizza that is actually…I like it.
Michael: Well, I guess it’s like having gammon and pineapple, you know, the thick cut of ham which is also salty.
Lori: Yeah, or pork chops and applesauce.
Michael: Ah, right.
Lori: But you see, the thing is that in the States the peanut butter most people buy is actually slightly sweet anyway. It’s only natural style peanut butter that is just, you know, peanuts and salt with nothing added.
Michael: So how would you classify the peanut butter here in Sweden, that you and I eat? What’s…
Lori: Oh, that’s got sugar in it, definitely. It’s slightly sweet; if you just taste it on its own you can taste that it’s slightly sweet.
Michael: OK!
Lori: If you compare it with the taste of natural peanut butter that’s just peanuts and salt, you’ll really taste the difference and taste how sweet the normal peanut butter is.
Michael: I’m thinking, if you can combine something like peanut butter and jam, then combining a hamburger with a donut doesn’t seem so strange.
Lori: I’m sorry! I know what you’re trying to say, but just, even hearing you say that, just sounds so funny, “combining a hamburger with a donut.”
Michael: Well, yeah, it’s pretty loony.
Lori: Yeah, loony. I couldn’t believe that when I read that story in my mom’s magazine. But I went on the Internet and had a look, and there were people saying that it sounds disgusting and looks disgusting, but actually they were quite tasty, so what do I know?
Michael: I can’t even begin to imagine what it would taste like. You know, I have no frame of reference. My taste buds cannot picture it, you know, I have an image of a donut in my head and an image of a nice juicy hamburger with a couple strips of bacon on. And forget the cheese because I hate cheese as you know, but the hamburger with bacon, that’s something that…in fact we should cut this podcast short right now because I want to go to the store and get some bacon and some bacon and some hamburger because I’m getting hungry now.
Lori: Sounds like a plan, but let’s ix-nay on the donuts.
Michael: Right, yeah, Hold the donuts!

Final words
Thanks for listening to this episode of Real English conversations. And if you haven’t done so already, make sure to check out the show at www.china232.com. I’m sure you’ll like it! See you next time!

Vocabulary notes

takes the cake
(Informal American English) you can say that something takes the cake if it is something that you think is very surprising or annoying.
sharp
Sharp is a word to describe the strong taste of certain foods, such as cheese. Cheeses range from sharp (strong) to mild (not strong).
key
key (adjective) means very important
glazed donut
A glazed donut is a type of fried pastry covered with a thin coat (glaze) of sugary icing.
horrendous
terrible, horrible, extremely unpleasant
come up with
To come up with something means to invent it or think of it.
savory
Food that is savory is salty, meaty, or spicy, not sweet. In British English it’s spelled savoury.
aberration
An aberration is something that differs from the normal state of things, particularly the normal standard of morals or taste.
gammon
Gammon is also called ham. It is meat from the back leg of a pig, usually preserved with smoke or salt (or both).
loony
loony is an informal word for crazy, stupid, or foolish
ix-nay
Lori is using Pig Latin to play with the word nix. Nix is an informal word that you can use for negation (no, nothing, not, etc.).

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Comments

15 Responses to “Real English Conversations: Weird food”

  1. Guildenstern on July 15th, 2007 23:33

    Actually that is not weird food. That sounds good for me :-)

    Fried Mars bars are weird!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_mars_bar

  2. PacoKiLi on July 17th, 2007 06:10

    Mexican food may be a little weird for foreigns :lol:

    … but it’s delicious for us :wink: you better try it!

  3. Native English School Blog on July 17th, 2007 09:53

    Keeping your English going through the summer…

    Summer is here again - you’ve put your coursebook and materials from this year’s lessons away in a cupboard and you’re ready to forget about English until September while you work on your tan up at Strzeszynek or Mielno (see above). Well, while…

  4. Zsolt Karpati on July 23rd, 2007 05:36

    It is a nice conversation but you can’t practically work with it. How do you teach this conversation in a classroom?

  5. Lori on July 23rd, 2007 08:05

    Thanks for your comment Zsolt. There are countless ways teachers can exploit our authentic conversational audio files (and transcripts) during a listening skills lesson in a classroom situation, but we prefer to leave it up to teachers to adapt our material to their own unique needs and contexts. For inexperienced teachers looking for a broad framework for planning a listening skills lesson, this BBC article about how to structure listening skills lessons might be useful. There are also loads of books on the subject. In fact, you’ve given me a great idea: we need a page here that offers teachers some practical suggestions about how they might exploit Better @ English material in their own classroom. Thanks for the idea :)

  6. Lori on July 23rd, 2007 08:16

    Guildenstern, I agree: fried Mars bars sound really weird! But maybe they are one of those foods that sound horrible, but are actually quite tasty!

    PacoKiLi, I love Mexican food! I’m from southern California, and grew up eating Mexican food of various sorts. I really miss it here in Sweden.

  7. kristof on July 23rd, 2007 16:14

    People do peanut-butter and jelly over here too, in the Netherlands - and in Belgium also, although peanut-butter is less of a common good around there. Still, it’s no wonder since a lot of US citizens have Dutch roots.

    I also like the salt/sweet combination. Pineapple on my pizza or on my ham/cheese toast, a little sugar in the spaghetti sauce, my especially delicious mustard-and-honey-glazed-pork-chops. As a child, I used to love cheese-and-waffles … Don’t ask.

  8. saleh musaid on July 25th, 2007 07:05

    thank you so much for this web site you don’t how yours episodes of real english coversation benfets me beacuse i have been in Americ and i get alot of proplems and i am sorry for any mistake in the spelling because my english is not well. :razz: :razz:anyway that is really wierd food have agood time

  9. Dave Kees on August 29th, 2007 16:44

    This sort of recording is useful for comprehensible input. Krashen has some interesting things to say about it as related to Narrow Listening:

    http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/07.html

  10. farzaneh on November 12th, 2007 17:11

    hi, well thanks for the conversation but i need some help! im an enlish learner and i need some conversations that u English people have in your society! like a conversation in a post office, in a taxi, for opening a bank account, at the library and….. can u guys help me? please! I would thank you for your helpS :wink:

  11. Jolanta on April 11th, 2008 17:16

    ewww that is nasty! who can eat that??! :???:

  12. Zhiwei You on April 11th, 2008 17:54

    :shock: Wow, what a humburger. I feel sick now; do you know how much calories are you put in your self. I guess you guys like the stuff that is different than me. Hope you are not getting sick from it.

  13. vero on August 1st, 2008 16:26

    hi! this is a msg for Franck from France: I love the way you laugh!! :wink:

  14. Susan on January 31st, 2009 01:41

    Thanks for your conversation lesson plan. I made some questions that you might want to add to your listening plan. The stars indicate the correct answers.

    • What is sharp Cheddar Cheese?
     Blunt cheese
     Mild cheese
     Dull cheese
     Strong flavored cheese*

    • What doesn’t the burger have?
     A bun*
     Bacon
     A beef patty
     Sharp cheddar cheese

    • What is the key ingredient?
     A bun
     A KrispyKream donut*
     A piece of toast
     A pickle

    • What is the name of sandwiches that Americans like?
     Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches*
     Peanut butter and honey sandwiches
     Peanut butter and jam sandwiches
     Pineapple and salt sandwiches

    • Donut hamburgers sound:
     Disgusting but taste good*
     Disgusting and taste disgusting
     Great and taste great
     Great and taste disgusting

    • Why does the man cut the podcast short?
     He needs to use the bathroom
     He wants to get a coffee and donut
     He wants to by bacon and hamburger*
     He wants to get a donut hamburger

  15. refilwe on June 2nd, 2009 11:05

    Hi thanks for the interesting conversation i really enjoyed it i’m looking foward to hearing more staff luv you guys,your web rocks.

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