Feeling peckish?
Hello again!
I hope you all enjoyed the longest day of the year! First, I need to apologize to all the druids out there. As Anita so kindly pointed out, ‘Stonehenge’ is more commonly written as one word, rather than two. I hope I haven’t offended any Celts!
And Naheed, thanks for telling us about the lunar eclipse. I didn’t see it myself, but it sounds pretty awesome. I’m glad you take a little nap after your morning prayers. Otherwise surely you’d feel pooped by the afternoon.
Naheed, you wrote beautifully in your last blog. You made very few errors, so I think I’m going to pack up my things and finish work for the week. Just kidding!
There are just a couple of things I can help you out with, and the first one is to do with directions. Naheed, you wrote:
‘…the best thing is that my room’s window is in the east direction’
When you want to describe the position of a room or building, you can use the verb ‘to face’. So, I can rewrite your phrase like this:
‘…the best thing is that my room’s window faces east’
Also, a little further on in your blog, you wrote:
‘As about celebrating the Summer Solstice, there is nothing much about it.’
You’ve used the gerund form, ‘celebrating’, perfectly. However, ‘As about’ isn’t quite right here. The phrase you were probably thinking of is ‘As for’, which means ‘on the subject of’. So, I can rewrite your phrase like this:
‘As for celebrating the Summer Solstice, there is nothing much about it.’
OK, that’s enough grammar. It’s Friday morning here, and I’ve just had a great start to the day because I’ve had my breakfast and read all your comments (thank you – reading your comments makes my day!). Tomo asked me whether we have any stinky food in England, and that got me thinking about our national dishes.
As I said, I’ve just had my breakfast. I usually have fruit and yoghurt with a cup of tea for breakfast. I think that if I at least eat healthily for breakfast, it doesn’t matter so much if the rest of my meals go to pot. I wouldn’t say it’s normal to eat fruit and yoghurt for breakfast in the UK. Most people will have cereal with milk, or toast. The traditional breakfast in the UK is the fry-up – this consists of fried eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, toast, fried mushrooms and fried tomatoes. It’s a meal in itself! Not many people eat a full English breakfast these days, because it’s not very healthy and it takes a while to make. My better half, Richard, sometimes cooks a full English breakfast on a weekend when he has more time. Interestingly, a full English breakfast is also known as ‘the full Monty’ (I don’t know why!) and over time, this phrase has come to be used in general situations, when you want to say ‘everything’, e.g.
Before Sarah gets married she’s going to have her hair cut, dyed and styled, her makeup done, a manicure, a pedicure and an eyebrow wax. She’s going for the full Monty.
What do you traditionally eat for breakfast? And does your country have a famous stinky/unappetising dish?
In terms of nasty foods, the two vilest things I can think of are jellied eels and black pudding. Jellied eels are a traditional dish found in the East End of London. To make the dish, you simply cook the eels, then let them cool. The juices that come out of the eels harden, forming a jelly. Gross! Richard tells me that black pudding actually tastes nice, but I’m a vegetarian and it’s the thought of black pudding that puts me off. Basically, you take some pig’s blood and cook it with some seasoning and breadcrumbs. Then you put it into a sausage skin, and it’s ready to be cooked. So it’s basically a sausage made from blood. Grim! Black pudding is sometimes part of a full English breakfast.
I can’t end on that disgusting note. Instead, I’ve listed below some nicknames that we use in Britain to talk about food. These are informal but everyday words. Do you know what they mean? I’ll explain in my next blog.
1) bangers
2) a sarnie
3) brekkie
4) a chip buttie
5) grub
Have a great weekend!
Jo
Vocabulary
If you feel peckish, you feel a little bit hungry, as though you’d like a snack.
I’m pooped! An informal way of saying ‘I’m tired’.
I’m packing up my things. You can use this phrase to say you’re putting your things in your bag and getting ready to leave work/college/school.
If something makes your day, it makes you very happy.
If something goes to pot, it goes wrong.
fry-up – a dish of fried food. Usually, this would contain eggs and bacon.
better half – like ‘other half’, this is a term of affection you can use to describe your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend
stinky -- smelly
vile (adjective) – disgusting
eels are long and slippery, a sort of snake-like fish.
Gross! You can use this exclamation to say you think something is horrible.
vegetarian – someone who doesn’t eat meat.
If something puts you off something, you don’t like the idea of it.
seasoning – salt, pepper, and maybe some herbs and spices
Grim! Like ‘Gross!’ this means you think something is disgusting.
Answers to your comments
Uddhav – June 21st is only the longest day if you live in the northern half (hemisphere) of the globe. If you live in the southern hemisphere, like Mauricio in Brazil, it’s the shortest day of the year. And if you live on the equator, the days are the same length all year round.
Mauricio – yes, the closer you get to the poles, the longer/shorter the days get. Qinping Hu in Sweden (further north than where I am) says it is still light there at 10.30p.m. at this time of year. The stones at Stonehenge must be at least 3 to 4 metres tall.
Rocio – good luck for your exam!
Benka – you can say ‘at this time of the year’ or ‘at this time of year’ – both mean the same thing.
Ana Paula – I’m not so busy this weekend, so I’m going to give my pets a rest and blog myself. But you’ll meet another one soon …
Tomo – I went to Japan for the World Cup (even though I’m not a big sports fan). I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, Niigata and Sapporo. I loved it, especially the noodles!
Comments
Hi Jo, Here in Italy we usually have milk and biscuits or milk and "fette biscottate" (I'm sorry I haven't been able to find the English translation!) with jam and sometimes butter. And a strong and "short" cup of coffe, of course! The vilest food I have ever had is a typical cheese from Sardegna (an Italian region). I had it when I was a child. It's very tasty but...there are small warms growing inside it (and of course people eat them!)!!!!!. Producing and selling this cheese is illegal today, but it seems to me that some farmers still produce it! I remember this episode: there were four of five of us (all children aged from 6 to 10 years old) staying around a circular table with a whole piece of this cheese in the centre. When the mum of one of my friends cut the cheese all this warms jumped out...and I remember my friends quashing them (...I hope the verb is correct...) with their fingers and then eating them! Fulvio
Hello Jo. As for breakfast in Spain, I have to tell you that most of the people take milk cofee with toasts. They put on the toast mainly olive oil and grated tomato. You can also put on the toast slices of ham or Spanish omelette. There is something similar to black puding in Spain. Its name is "Morcilla". It's made mainly of pig's blood mixed whith minced boiled onions, boiled rice and some seasoning. And then you put it into cleaned innards. I like "morcilla" very much. Unlike you I'm not a vegetarian. Many, many years ago I went, but in those days in Spain it was hard to be a vegetarian. So I gave up. A pity. It is always very nice to read your blog. Have a nice weekend.
Hello Jo,my dear teacher.thanks fot your answers to almost every cmments.now i am obsessed by a problem for a long time,could you help me ?first is what the meaning of "in terms of "is and another is when can we use"being or be"and how to use it ?in your last blog there was a sentence"there being mistical atmosphter" and i have read one before"i'll be asking people if they think they take after their mothers"why they use "be or being here"please explain it for me ,i'll appericiate for it.
Thanks for cheer me up Jo! 'cause I'm not in the mood of study these days.. summer's just round the corner and I can't concentrate myself with sunny days and with people in the beach! I do the same that you with the breakfast 'cause fortunately I'm not very hungry when I wake up.. but later in the afternoon I am a greed! (is it correct to say it this way?) Have a nice weekend!
Hi Jo, when I feel peckish and pooped, I like to go for fast food. Usually I go for 'brunch' (lunch+Breakfast), so your english breakfast really fasinated me, gave me reason to continue what I usually do. I like to eat my own recipes, which at times goes to pot, when food gets overburnt and whole place becomes stinky. The vilest thing is my friend likes to eat overburnt stuff, may it be toast, milk or meat. It puts me off when he offers to cook something and over burns the stuff on purpose, as I hate to eat burnt part. I am as well vegitarian and some times, eggitarian. I like eggs and good egg dish makes my day. I have not heard about the nicknames of the food you mentioned, I wait to know about it. Cheers, Manas
Hi Jo!!! We usually have as breakfast here in Brazil, coffe and milk ( the famous 'média'), marge spreading on French bread. If you go in any Brazilian bakery and ask for 'a média', that´s what they will serve to you. However, in my case I have as a breakfast two slices of whole bread instead French bread, due the first one being more nutritious than the second one, and I also have a cup of coffee or tea, yoghurt and a fruit. Hmm... I tried to figure out the meaning of the words: 1-bangers: sausage; 2-a sarnie: a sandwich; 3-brekkie: breakfast; 4-a chip buttie: a kind of sandwish; 5-grub: food. Ah! Jo, I´m looking foward to meeting another one of your cute pets. :-) Well, it´s time to go. I have Body Combat class now. Have a nice weekend, Ana Paula.
Hello Jo :=) You say that black pudding puts you off. Because you are a vegetarian I'm able to understand you, but as a matter of fact it's very healthy. However, one thing in your recipe should be changed: instead of breadcrumbs it's better to take roasted buckwheat, which is the best, or, alternatively pearl barley. Yummy! If you didn't know what black pudding is made of, you would think it's vegetarian food. If you don't bellieve me, close your eyes and taste a little bit of it. Enjoy your meal!
Dear Jo.After reading your blog, i feel a little peckish. Maybe i will grab some snack and a bag of milk for my tummy. Black pudding and jellied eel sound vilest, maybe tasted yummy. By the way, the full Monty put me off, and i can't stand that kind of cuisine.Chinese food is better than any foreign food i have tasted, except pizza and spaghetti bolognese, steak, and all kinds of fishes.Am i nasty? You are a vegetarian. Maybe it's a bad idea to tell you this.Anyway,you make my day when i read your blog. I would like you to visit my photo album on Facebook(Melly Taoy).I put some ugly pictures of mine.:-) Enjoy your weekend.
Thank you, Jo. You visited many places in Japan! You had ramen noodles, right? Sapporo is famous for its ramen. I like salt ramen. I've seen jellied eels on TV once before. We Japanese like grilled eels. The pudding you've told me is sounds like disgusting, (sorry, Rechard and someone think it is nice. I can't help imagining bloody pudding on the plate in front of me can't be nice) but interesting. I would bite it if I were starving! We have another stinky food. It called "kusaya" which is kind of dried salted fish. I've never eaten and seen it around my place. It is eaten some particular places. It's tremendously stinky. I might throw up if I smell it. I know barngers as bangers and mash but the others I have no idea. Jo, I'd like you to answer my riddle. OK? The answer is the place you've visited before in Japan. <Hints> I'm temporary living in the place. You'll see a golden temple. If you move the answer's suffix to before the prefix is our capital city. Where am I now?
Dear Jo, I like your blog, and I like to eat eel-rice, a Japanese style cuisine, toast the eel and put on the rice.Have a great weekend!
Hi dear Jo , Thanks to remind summer solstice to me . Although, long time ago in the past some of Persian people was celebrating summer and winter solstice , but these days only winter solstice is celebrated in Iran . It called Yalda night . All families and friends gather and talking and chatting and have funny time together .It 's custom specially to eat watermelon in Yalda night . I love Stone Henge . it seems very mysterious to me, too. I wish some day I can be in Wiltshire countryside . Could you put some photo of neo-druids program , please . And maybe you can drive to stone henge to have some photos by your own fro your own virtual students ? About breakfast in Iran : it 's usual to eat bread- cheese , boiled or fried , egg - jam - butter , honey – butter , cream for breakfast and of course the tea is the most important part . And also there are too stinky food for breakfast . The first one is sheep head soap ( Gross ! ) and second one is Halim . The first one is very liked by people and also is very nutritive and it 's remedy for some of disease. This food is cooked and served in some special restaurants in the morning . Halim is a potage is made from turkey and vegetables and it takes a long time to be prepared ( it must be on oven all the night ) and of course is very nutritive . But I don’t like it . At the end can you give me some tips about your special herbal dish . I don’t like meat a lot but most of Persian foods is made form rice and meat and if there is herbal dish , it takes along time to be prepared and I 'm a short time person . Have a nice weekend and send my hello to your better half Bye
Hello,Jo. When you wrote about some really gross food, you reminded me of my childhood when I didn't want to eat spinach. In my plate, spinach looked like seaweed, and when I swam in the sea I was afraid to touch the bottom with my feet because I thought that fish from the seaweed would bite me. And another thing, that bloody, gross thing that looks like a sausage, here in Serbia we call it 'krvavica', I eat it regularly. 'cause if I don't, I would be anemic again, as it was when I was a child because I didn't want to eat black puding and spinach. I often eat for brunch, I call brunch'marenda', fried liver which also make your blood strong.These my meals may look like something really vile to a vegetarian, but believe me, they are really healthy. I will be reading you soon.
Hello Jo!The breakfast that I like to eat in the weekends, when I have more time consists of : an orange juice, a toast with butter and jam (raspberry jam is my favourite) and a cup of coffe with milk and and a teaspoonful of honey. As I usually don't have my time, I eat milk with coffe and some biscuits. The vilest dish I have eaten was "ear of pig", the Spanish name is actually the same that the translation. I must say that this plate was made with an absolutely delicious sauce, where I dipped some bread. But in the moment when I bit the first piece of ear, and I felt the texture of the cartilage. GROSS! This was the first and the last bite. Have a nice weekend!
On the topic of stinky food, I once visited a food-processing company where sardines were cooked and canned. Canned sardines are very popular here, and I specially like the ones that come with tomato sauce. But the smell of sardines being batch-cooked is just repulsive. I felt like vomiting at one point. I think that was the vilest stench I ever experienced, it seems to enter your nostrils and go straight to your stomach. Urgh, disgusting! The workers in that company had to wear masks to stand the stench, but everything was very clean though. There a popular dish in the North-East of Brazil made from goat's stomach cut in strips. They say you have to leave it to soak in lemon for 12 hours before cooking so that it doesn't smell bad, but people who've already eaten it say that it tastes good. In Brazil people are not in the habit of eating large breakfasts. We generally have coffee, instead of tea, and milk. Some people like having juice too, but I don't like fruit juice in the morning. To eat we have bread, toast and cakes, cheese, cream cheese, butter, sliced ham. In rural areas, they make their own bread (usually corn bread), as there are no baker's shops nearby. As a whole, we don't eat much in the morning because our main meal is lunch, which we have at about mid-day. Jo, what are the time of meals in Britain? I hear you have dinner really early, sometimes in broad daylight, is it true?
I WOULD LIKE TO BE A VEGETARIAN TOO. I CONGRATULATE YOU TO YOUR DECISION. IT IS THE BEST WAY OF LIVING.
Hi, Jo! How you doing? Hope you're good. As for Argentinian breakfast I'll tell you that our breakfast is not so different as yours: some people have yoghurt and fruits but other prefer a cup of coffee or tea with toats or cookies. But unlike you (and the rest of people don't live in Argentina or Uruguay), we wont to drinking 'mate', an infusion prepared by dried leaves of yerba mate. Have you ever heard about it? I used to eat black pudding ('morcilla' is the Spanish for that) when I was a child but one day somebody told me the process whereby they are made and what are they made of and I suddenly decided to stop eating them. It's been several years since I last ate one. Well, that's all. I'm looking forward to reading your next blog. Wish you all the very best!
How have you been up to ? Teacher Kent !! At least few days I looked in on my parent at house countryside between two proviences. I am nice to talk to my clan and share experiences with them while I stayed at the university. Bravo !! Until the end of this day I come back once again on BBC site . Amazingly the web pages are updated with variety of informative entries ,in one fell swoop. And I would like to give my regard to BBC team work-they are vigorously coping with task. By the way at this stage I feel peckish like you . According to the description of England food make me mount-watering with regarding to tasty food,type of foods. Related to this topic I use YUMMY when I want to describe peckish feeling. It is totally wrong- YUMMY is a word to describe newborns'feeling . It is my fault !!! I learn from the topic when I first glance at topic why teacher Kent does not use YUMMY.It is ridiculous, isn't it? See you around < Wisarut S >
Hi everyone, I am glad to be back. You may have noticed that Leila from Finland has not been present lately. My absence has been due to a work issues and travel. Jo, black pudding is familiar to me also; we have it here in Finland. Often it is served as a soup dish: potatoes, onion, black pudding and streaks of bacon. I must say it is not one of my favorites, although I did used to like when I was a kid. We also serve black pudding with red berries, it is decent grub, almost as good as bangers, but I would not have it for brekkie.
Hello, My name is Isaac Tinajero, Im 22 years old and Im bachelor of International Busines. I want to share some about Mexican food. It is delicious, spicy and fatty but delicious. The worst meal I think exists into mexican menu is also Black pudding which many people usually eats on sundays at markets. On the other hand most popular meal in Mexico are "Tacos" and there´s not translation into English. Tacos are a piece of "Tortilla" (similar to Spanish omelet but made of maize) with meat on it. The meat is usually of Pigs, Bulls, Chicken and Kids. With the meat is also additioned to the taco, coriander, onion and hot sauce (everyday mexican food complement). The maize omelet envolves the inner ingredients and it is eaten with the hands. I love Tacos like any other Mexican. I hope you can taste them soon if posible. Well, this is my first message I write here, I hope it isn´t the last. Greetings from Mexico Stae.
Hi Jo! This is my first time visiting your blog, and I love it!! I like light breakfast, so usually I'll have milk and fruits in the morning. When I visited UK years ago my local friends also prefer milk and toast. They only have heavy meal at dinnertime, such as baked beans, eggs and chicken. They were also very tasty. In Taiwan, we have one notorious dish called "Stinky Tofu." It doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's very stink! Stinky tofu can be eaten cold, steamed, stewed, or most commonly, fried. It is often accompanied by chili sauce. Most of the tourist would run away from it, but I just couldn't understand why - Stinky Tofu is so yummy!!
Hi Jo . your blog was good.We have learnt about common breakfast in England.In Southern Part of India(Tamil Nadu,Andhra Pradesh,Kerala) We will have variety of breakfast.Pongal and Vaada is common one.'Vaada' means dhaal which is grinded with chillies,ginger,garlic, some spices for taste and little water to make it collaidal paste.And the paste is fried in Oil with required shape.'Pongal' means boiled rice with dhaal and ghee. We have another famous breakfast Idly and Chutney. Idly means griended rice paste boiled in steam .Vaada with Idly and Chutney is nice too...
Hello Jo! The food you have told me made very hungry! Hmmmm~ Oh yeah, do you know any idea what this food is called? *A sausage made from pig's blood! It sounds a bit scary, but it's your national dishes!:-/
hi JO, i just read your blog. it is very exciting. i can know more your culture . you know, i m in ASIAN so our breakfast completely different your. in viet nam, before having breakfast, they offent take exercise in the park. but not me haha. My favourite is PHO (soup noodle ). This is symbol of my country, it is very popular because every people can eat it everytime and everywhere. i see you are vegetarian, so you can visit ASIAN to discover food which suitable for you, not meat, only vegetable, tofu (soya cake ), but it is not symble to cook it. It has special seasonal, cuisine. when i pooped , i just drink a cup orange juice or sugar cane juice. It make me feel more comfortable especial in summer. thanks
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