Wasabi

Hi Ha, and all our friends!

Ha, I agree that music is great. I like listening to music when I’m driving in my car. At the moment I’m listening to the latest album of a UK band called The Kaiser Chiefs. I love it.

Ha, there’s a small point I want to pick up on in your last blog. You wrote:

‘I am also fond of listening to Chinese musics’.

I just wanted to point out that you don’t add an ‘s’ onto the end of ‘music’ to make a plural. And in fact ‘music’ is an uncountable noun. So, if you wanted to use a plural meaning, you would have to say something like:

I like many different types of music.

And for a singular meaning, you could say this:

This is my favourite piece of music.

But never ‘musics’, OK?

Ha, you did a great job using the correct tenses in your last blog. Well done. It’s really such an improvement.

Which reminds me – here are the answers to those tenses that you had to correct in my last blog:

It’s got quite a hot taste to it – something like mustard or wasabi, if 1) you have ever tried either of those foods.

Watercress 2) has been farmed in this part of southern England for over 200 years.
(this was a nasty one – we use ‘has been’ because the activity is still continuing today.)

In the 1800s, watercress 3) was sent to the Covent Garden market in London by stagecoach.

Watercress grows in long, flat beds, which 4) are fed by mineral water that comes from underground springs.
(another nasty one – ‘feed’ is irregular in the past tense)

Apparently, the Romans 5) believed that watercress was an aphrodisiac.

Hmm, maybe 6) I’ll/I should make some watercress soup for dinner.

Now, in my last blog I wrote about watercress and explained that its taste is akin to wasabi. Jill asked what wasabi is. So I want to tell you a little story – a true story.

Wasabi is a *very* hot sauce, originally from Japan. It’s green in colour, and you can mix it with soy sauce and dunk your noodles into it. You can also dip sushi into wasabi for an extra kick. Delicious! Of course, you only want to use a touch of wasabi, because it’s very hot (Tomo, have I got this right? Maybe you can tell us more about wasabi!).

Anyway, like Jill, I didn’t know what wasabi was once upon a time. I was in Hong Kong, and I was at a dinner buffet with some friends on Lantau island. The buffet was bursting with delicious dishes – fresh mango, seafood, noodles, sushi, pasta, pizza. You name it, this buffet had it. So I filled my plate with some salad, bread, pasta, avocado and fruit, and I sat down to eat.

How nice the little rice spoon filled with avocado looked! I put the whole thing in my mouth and swallowed.

Except, it wasn’t avocado at all. It was a whole spoonful of wasabi! My eyes streamed, my nose felt like it was on fire, my face went bright red and my nose starting running. I drank a whole glass of water but it didn’t help. And do you know what my so-called friends did? They laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I was crying from the pain, and they were crying because they were hysterical. Ah well, at least I provided some entertainment for the evening!

Luckily this experience hasn’t put me off wasabi. But these days, I only eat very small amounts of it.

OK, I’m finishing now because – can you keep a secret? – I’m going to bake a carrot cake for Richard. It’s his birthday tomorrow. Don’t let the cat out of the bag!

Enjoy your weekends!

Jo

Vocabulary

to pick up on – to mention

akin to – similar to

dunk – dip into something wet. For example, you can ‘dunk’ a biscuit into a cup of tea.

for an extra kick – more impact, more excitement

a touch – a small amount

bursting with – full to overflowing

my eyes streamed – if your eyes stream, you can’t stop tears falling out of them

when your nose runs, a thick wet substance (the impolite word for it is ‘snot’) comes out of it – not nice!

Something that puts you off discourages you


Answers to your comments

Nameless of Tehran – ‘take up’ means ‘absorb’ in the following sentence: ‘More CO2 will build up in the atmosphere instead of being taken up by plants’.

Mani – how to get an excellent score in an exam? If I could make the formula I would be very rich. The most important thing is to study hard, get lots of rest, eat well and try to stay calm. Good luck!

Jill – yes, it should have been ‘eat’, not ‘each’. Thanks! I changed it so I didn’t confuse anyone else.

Thanks for all your contributions. This blog has now closed and can no longer accept new comments.