Saying goodbye with a nice cup of tea

Hello again Taru!

I really enjoyed reading about how you collect wild herbs, mushrooms and other plants in summer and autumn. How lovely to be able to go out of your house, look around for something to eat, pick it and then go back inside and cook.
Your photos were great too. I’ve got a blackcurrant bush in the front garden. Next time the sun is shining in the morning, I’ll go outside and pick the leaves to make into tea. We pick the fruit and cook it slowly with sugar to make a dessert or jam, but I had never thought of making a herbal tea with the leaves. Thank you for the tip!

I like the links you posted too, particularly the one with the recipes. Dandelion leaves grow wild here like they do in Finland, so I am going to try adding some to a salad. Perhaps I will tell Rian and Clara that they are eating lettuce, until after they’ve tried it…

I have found this useful list of cooking vocabulary on the BBC LE site:

BBC LE: Flatmates - Kitchen vocabulary

The list includes the word boil (meaning to heat water until it is very, very hot to make a hot drink or to cook food), as in boil an egg, boil some potatoes, boil some water for tea and so on. A couple of other cooking words that are not on the list are: pour and teapot. Pour means to make something (perhaps boiling water) flow out of a container (perhaps a kettle). A teapot is the container into which you pour boiling water onto tea or blackcurrant leaves. I can see from your photos that your teapot has got a blue stripe around the bottom. I can’t see your kettle; is it electric or do you boil your kettle on your gas (or electric) hob?

OK, so the words that I want to show you today are: boil, pour and teapot. Can you use them to replace the words in italics in this sentence?

Put the leaves into a tee pan and cook the water and turn it over the leaves.

The answer is as the bottom of the page, after the 'comments on the comments' section!

Making and drinking tea is an important social activity for lots of people I know. Rian, (my 14 -year old son) usually kindly offers to make me a cup of tea just after I have reminded him that it is his bedtime. He knows that I will always say 'yes, please!' and he will get a few extra minutes downstairs before he has to go up to bed…

Here’s a really nice page on tea idioms in English:

BBC LE: Food idioms - Tea

Well that’s it from me; it’s over to Jim for the rest of June. I have really enjoyed reading your posts Taru, and equally enjoyed getting to know Marcos and Jihad too. What a wonderfully diverse community the BBC LE bloggers are! Clara and I have made a little 'goodbye and thank you' video which you can see here:

Saying goodbye and thank you!

I tried to change the picture from the video that is automatically selected by YouTube, but all the other options were equally weird-looking. Oh dear. My tuneless humming and unintentionally weird poses have all been exposed on this blog. Never mind. I should have let Clara do all my videos.

I hope to see you on an Open Blog in the future. If any of you are on Facebook, I am there too and would be happy to be Facebook friends with you (and fellow fans of the BBC LE Facebook site!).

All the best with your learning, using and blogging!

Rachel

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Comments on the comments:

All of your comments have been brilliant – so a special thank you to all of you who have written to me over the last ten weeks. You are part of a very exciting community!

Hyoshil (from the UK) – I’ve really enjoyed talking to you through the blog and reading your energetic and expressive writing. Please pop in to York St John University for a cup of coffee sometime! It would be great to meet in person and we have very nice cakes!

Vladimir (from Ukraine) – thank you for your translation of the Russian saying about education. As a lifelong learner (and an adult-lifelong teacher) I definitely agree!!

Asma (from UAE) – yes, when what we study and what we teach is also a hobby, we’re very lucky.

Marianna (from Slovakia) – best of luck with everything. I’ve enjoyed reading your comments about your trips to visit friends and all the other interesting things you have described. Thank you!

Answer: Put the leaves into a teapot and boil the water and pour it over the leaves.

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