Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 342, At the Butchers.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, episode 342.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development at in beautiful Los Angeles California, the home of Hollywood.
You can visit our website by going to www.eslpod.com.
While you're there, download a learning guide for this episode, an 8-10 page guide that helps you improve your English even faster.
On this episode...
We're going to take a trip to the butcher's.
A butcher is someone who cuts and prepares meat and sells it.
Let's get started.
What can I get for you?
I'd like a pound of ground beef, please.
Would you like the regular or the extra lean?
The extra lean is a dollar more per pound.
I'll take the regular.
Could you also throw in two thick pork chops and two chicken breasts?
I'm sorry, but we're out of chicken breasts right now, but we have some thighs.
Hmm.
In that case, I'll just take some ham.
I'd like that thinly sliced.
Okay.
Is there anything else?
Yes, I'd like some other cold cuts, but I'm not sure which ones.
Why don't you give me half a pound of salami and a pound of bologna?
No problem.
Will that be all?
No, I'd like two steaks.
Do you have any that are very, very tender?
The ones I bought last week were really tough.
We have T-bone, ribeye, and sirloin steaks.
The ribeye is probably the most tender.
I'll take two of those.
Okay.
Anything else?
No, I think that's all.
For now.
Our dialogue today is about a butcher shop, a place where they sell meat specifically.
Butchers are, in terms of having their own business, not as popular in the United States as they used to be, maybe 30, 40 years ago.
There are still some what we call butcher shops, places that you can only buy meat.
But most of the butchers now work for one of the larger supermarkets.
The butcher begins the dialogue with Gina by saying, What can I get for you?
He's asking what she wants to buy.
What can I get for you, he says.
Gina says, I'd like a pound of ground beef, please.
Beef is a general word we use to describe the meat from a cow in particular.
Ground beef is cow meat that has been cut up into very small pieces using a special machine.
We make hamburgers, for example, from ground beef.
The butcher says, would you like the regular or the extra lean?
When we say something is lean, L-E-A-N, we mean it has very little fat.
It's meat that has very little fat in it or on it.
Lean has a couple of different definitions.
Take a look at the learning guide for some additional explanations.
You'll also find in the learning guide an explanation of something called the USDA in the United States.
And we talk about how meat is rated by quality in the U.S.
Take a look at the cultural note for that.
The butcher says the extra lean is a dollar more per pound.
Gina says, I'll take the regular, meaning give me the regular.
When you say to someone at a store that you want to buy something, you say or can say I'll take two pairs of socks and one of those watches.
It means I want to buy those things.
Gina says, I'll take the regular beef.
Could you also throw in two thick pork chops and two chicken breasts?
To throw in is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to add.
Usually, we use this when someone is selling something to you and you want them to include some additional things.
Not necessarily for free, though sometimes...
That's the case.
In this case Gina is asking the butcher to add to her order what she's buying two thick pork chops and chicken breasts.
A pork chop is a thin piece of meat that comes from a pig.
It's usually big enough for one person to eat.
You often, in a pork chop, still have the bone in the meat that you have to eat around.
Chicken breasts are the white meat part of a chicken that's on the front of the chicken.
From you can guess their chest.
Your chest is the front upper part of your body.
The butcher says I'm sorry but we're out of chicken breasts right now.
We're out of them.
We don't have any more left.
We don't have any to sell you.
He says we do have some thighs.
A thigh T-H-I-G-H is the upper part of a person or an animal's leg.
In the case of a chicken, there's a lot of meat in the thigh.
There's also more fat in the thigh part of a chicken.
Gina says, hmm, which is a sound you make when you're thinking about something.
Hmm.
In that case, I'll just take some ham.
In that case means well, in this situation, considering what you told me, considering all the facts, I'll just take some ham.
Ham is meat from the top part of a pig's leg.
Usually it has been... what we call preserved, with either smoke or salt.
So it's given a special treatment, a special processing.
Gina says, I'd like the ham thinly sliced.
To slice, S-L-I-C-E, means to cut something into very thin, flat pieces.
You can slice bread.
You can slice meat.
In this case, she wants thin slices, pieces that are not thick but thin of the ham.
Personally, I like thick sliced ham.
But this is Gina, so it's her decision.
The butcher says, okay, is there anything else?
And Gina says, yes.
Cold cuts are meats that are cut into very thin, flat pieces that are in thin slices.
Usually, we use cold cuts to make sandwiches.
You could have cold cuts of turkey, of ham, of bologna, of roast beef.
All of these are cold meats that you use to make sandwiches.
And usually cold cuts are meat that is prepared in a way that you can use it for a sandwich.
A cut of meat is just another word for a piece of meat.
Gina says, Why don't you give me half a pound of salami and a pound of bologna?
Why don't you give me means?
Please give me half a pound of salami S-A-L-A-M-I and a pound of bologna.
Bologna.
B-O-L-O-G-N-E is a meat used for sandwiches, usually made from other kinds of meat mixed together, such as ham, turkey or other things.
When I was growing up, bologna was very inexpensive.
It was the cheapest cold cut you could buy.
So, since I come from a big family of 11 people, In order to feed everyone for lunch, we would often eat bologna.
In fact, we'd have bologna almost every day, which is why I don't eat bologna anymore.
Salami is a long, spicy sausage that's cut into slices and is eaten cold.
A sausage is again a mixture of different kinds of meats that are put into a long tube and you slice them and you have salami as a cold cut.
The butcher says, no problem.
Will that be all?
Meaning, do you have anything else you want to buy?
Gina, who is apparently feeding 100 people, says, no, I'd like two steaks.
A steak is a thick piece of good quality beef from a cow.
Usually from a cow, you can have other kinds of steaks.
There are ham steaks from a pig.
But normally when someone says a steak, they mean a beef steak.
Do you have any steaks that are very tender steaks?
Something that is tender, T-E-N-D-E-R, is soft.
So when we're talking about meat, we're talking about meat that is easy to cut, easy to chew in your mouth.
That would be tender meat.
The opposite of tender would be tough.
Gina says the ones I bought last week, the steaks I bought last week, were really tough.
Tough means they were difficult to eat.
They were hard.
They were difficult to cut and chew.
It's definitely considered a bad thing if your meat is tough.
Tough has a couple of different meanings in English.
Once again, take a look at your learning guide for some additional explanations.
The butcher says to Gina...
We have T-bone, ribeye, and sirloin steaks.
These are three different kinds of steaks from a cow.
T-bone is a thick piece of meat that has a bone inside of it.
And the bone is usually in the shape of the letter T.
Ribeye is a thick piece of meat that is very tender.
It also usually has more fat.
It's found around the ribs.
The bones of the cow's chest are the ribs.
So ribeye steak is very tender, a little fatty.
Sirloin, S-I-R-L-O-I-N, is a thick piece of good quality beef that comes from the cow's back.
So these are three different kinds of beef steaks.
Gina says, I'll take two of the ribeye.
The butcher says, anything else?
And Gina says, no, I think that's all for now.
She'll probably be back in a few minutes and order an entire cow.
Gina may be very hungry, however.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What can I get for you?
I'd like a pound of ground beef, please.
Would you like the regular or the extra lean?
The extra lean is a dollar more per pound.
I'll take the regular.
Could you also throw in two thick pork chops and two chicken breasts?
I'm sorry, but we're out of chicken breasts right now, but we have some thighs.
Hmm, in that case, I'll just take some ham.
I'd like that thinly sliced.
Okay, is there anything else?
Yes, I'd like some other cold cuts, but I'm not sure which ones.
Why don't you give me half a pound of salami and a pound of bologna?
No problem.
Will that be all?
No, I'd like two steaks.
Do you have any that are very, very tender?
The ones I bought last week were really tough.
We have T-bone, ribeye, and sirloin steaks.
The ribeye is probably the most tender.
I'll take two of those.
Okay, anything else?
No, I think that's all.
For now.
The script for this episode was written by stake-loving Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2008.
