Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 639, Ordering Soups and Salads.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 639.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com. go there to download the learning guide for this episode.
The learning guide will help you improve.
And the waiter actually the waitress here, we call her the server.
It's the same thing.
They're going to be talking about soups and salads.
So lots of vocabulary related to soups and salads in this episode.
Let's get started.
After a long, tiring day at work, I stopped at a restaurant nearby for a quick meal.
Hi, I'm Ursula.
Can I get you something to drink?
Yes, I'd like an iced tea and I'm also ready to order.
I'll just have a bowl of soup and a salad.
Sure, no problem.
What kind of soup would you like?
We have chicken noodle, minestrone, and cream of mushroom.
Do you have something that's hearty?
If you want something hearty, I would suggest our clam chowder or beef stew.
I'll take a bowl of beef stew.
Great.
What kind of salad would you like?
A chef's salad, Caesar salad, or Cobb salad?
I'll just have a garden salad.
Okay.
What kind of dressing would you like?
What kind do you have?
We have French, Italian, Ranch, Thousand Island, and Vinaigrette.
Do you have blue cheese?
Oh, yes.
I forgot to mention blue cheese.
Okay, that's a bowl of beef stew and a garden salad with blue cheese dressing.
Will that be all?
Yes, that's all.
By the time I had finished placing my order, I was even more tired.
Do you sometimes feel that life gives you too many choices?
Our dialogue begins with Paolo telling us that he is going to a restaurant for a quick meal.
He says he's had a long, tiring day.
A tiring day is a day that makes you tired, that makes your body feel weak or sleepy or tired.
He sits down and the server, whose name is Ursula, comes in and says, Hi, I'm Ursula.
Ursula is not a common woman's name anymore.
I once knew a sister Ursula, but that's a different story.
Paolo says, Yes, I'd like an iced tea, and I'm also ready to order.
I'll just have a bowl of soup and a salad.
When he says, I'll have, he means this is what I want to order.
When he says, I'll just have, he means just this and nothing else.
He's going to order a soup, which is a bowl of hot food, usually liquid, or there's liquid in it that you eat with a spoon.
Or he's going to have a salad, which is when you have many different vegetables or possibly fruits, usually uncooked, that are torn into small pieces.
The most common vegetable in a salad is lettuce, which is typically green, although it can be red and perhaps blue.
No, I don't think it can be blue.
Just kidding.
Ursula says, That's a very polite way of asking, would you like.
What kind of soup would you like?
What kind of soup do you want?
She says In the United States it's considered a food that you eat when you are not feeling well, when you have a cold, for example.
Your mother will make you a bowl of hot chicken soup, chicken noodle soup.
Minestrone M-I-N-E-S-T-R-O-N-E is a soup we associate with Italy in Italian restaurants, at least in the US.
This soup has different kinds of vegetables and often a little bit of pasta.
It's typically in a salty tomato sauce. or perhaps spinach-based liquid.
Cream of mushroom is a thick soup made from heavy cream or milk that has been blended together, put together with cooked mushrooms and other spices.
Paolo says, do you have something that's hearty?
The adjective hearty H-E-A-R-T-Y, when used in this case with soup, means something that will make you feel full after you finish eating it.
It's very large, and we would probably say it is filling.
A meal that is filling...
F-I-L-L-I-N-G is a meal that makes you feel like you can't eat anymore when you are done eating it.
The server says, if you want something hearty, I would suggest our clam chowder or beef stew.
Clam chowder is is another thick soup that is made with clams.
Clams are animals that live in the ocean in what's called a shell.
It's also made with potatoes, heavy cream, sometimes bacon.
That is what we call actually New England clam chowder.
In the Midwest, in Minnesota, where I'm from, we called it Boston clam chowder.
Boston is in the region of the United States known as New England, which is in the northwest east part of the US, the oldest part of the United States when it comes to colonists who came from Europe.
The other kind of clam chowder is red instead of white.
New England clam chowder is white.
The other kind of clam chowder is red.
It uses tomatoes instead of milk or cream, and that is called Manhattan clam chowder.
Manhattan is a part of New York City.
In fact, I think when I was growing up we sometimes called it New York clam chowder.
In any case, you have these two kinds of clam chowder.
Clam chowder in the United States has traditionally been served on Fridays.
Restaurants would have clam chowder on Fridays.
That was because there used to be a requirement for Catholics people of the Roman Catholic religion not to eat meat on any Friday throughout the year.
Those regulations changed in the 1960s.
However, the tradition of always having clam chowder on Friday continued with many restaurants and still today, when you go to a restaurant that has different kinds of soup, they will often have a clam chowder on Friday.
The second kind of hearty soup Ursula recommends is beef stew.
Stew S-T-E-W is a thick soup that is made by cooking meat, vegetables and potatoes in in a liquid that is salty, usually for several hours.
It takes a long time to make a good beef stew.
There are different kinds of stew.
Beef is the most common meat you will find in stews, though you can make them with other meats, of course.
In Minnesota, every fall...
There are beef stews that are made as part of large celebrations, what are called fall festivals.
And the stew is made in a very large pot.
This is called in Minnesota, booyah.
B-O-O-Y-A.
If you go to Minnesota or the Midwest, in the fall you will find booyah, at least in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
More recently, the word booyah has taken on a different meaning.
It is often spelled with an H at the end, and it means sort of...
Take that, or there you go.
It's something you yell at someone in certain situations.
We'll talk about that on a different episode.
Getting back to our food, Paolo says, I'll take a bowl of beef stew.
I'll take means the same as I'll have.
It means I want to order food.
The server says, great, what kind of salad would you like?
A chef salad, Caesar salad, or Cobb salad?
These are three common salads found in American restaurants.
Let's start with the chef salad.
A chef's salad typically has lettuce.
It has an egg that is completely cooked.
We would call it a hard-boiled egg.
It has small pieces of ham, chicken, cheese, as well as some other vegetables.
That's a chef's salad.
A Caesar capital.
C-A-E-S-A-R salad is a salad that has a special kind of lettuce, called romaine lettuce, in a dressing, a Caesar dressing.
Dressing is the liquid that you often put on top of the salads.
A Caesar salad has cheese.
It has usually what are called croutons, which are small pieces of crunchy fried bread.
Sometimes there's chicken or shrimp on the top of a Caesar salad, but not always.
The Caesar dressing itself is made from several different ingredients, including olive oil, garlic and anchovies.
A Cobb salad is a type of salad that has different kinds of lettuce.
It also has a hard-boiled egg, small pieces of ham and chicken cheese, sometimes avocado tomato, and on top there is what is called a blue cheese dressing, which is made, of course, from cheese.
Paolo doesn't want a chef Caesar or Cobb salad.
He says, I'll just have a garden salad.
A garden salad is a small, simple salad made with lettuce and a few other vegetables, but no meat and typically no cheese.
The server says, what kind of dressing would you like?
Paolo says, what kind do you have?
The lovely Ursula says, we have French, Italian, Ranch, Fausen Island, and Vinaigrette.
All of these are kinds of liquid dressing.
We'll go through them quickly.
French is a reddish-orange dressing made from oil, vinegar and usually some ketchup, other herbs and spices blended together.
It's a very smooth, thick dressing.
Italian dressing is almost clear in color.
It's also made from oil and vinegar, adding salt pepper, sometimes some very small spices, small pieces of vegetables, as well as some herbs.
Ranch dressing is white and thick, typically made from buttermilk, sour cream, and mayonnaise.
Thousand Island dressing is a type of salad dressing that is light orange, almost pink.
It's made from mayonnaise ketchup, minced pickles and other vegetables.
Vinaigrette V-I-N-A-I-G-R-E-T-T-E is a simple mixture combination of oil vinegar salt, and pepper.
Once again, Paolo doesn't like any of his choices.
He says, do you have blue cheese?
We've already talked about that.
The server says, oh yes, I forgot to mention blue cheese.
Okay, that's a bowl of beef stew and a garden salad with blue cheese dressing.
Will that be all?
Paolo says, yes, that's all, meaning I don't want any more food.
By the time he finished placing his order, he says, I was even more tired.
Paolo is tired because he had to select from long lists of food types, salads, and soups.
But that's not unusual in an American restaurant, where they give you often many choices when you are ordering your food.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
After a long, tiring day at work, I stopped at a restaurant nearby for a quick meal.
Hi, I'm Ursula.
Can I get you something to drink?
Yes, I'd like an iced tea, and I'm also ready to order.
I'll just have a bowl of soup and a salad.
Sure, no problem.
What kind of soup would you like?
We have chicken noodle, minestrone, and cream of mushroom.
Do you have something that's hearty?
If you want something hearty, I would suggest our clam chowder or beef stew.
I'll take a bowl of beef stew.
Great.
What kind of salad would you like?
A chef's salad, Caesar salad, or Cobb salad?
I'll just have a garden salad.
Okay.
What kind of dressing would you like?
What kind do you have?
We have French, Italian, ranch, Thousand Island, and vinaigrette.
Do you have blue cheese?
Oh, yes.
I forgot to mention blue cheese.
Okay.
That's a bowl of beef stew and a garden salad with blue cheese dressing.
Would that be all?
Yes, that's all.
You can't get chicken noodle soup here, but you can get some excellent scripts written by our own Dr.
Lucy Say
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
