Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 665, Types of Sandwiches.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 665.
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 a learning guide for this episode and to make your life a little happier today.
This episode, I hope, will make you happy or perhaps hungry.
It's called Types of Sandwiches.
Let's get started.
I am so hungry.
When can we go eat?
Just another minute and I'll be finished here.
What do you have a craving for?
I want a good sandwich.
Maybe a BLT or a pastrami on rye.
Now that I think of it, a Reuben or a club sandwich would really hit the spot.
I wonder if Nathan's is still open.
I doubt it.
It's really late.
In that case, maybe we can find a diner where I can get a French dip or a cheese steak sandwich.
I'd even settle for a tuna or chicken salad sandwich.
The nearest diner is closed for renovations, remember?
What are we going to do?
Where?
My place.
You'll have a choice of grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.
What do you say?
I guess beggars can't be choosers.
Our dialogue begins with Geraldo saying, I am so hungry.
I am very hungry.
When can we go eat?
Notice this use of go plus a verb.
It's used in more conversational english.
He could say when can we eat or when can we go to eat, but it's possible also to leave out the two and say simply when can we go eat.
You might also say something like i'm going to go play baseball, i'm going to go watch a movie on television.
Natasha says just another minute and I'll be finished here.
What do you have a craving for?
To crave, C-R-A-V-E, means to be hungry for something.
It's typically food, but you could also crave love or crave attention.
It's wanting something very badly, wanting it a lot.
To have a craving.
Here the verb becomes a noun, a gerund.
A craving means to have a sudden strong desire to eat a particular kind of food.
When someone asks, what do you have a craving for?
And that's probably how you would normally hear it as a noun.
They're asking if there is some specific food you really want.
I have a craving for lasagna.
Or I have a craving for sushi.
Or whatever it happens to be.
Natasha asks Geraldo what he has a craving for.
Geraldo says, I want a good sandwich.
Maybe ice. a BLT, or a pastrami on rye.
BLT stands for bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
A BLT is a sandwich that is made with bacon, lettuce and slices of tomato, pieces of tomato typically on a Toasted bread.
So you have two pieces of toasted bread.
You put the sandwich in between.
That's what a sandwich is.
And you will often add something like mayonnaise on the sandwich as well.
Pastrami P-A-S-T-R-A-M-I is a type of meat made from beef.
Pastrami on rye is a sandwich where the bread is made from rye, R-Y-E.
Rye is a grain.
It's something that you can make bread out of.
Pastrami on rye is a popular sandwich that you could get, for example, at a New York deli.
Adeli D-E-L-I stands for delicatessent, or is short for delicatessent, which is a small store that sells meat and cheese and often has sandwiches for sale.
If you go to New York City you'll see a lot of delis, and pastrami on rye is the classic, we might say popular sandwich that you can find there, among others.
So Geraldo says maybe he wants a BLT or a pastrami on rye.
Now that I think of it, a Reuben or a club sandwich would really hit the spot, right?
A Reuben sandwich.
It's spelled like the name Reuben capital R-E-U B, as in boy E-N, is a sandwich made from many small pieces, small slices of corned beef, which is a type of beef that is cured or treated with salt.
It also has a certain kind of what we would call cabbage, fermented cabbage, called sauerkraut.
And you put this between two toasted pieces of bread.
That's a Reuben.
Not my favorite sandwich.
A club sandwich, I love club sandwiches, a club sandwich is made with three pieces of bread.
So it's like one sandwich on top of another sandwich.
You have many different kinds of meats that would or could go into a club sandwich.
Most typically, it's turkey, ham, and chicken.
The meat is in a form we would call cold cuts, C-U-T-S.
Cold cuts is when meat is processed.
It's put through a machine, if you will, and it comes out in very thin pieces.
We would call them slices.
And that's what you would normally get in a club sandwich at a restaurant.
You would also have tomatoes, lettuce, usually mayonnaise, perhaps mustard as well.
I don't like mine with mustard.
Geraldo thinks one of these sandwiches, a Reuben or a Club, would really hit the spot.
To hit the spot is when the food that you are eating or the drink that you are drinking are very satisfying.
They meet your need.
You were very hungry and you go and you have your favorite sandwich and now you're not hungry anymore.
You say, boy, that hit the spot.
That's exactly what I wanted.
I am no longer hungry or thirsty anymore.
Geraldo says I wonder if Nathan's is still open.
Nathan's is a restaurant that he wants to go to.
Natasha says I doubt it.
I don't think so.
It's really late.
Probably late at night.
Geraldo says in that case...
Maybe we can find a diner where I can get a French dip or a cheesesteak sandwich.
A diner.
D-I-N-E-R is a restaurant, an informal restaurant that serves inexpensive, cheap food, usually sandwiches soups salads, maybe some other types of drinks.
There's no alcohol at a diner.
It's not a restaurant you would bring your girlfriend to, at least if you were on a first date, unless she really likes diners possible.
There was a wonderful movie called Diner that was made in the 1980s when I was in college, about American young men in their late teens, early 20s, which is how old I was when the movie came out.
Diners are very popular in American culture.
You will find diners in every city and every small town typically, and it's a place where you can get good but not expensive food.
There's a diner I go to not too far from me over in Santa Monica called Ray's R-A-E apostrophe S.
In any case, Geraldo says that maybe they can find a diner.
Diners are often open until a very late hour, sometimes 24 hours a day.
Where I can get a French dip or a cheesesteak sandwich.
A French dip is a sandwich that is made with a large we would call it roll a large piece of white bread.
And inside are slices, small pieces of roast beef.
And typically there is a small cup inside. or bowl that has something like soup in it.
We would call it a broth that is made from the cooking of the beef.
So you take the sandwich in one hand and you put it into the broth, the soup, if you will.
It's not soup.
It's a liquid.
And you then take a bite out of the sandwich and then you dip it, that is, you put it back in again, take it out and continue eating the sandwich this way.
The French dip, according to at least two restaurants here in Los Angeles, was invented...
Los Angeles.
It was first made here in Los Angeles.
There are at least two restaurants that say they were the first to make a French dip.
The one that I go to, which is located near the Chinatown area of Los Angeles, where there are lots of Chinese restaurants and stores.
But it's not a Chinese restaurant at all.
It's called Philippe's.
A cheesesteak sandwich is a sandwich made on a long white sheet piece of bread we would call it a bun b-u-n and you put in small thin pieces or slices of steak of beef and on top of it you put cheese that is going to melt with the heat and It's a very popular sandwich in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
If you ever go to Philadelphia, what you should get is a cheese steak sandwich.
That's what they are famous for.
One of the things they're famous for.
Geraldo says, I'd even settle for a tuna or chicken salad sandwich.
To settle for something is a phrasal verb meaning it's not the thing you really wanted, but it's okay.
I really want a pizza, but I'll settle for some lasagna.
It's not my favorite, but it's good enough.
It's acceptable to you.
Subtle has a number of different meanings in English.
Some of those can be found in our learning guide.
A tuna or chicken salad sandwich is a sandwich made with two pieces or two slices of bread filled with either tuna, which is a kind of fish, or chicken, But it's cut up and combined with mayonnaise and usually some very small pieces of onion.
And there's also a piece or slice of lettuce and or tomato that will often come on a tuna or chicken salad sandwich.
I love tuna salad sandwiches.
Natasha says the nearest diner is closed for renovation.
Renovation is when you take a building, usually a commercial building, and you make significant or big changes to it to make it better.
For a house, we would probably say you're remodeling the house.
For a building where a restaurant might be, we would say renovation.
But they're basically the same ideas.
Geraldo says, what are we going to do?
Because the diner that he wanted to go to is not open.
Natasha says I know of a place.
Meaning I know a place that's open and ready to serve.
Meaning you can get some food there right now.
Geraldo says, where?
Natasha says, my place, meaning my house or my apartment, the place where I live.
Geraldo says, you can make me a good sandwich.
Natasha says, you'll have your choice of grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.
What do you say?
A grilled cheese sandwich I used to eat when I was a kid is a sandwich that's made of a piece of cheese and melted on a toasted piece of bread.
Usually you put the cheese in there and you put some butter on the outside.
Then you put it in a pan and you heat it up and brown the bread.
Make the bread browned and crisp.
A little bit hard.
That's a grilled cheese sandwich.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is again a sandwich that you would eat as a child probably more than as an adult.
Peanut butter is a type of paste that is made from peanuts.
It's thick.
Jelly is made from some sort of typically fruit paste.
But it's very sweet and it is like the peanut butter, kind of thick.
You put those two together and you get a PBJ, as we sometimes call it, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
It's the sort of thing that children, young children can make on their own without any help.
And it is also something that would be popular to, for example, take to school to eat at your lunchtime.
Natasha says, what do you say?
Meaning, what do you think of my idea?
Geraldo says, I guess beggars can't be choosers.
This is an old expression.
Beggars, B-E-G-G-A-R-S, are people who don't have money and ask other people for money.
Often on the street, you're walking down the street and someone says, do you have a dollar?
That's a beggar, a poor person without enough money asking someone else for some money.
A chooser is someone who chooses.
So the expression beggars can't, cannot be.
Choosers means that if you are asking someone for something, you don't necessarily have the opportunity or option of choosing.
You have to take what they give you.
If you ask someone for $10 and they give you $5, you can't say, oh, no, no, I want $10.
You would take the $5.
You would take what is offered to you.
And that's what Geraldo is saying.
He doesn't have any other choice.
This is his only option.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I'm so hungry.
When can we go eat?
Just another minute and I'll be finished here.
What do you have a craving for?
I want a good sandwich, maybe a BLT or a pastrami on rye.
Now that I think of it, a Reuben or a club sandwich would really hit the spot.
I wonder if Nathan's is still open.
I doubt it.
It's really late.
In that case, maybe we can find a diner where I can get a French dip or a cheesesteak sandwich.
I'd even settle for a tuna or chicken salad sandwich.
The nearest diner is closed for renovations, remember?
What are we going to do?
I know of a place that's open and ready to serve.
Where?
My place.
You can make me a good sandwich?
You'll have a choice of grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.
What do you say?
I guess beggars can't be choosers.
No one likes a good French dip sandwich more than the writer of this dialogue for our episode today, 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 2011 by the Center for Educational Development.
