Having a barbecue.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 829.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in Los Angeles, California.
Why am I speaking so strangely?
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
Didn't have enough coffee this morning.
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This episode is a dialogue between George and Sophia.
They're going to be cooking.
They're going to be having a barbecue.
Let's get started.
Step aside.
The king of the cookout is here.
I'm ready to work my magic on this barbecue.
Here are the burgers and hot dogs.
The kids are pretty hungry.
Hold on.
I need to put on the charcoal.
Now I'm ready to fire up this barbecue.
Where's the lighter fluid?
It's right here.
Good.
Oh, I almost forgot.
I'll need to gather some wood to burn to give the meat that smoky flavor.
Why don't I do that while you get things going?
No, I need to do things my way.
I also need to make my world-famous barbecue sauce.
The meat won't taste very good if I don't baste it with my special sauce each time I flip it.
Okay, how about if I get the corn on the cob ready for grilling?
I'll do that.
I have my own special way of preparing the corn.
Is there anything I can do to hurry things along?
Perfection takes time.
Would you tell Michelangelo to hurry up?
Our dialogue begins with George saying, step aside.
That expression step aside A-S-I-D-E is used when you are telling someone to move out of your way, to move so that you can walk through a certain area or you can be in a certain area.
George is saying move over the king of the cookout is here.
The king of is used when a man thinks he's the best person in some area.
He's the expert.
I'm the king of poker players.
I'm the king of podcasters.
I'm the king of the world.
Well, that was that was in Titanic.
Remember the movie Titanic?
Yeah.
Anyway, that's what we mean.
I'm the king of.
I'm the most powerful person or the most knowledgeable or expert person in this area.
A woman would say I'm the queen of something.
George is the king of cookouts, a cookout.
C-O-O-K-O-U-T is an event where food is cooked, usually outside, outside of a house or a building, and it's cooked over an open fire.
We would say it's grilled, so that you have these little bars of metal and the fire underneath and you put the food on top of the bars of metal, the grill, that's a cookout.
George says, I'm ready to work my magic on this barbecue.
The expression to work your magic means I'm going to do something very well.
I'm going to do something better than anyone else can do.
A barbecue is a large device that is used to cook outside.
It has a grill on it.
You can either use gas, which is very popular nowadays.
But the traditional way is to use small pieces of charcoal that you light on fire and then the charcoal gets hot and that cooks the food.
That provides the heat.
So a barbecue can refer to that device, that thing that you use to cook with.
Sometimes it's just used to describe a cookout, a party.
We're going to have a barbecue, meaning we're going to have a meal where we cook outside on a barbecue.
This is often abbreviated barbecue, B-A-R-B-E-C-U-E, with the three letters capitalized B-B-Q.
Sophia says, here are the burgers and hot dogs.
The kids are pretty hungry.
Burgers refers to hamburgers.
Hot dogs are hot dogs, and those are both popular things to cook at a barbecue in addition to ribs and chicken.
The kids are pretty hungry, Sophia says, meaning the kids are very hungry.
George says, hold on, meaning wait.
I need to put on the charcoal.
Now I'm ready to fire up this barbecue.
Where's the lighter fluid?
Remember I said there is sort of a traditional way of doing barbecues where you use little pieces of charcoal, basically.
What you do is you put the charcoal, C-H-A-R-C-O-A-L, inside the barbecue.
Then you put on lighter fluid.
Lighter fluid is a liquid that you pour over the charcoal that causes it to burn when you put fire on there.
To fire up would mean to light something to start a fire burning.
And so what you're doing is you are lighting up the pieces of charcoal so they'll get hot.
And once they get hot, then you can put the food on top of the grill and cook it.
George is firing up the barbecue.
He's asking for the lighter fluid, and Sophia says it's right here.
George says, good.
Oh, I almost forgot.
I'll need to gather some wood.
I'll need to get some wood to burn to give the meat that smoky flavor.
Smoky, S-M-O-K-Y, means a lot of smoke, smoke.
The gray colored air that comes from burning something with a fire, basically.
And that's popular in barbecues to want to have, for some things, a smoky flavor.
There are different ways of getting that.
Burning wood is one of them.
I think you can actually buy charcoal that's somehow flavored and when you use it it produces that smoky effect or result.
Sophia says, why don't I do that while you get things going?
Sophia's saying, I'll go get the wood.
You start the barbecue.
George says, no, I need to do things my way. meaning I need to do things the way I want to do them.
I also need to make my world famous barbecue sauce.
World famous means everyone in the world knows about it.
A barbecue sauce.
S-A-U-C-E is a thick liquid you put on top of the meat that you're cooking.
That gives it a very certain barbecue taste.
I'm not sure how to describe it.
It's usually made with something a little sweet inside.
George says the meat won't taste very good if I don't baste it with my special sauce each time I flip it.
To baste means to use a small tool.
It looks often like a brush to put the sauce, this heavy or thick liquid, over the food so that it doesn't become too dry.
George needs to baste the meat with his special sauce each time he flips it.
To flip, F-L-I-P, here means to turn something over.
So if you're cooking a hamburger, you cook one side and then you flip it over, you turn it over and cook the other side.
Sometimes jokingly.
We talk about people who work in hamburger restaurants like McDonald's as flipping burgers.
The term is used to describe a job that doesn't pay very well and is probably not the most interesting.
Sophia says, OK, how about if I get the corn on the cob ready for grilling?
Corn on the cob is corn, the vegetable that comes, still attached to the hard inedible, what you don't eat.
Part of the plant.
If you know what corn looks like when you take it off the plant.
Well, you take the outside of the corn off, what we call the husk H-U-S-K.
And you're left with the corn on the cob C-O-B.
The cob is the middle part of the plant, the hard part that you don't eat.
Grilling, you already know, means to cook something on top of this metal device.
So grill can be a noun, but here it's used as a verb.
It means basically the same as barbecuing in this instance.
George says, I'll do that.
I have my own special way of preparing corn.
Sophia says, is there anything I can do to hurry things along?
Remember, the children are hungry.
And George is taking a long time.
So Sophia says she wants to hurry things along.
That means to speed things up, to make things happen more quickly.
George says perfection takes time.
Perfection is when you can't do anything any better than it is.
It's without any mistakes.
George says, would you tell Michelangelo to hurry up?
Michelangelo, you probably know, is the or was the influential Italian Renaissance artist who painted the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome.
He created the statue of David in Florence, Italy, and so forth.
Michelangelo here is used to mean an artist, a great artist.
And George thinks of himself as a great artist.
We also.
If we're trying to describe someone who's brilliant, someone who's intellectually a genius, we would say he's an Einstein.
Well, George is saying he's a Michelangelo.
He's a great artist as a cook.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Step aside.
The king of the cookout is here.
I'm ready to work my magic on this barbecue.
Here are the burgers and hot dogs.
The kids are pretty hungry.
Hold on.
I need to put on the charcoal.
Now I'm ready to fire up this barbecue.
Where's the lighter fluid?
It's right here.
Good.
Oh, I almost forgot.
I'll need to gather some wood to burn to give the meat that smoky flavor.
Why don't I do that while you get things going?
No, I need to do things my way.
I also need to make my world-famous barbecue sauce.
The meat won't taste very good if I don't baste it with my special sauce each time I flip it.
Okay, how about if I get the corn on the cob ready for grilling?
I'll do that.
I have my own special way of preparing the corn.
Is there anything I can do to hurry things along?
Perfection takes time.
Would you tell Michelangelo to hurry up?
She's the queen of ESL scriptwriters.
A Michelangelo in what she does.
I'm speaking, of course, of our own Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
