Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1193, Reducing Food Waste.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1193.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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All the cool kids are doing it.
This episode is a dialogue between John and Marta about not wasting your food.
Let's get started.
Wait!
What are you doing with that squishy tomato?
I'm tossing it.
It's no good anymore.
I'll take it.
And I'll take that stale bread, too.
Stop!
You can't fish that out of the trash.
I'm trying to do my part to reduce food waste.
Tired vegetables are still okay to eat, as are bruised fruit.
Fine, but not once they've been discarded.
Stay out of my trash.
What are you going to do with this graying meat?
I was going to throw that out, too.
I'll take it.
I'm sure I can make something edible with it.
You can't be serious.
I'm all for doing my part, but I draw the line at eating spoiled meat.
It's not spoiled.
It's just beyond the peak of freshness.
Well, be my guest.
You can have all of this food.
And to show my thanks...
I'll invite you over to lunch tomorrow.
Thanks, but no thanks.
John says to Marta, Wait, what are you doing with that squishy tomato?
Squishy S-Q-U-I-S-H-Y is something that is soft, usually something that you can change the shape of easily by squeezing it or putting your hands around it.
A squishy tomato would be a tomato that is no longer soft, Hard or firm, F-I-R-M.
Meaning when you pick it up it would fall apart, basically.
John is asking Marta what she is doing with a tomato that seems to be squishy.
Marta says, I'm tossing it.
It's no good anymore.
To toss, T-O-S-S, here means to throw away, to get rid of.
John says, I'll take it and I'll take that stale bread too.
John wants Marta to give him this squishy tomato as well as some stale, S-T-A-L-E, bread.
Bread that is stale is no longer fresh.
It's old and dried out.
Often it's hard.
Marta says, stop.
You can't fish that out of the trash.
To fish F-I-S-H something out of something else means to take something out of a container where it is surrounded by other things.
So, for example, if you open up a drawer that has lots of different things in it, You may fish out something.
You may take something out that is mixed up with or in a pile of other things.
In this case, John is trying to fish something out of the trash, T-R-A-S-H.
Trash here refers to garbage or things that are being thrown away.
Most people in their houses have a container, an object that they use to put trash into or to put garbage into things that they are throwing away, things that they are getting rid of.
Well, John is apparently trying to take some food out of a trash container, which sounds pretty awful, pretty disgusting.
John says, however, that he's trying to do his part to reduce food waste.
Food waste.
W-A-S-T-E is food that is not eaten, but instead thrown away when in fact, it could still be used.
John says that he's trying to reduce food waste.
He's trying to make sure that we don't waste too much food.
He says tired vegetables are still okay to eat, as are bruised fruit.
Tired, T-I-R-E-D, usually means the same as sleepy. of not having a lot of energy.
But tired vegetables would refer to older vegetables that start to look like they aren't very fresh, that you may not want to eat them.
But John says it's okay to eat tired vegetables, vegetables that are older.
He also says it's okay to eat bruised fruit.
If fruit is bruised, it has small dark spots on the skin and is usually soft in those particular spots, those areas.
If you have a banana that's bruised, it will often be black because of the bruise and it will be soft when you touch it.
John says it's okay to eat bruised fruit.
Marta says fine, but not once they've been discarded.
She's saying maybe it's okay to eat tired vegetables and bruised fruit, but not once they have been discarded.
D-I-S-C-A-R-D-E-D.
To discard means to throw something away, to put something, in this case, in the garbage container.
She then tells John stay out of my trash, meaning don't go looking in my trash container and taking things out of it.
To stay out of some place means not to go there or not to go in there.
John then asks her, what are you going to do with this graying meat?
Graying, G-R-A-Y-I-N-G, comes from the color gray, G-R-A-Y.
Meat can turn gray when it gets old, and it's usually a sign you don't want to eat it.
That's why Marta says, I was going to throw that out too.
She was going to get rid of the grain meat.
But John says, I'll take it.
I'm sure I can make something edible with it.
Edible, E-D-I-B-L-E, means able to be eaten, something you can eat without getting sick.
John thinks he can take this graying meat, this old meat, and make something out of it, cook something that would allow him to eat it.
I'm not so sure.
Neither is Marta.
She says, you can't be serious, meaning you must be joking.
I'm all for, meaning I'm in favor of, doing my part.
To do your part means to help in a group effort or to do your fair share of the work.
If someone says, I want to do my part, that person wants to help the group do something.
Not everything, but what that person thinks would be his responsibility or his part of the work that needs to be done.
Marta wants to do her part to stop wasting food.
But she says The expression to draw D-R-A-W the line means to indicate that you will not do anything beyond a certain point.
You are indicating the limits of something.
You are saying... how much you will accept and what you won't accept.
Notice she says, I will draw the line at.
And then she says, eating spoiled meat.
What she's saying here is that she's not going to Eat spoiled meat.
That's the limit to what she will do in terms of stopping food waste.
She won't do that.
She's drawing the line at this particular action.
Eating spoiled, S-P-O-I-L-E-D, meat.
Spoiled food is food that you can no longer eat, usually because it is too old and has become what we would describe as rotten.
If food is rotten, it will make you sick if you eat it.
Sometimes we use that adjective rotten when we're talking about a person who misbehaves or who does things wrong or acts badly.
You may talk about a rotten child, a child who is always screaming and causing problems and not being very nice.
There was a famous punk rock star of the 1970s called Johnny Rotten.
Well, here we're not talking about rock stars.
We're talking about food that you should not eat.
And Marta doesn't want to eat food that is spoiled or rotten.
John, no relation, I think, to Johnny Rotten, meaning I don't think the two are brothers or anything says it's not spoiled.
It's just beyond the peak of freshness.
To be beyond, B-O-Y-O-N-D, means to be past something.
The peak, P-E-A-K, of something is the highest point.
You can think of a mountain having a peak.
It's the highest point, the highest place on a mountain.
Freshness, F-R-E-S-H-N-E-S-S, is when food is at its best, when it is best to eat.
If something is beyond the peak of freshness, then it is no longer the best time to eat it, but it's still okay to eat it.
That's what John is saying.
Marta says, This is a very common expression in conversational English.
Be my guest means go ahead and do it.
You are telling someone it's okay for him to do something.
Sometimes, however...
Often, in fact, we use it somewhat as a joke, or use it sarcastically, meaning we don't really mean it, or we are saying that we don't want to do something.
But if you want to, then you can do it.
For example, let's say your neighbor's dog is barking.
And you start yelling at the dog and the dog, of course, being stupid as dogs are, doesn't do anything.
And your wife says to you, why don't you tell that dog to be quiet?
And you say, I've already tried.
She says, well, I'm going to try.
And you say, okay, be my guest.
You're telling her to go and try to get the dog to be quiet.
But you're probably saying it in such a way as to indicate that you don't think she will be very successful.
One thing you might try to do is to give the dog some spoiled meat.
That might eventually cause the dog to no longer bark.
I'm just kidding, of course.
You shouldn't do that.
I am not recommending that to anyone.
Please don't email and tell me that I'm a rotten person.
Anyway, Marta says, well, be my guest.
You can have all of this food, she says.
John says, and to show my thanks, to thank you, I'll invite you over to lunch tomorrow.
John is inviting Marta to come over to his house and have lunch.
Marta says, thanks, but no thanks.
If someone asks you to do something that you think is dangerous or perhaps is going to be unpleasant, and you want to indicate that the person probably shouldn't have even asked you to do this, you might use this expression thanks, but no thanks.
It means, no, I really don't want to do that.
You're thanking the person, but you're saying no thanks, meaning no, I don't want to.
Of course Marta doesn't want to go over to John's house and eat all of the food that John has taken from her.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Wait, what are you doing with that squishy tomato?
I'm tossing it.
It's no good anymore.
I'll take it.
And I'll take that stale bread, too.
Stop.
You can't fish that out of the trash.
I'm trying to do my part to reduce food waste.
Tired vegetables are still okay to eat, as are bruised fruit.
Fine, but not once they've been discarded.
Stay out of my trash.
What are you going to do with this grain meat?
I was going to throw that out, too.
I'll take it.
I'm sure I can make something edible with it.
You can't be serious.
I'm all for doing my part, but I draw the line at eating spoiled meat.
It's not spoiled.
It's just beyond the peak of freshness.
Well, be my guest.
You can have all of this food.
And to show my thanks, I'll invite you over to lunch tomorrow.
Thanks, but no thanks.
There's nothing stale, bruised, or grain about our dialogues.
They're all at the peak of freshness.
Thanks to our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
