Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1057, Storing Food.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1057.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
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I'm sure you'll enjoy.
On this episode, we learn all about how to keep, that is, how to store food.
Let's get started.
Wow.
What are we going to do with all these leftovers?
Let's store them in different containers and we can each take some to work to share.
We won't be able to eat all of this ourselves and I don't want it to go to waste.
Okay, I'll get some plastic containers and sandwich bags for the cookies.
Can you also grab some wax paper too?
We'll need to put some between each brownie so they don't stick together.
We're not going to have enough plastic containers.
How about wrapping up some of this food in saran wrap or aluminum foil?
Great idea.
I think I have some freezer bags too.
We might as well freeze a couple of pieces of cake to eat later.
I wish we could vacuum seal them and store more pieces.
That cake was really good.
I know.
I could eat three pieces in one sitting.
Hmm.
On second thought, for the sake of our waistlines, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea.
Our dialogue today is all about storing or keeping food.
It begins with Lee saying to Sarah, Wow, what are we going to do with all these leftovers?
Leftovers L-E-F-T-O-V-E-R-S refers to food that was served at a meal, such as at dinner, but that nobody ate.
Usually leftovers, if there's a lot of food, are kept to be eaten later.
Of course, you don't want to throw away good food.
So leftovers would be food that was prepared for one meal, wasn't eaten and is then stored to be eaten at a later time.
To store as a verb means to keep something to use in the future, to put away something to use later.
Sarah says, let's store them, meaning the leftovers, in different containers.
A container, C-O-N-T-A-I-N-E-R, is a box that is used to store something.
You could have a plastic container, which is very common in kitchens in the United States.
Plastic containers are often used to store leftovers.
Sarah says...
We can take some to work to share.
She's referring here to the leftovers.
They can take some of the leftovers to work in order to give to other people to eat.
She says we won't be able to eat all of this ourselves and I don't want it to go to waste.
To go to waste, W-A-S-T-E, means that it will not be used and will therefore have to be thrown away.
The word waste is often used to refer to junk or garbage or simply something that you're not going to use anymore and that you are going to get rid of or throw away.
To let something go to waste means to not eat something in this case or use something and therefore it will have to be thrown away because, of course, food won't last forever.
Eventually the food will change in such a way that you can no longer eat it.
Lee says, okay, I'll get some plastic containers and and sandwich bags for the cookies.
Plastic, P-L-A-S-T-I-C, is a material that we use to make all sorts of things, including containers.
I mentioned earlier about how popular plastic containers are in American kitchens.
Well, plastic is the material that is used for all sorts of things nowadays.
It can be a soft material or it can be a very hard material.
Sandwich bags are small plastic bags that are used to put well sandwiches in or small amounts of food.
You don't have to put a sandwich in a sandwich bag.
You can put any sort of food inside of one.
A sandwich bag is usually...
About a half a quart, let's say, in size.
It's not that big.
Maybe three or four inches by four or five inches.
Something like that.
Sarah says, can you also grab some wax paper, too?
Wax W-A-X paper is paper that has a little bit of wax on it that's used for wrapping up food or for using especially with baking when you cook food inside of an oven.
Wax is a substance that we normally associate with candles.
Most candles are made out of wax.
But wax paper is a special kind of paper that is used either in cooking or in storing food.
Sarah says we need to put some meaning, some wax paper between each brownie so they don't stick together.
One common use of wax paper is is to use it to separate different pieces of food that you want to separate later on.
A brownie is a small chocolate sweet that is quite popular with my wife, for example, made from typically sugar butter, flour and chocolate.
Usually, you use a little bit of egg when making a brownie as well.
Lee says we're not going to have enough plastic containers, meaning we have more food than we have containers to store it in.
How about wrapping up some of this food in saran wrap or aluminum foil?
To wrap?
WRAP up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to package something, to put something in a container in order to either use it later or to move it from one place to another.
If you give someone a gift, you usually wrap it with what is called wrapping paper, such as a birthday gift or a gift for say, Christmas.
To wrap up as a phrasal verb means to put something around the object, in this case the food, in order to transport it or to store it.
Lee talks about two different kinds of materials that could be used to wrap up food.
The first is saran, S-A-R-A-N, wrap.
Saran wrap is a thin, clear piece of plastic that is used for wrapping up food.
The important thing about saran wrap is that it sticks very easily to plastic and to itself, so you can put saran wrap around something and it will stay wrapped.
It won't come apart like, for example, a piece of regular paper.
Aluminum foil F-O-I-L is a thin piece of a flexible metal called aluminum.
At least it's made with aluminum in it.
Typically it's silver in color and is used, again, to wrap food up.
Almost every American kitchen will have both saran wrap and aluminum foil for storing things, for wrapping things up.
Sarah says, great idea.
I think I have some freezer bags, too.
A freezer, F-R-E-E-Z-E-R, is a place where you keep things frozen, of course.
That would be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
A freezer bag is a special kind of plastic bag that usually is a little thicker than a sandwich bag and a little bigger in size, that you can use to put food into and then store in a freezer.
Sarah says we might as well freeze a couple of pieces of cake to eat later.
The expression might as well is used to make a suggestion or to agree with another person's suggestion, but not with a lot of excitement or enthusiasm.
You're saying, well, yes, we should do this, but you're not that excited about it.
If you don't do it, it won't be a big deal.
Sarah tells Lee that they might as well freeze a couple pieces of cake to eat later.
Lee says, I wish we could vacuum seal them and store more pieces.
That cake was really good.
To vacuum, V-A-C-U-U-M, seal, S-E-A-L something, is to put it in a special kind of plastic package.
Usually and remove all or most of the air from the package.
This is often done with food in order to ensure or to make sure that it doesn't spoil, that it keeps fresh, that you can use it later on.
Some people own special machines that will create vacuum seals around food so that you can have a better system of storing it.
I don't have one myself.
Sarah says, I know, agreeing with Lee's assessment of the cake as being really good.
I could eat three pieces in one sitting.
Sarah says the cake is so good that she could eat three parts of the cake three pieces of the cake in one sitting.
In one sitting, S-I-T-T-I-N-G, means at once or at one time without taking a break.
Sarah's saying she could sit down and have one piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another piece of cake all at one time.
Lee says, hmm, indicating that he's thinking about something.
On second thought, thinking about it more carefully.
For the sake of our waistlines, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea.
Lee is saying that maybe the suggestion of freezing more cake is not a good idea.
Why?
Because he's worried about his and Sarah's waist lines.
Your waist, W-A-I-S-T, notice the different spelling from an identically sounding word.
Waist, as in to go to waist refers to a part of your body that is above your hips and below your ribs.
So basically, when you put on a pair of pants, the pants go up to your waistline.
That's the line that would indicate where your waist is located.
Usually, when you are measuring your waistline, you are measuring the part of your body that is just above your hips.
Your hips H-I-P-S are at the top of your legs, where your top of your body, what we would call your torso T-O-R-S-O, is joined to your legs.
That's the waist area, and the waistline would be, In this case, an indication of how fat you are or how skinny you are.
If you're worried about your waistline, you're worried about getting too fat, of gaining too much weight.
And that's what Lee is referring to.
He's saying that perhaps we shouldn't keep this cake because if we eat it, we'll become fat.
And that in fact happens quite a bit when people eat too much cake bread pasta sugar, all the good things in life.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Wow, what are we going to do with all these leftovers?
Let's store them in different containers and we can each take some to work to share.
We won't be able to eat all of this ourselves and I don't want it to go to waste.
Okay, I'll get some plastic containers and sandwich bags for the cookies.
Can you also grab some wax paper too?
We'll need to put some between each brownie so they don't stick together.
We're not going to have enough plastic containers.
How about wrapping up some of this food in saran wrap or aluminum foil?
Great idea.
I think I have some freezer bags, too.
We might as well freeze a couple of pieces of cake to eat later.
I wish we could vacuum seal them and store more pieces.
That cake was really good.
I know.
I could eat three pieces in one sitting.
Hmm, on second thought, for the sake of our waistlines, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea.
You can't wrap our scriptwriters' scripts up in saran wrap, but if you listen to them you'll learn a lot of English.
Thank you, Dr. Lucy Say, for your wonderful scripts.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
