Episode 0168

Hello everyone and welcome back to English Pod. My name is Marco.

And my name is Catherine and today we have an advanced media level lesson, so that's the very highest of our levels.

Right. And we're going to be talking about a very popular tradition in North America, uh a Thanksgiving dinner.

Okay, so Thanksgiving is a very special holiday for Americans and Canadians also celebrate it.

But on different dates, right? Canadians have it on a different date.

Exactly. I'm not sure what the Canadian date is, but Americans celebrate it at the end of November, the day changes every year because it's a Thursday, but we usually have the day off from work or school and we all eat together and celebrate the year and celebrate the harvest and celebrate uh our families and friends.

So this tradition of Thanksgiving, what what do you commemorate or what do you celebrate?

Well, we actually celebrate the first harvest that the pilgrims had when they were right off the boat in New England. So that's the eastern part of America. These people had come from England and they were trying to find a new land and a new life and they ended up in the Massachusetts area. And they didn't know how to farm. They didn't know how to uh work the land. And so the Native Americans who were living there at the time helped them out, helped them grow corn, helped them find out how to use the land in a productive way.

And so when that first harvest happened, everyone was able to grow, it was actually a year after they arrived, everyone was able to grow corn and food and crops and then they all shared a meal together to celebrate this wonderful occasion.

Wow. And it actually helped them survive the winter because most of the pilgrims, most of the settlers, they died during the first winter.

And so this was a really great, great thing for them.

Wow. That's really interesting, an interesting aspect of uh history and why this is celebrated uh mostly as you say in North America and Canada and that's why many other countries don't really have it. But um it's a popular uh get together and well, what you usually have is a turkey, right?

Exactly. So turkey is a very big bird and they go gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. And they have that kind of really red long kind of thing on their necks. And big tail or big tail feathers.

And they're delicious. But the funny thing is about turkey that there's a chemical in it that makes you very sleepy. Well, not a chemical, there's a protein in it that makes you very sleepy. And so the joke is that after you eat dinner on Thanksgiving, everyone falls asleep on the sofa.

Well, Thanksgiving meals in the United States are very, very big. They're very elaborate, right? You'll not only have turkey, but you have pumpkin pie and you have mashed potatoes and gravy and just like a table full of of of food.

Exactly. And it's a way to celebrate well, to give thanks for all the things that you have and so we like to give like to cook a lot of food to celebrate that. And they're all fall foods. So squash, pumpkin, uh potatoes, things like that.

All right. So we have a dialogue here, um so it's just that. It's a guy who is preparing a turkey dinner and also preparing pumpkin pie, but he's doing it in a very peculiar way. So why don't we listen to the dialogue and then we'll come back and just talk a little bit about the different terms that he used.

All right, we're back. So I think this is going to be one great Thanksgiving dinner for him.

Oh my gosh, and talking about this is making me so hungry. This always happens when we have food lessons.

What about do you have any family members who actually drink a little bit too much during Thanksgiving?

All right. So as he was preparing the Thanksgiving dinner, he mentioned a couple of things. For example, a mouth-watering turkey.

Mouth-watering, so this is a way to say appetizing. You know when you see something delicious on TV and your mouth starts your mouth starts to to water. You're salivating. That means that you're your brain is telling you that you want to eat it. And so your mouth starts to water. So we say that something that's very appetizing, something that looks like it will taste very, very good, it's mouth-watering.

Mouth-watering. All right. So he was preparing a mouth-watering turkey. So, moving on, he mentioned that he had a key ingredient for his turkey and it was whiskey. Not only whiskey, but 12-year whiskey.

Okay, so the thing about whiskeys is that often times on the label of a bottle, they'll advertise how old the whiskey is because you pay more for older whiskeys. They just they have a better taste in many cases. So I guess but um in this case, it's a 12-year whiskey. That means that it was stored in a cask for 12 years to let it age and then they sell it after 12 years. And so that's the special ingredient.

That's the special ingredient. 12-year whiskey. And well, he not only put it on the turkey, but also he had a couple of uh of drinks himself. And in one of those, he mentioned that hit the spot.

Mmm, that hit the spot. Okay, so this is a really common phrase in English that we use to say that something is very satisfying.

So that hit the spot. And not only for drinks, right?

No, you could use it for food or anything really. So in this case, um I could say, oh, I was so hungry, that sandwich really hit the spot. I really needed to eat right now and that sandwich was perfect.

That was perfect. All right. So that hit the spot. Now, when he referred to the turkey, in one occasion, he said, we place our bird on a rack. All right, so what's a bird and what's what bird and what's the rack?

Okay, so this is a this is really interesting. We talk about the turkey often times when we're making commercials or talking about recipes as the bird. So you want to take out the bird, you want to open the packaging. So the bird is the turkey. A turkey is a kind of bird. Um you can say this about chicken as well because it's another kind of bird. But this is a kind of a colloquial term in cooking for whatever bird you're cooking.

Right. Okay. And when you're placing it on a rack, what's a rack?

Okay, so in our ovens, an oven is uh it's a kitchen item appliance that you you have that heats up food. Um but it's not like a microwave, it's much stronger. And so inside there are metal bars. We don't have they're like shelves, but they're open. And so these metal bars are called a rack.

Okay. So you put the turkey in the oven on the rack. Right. You can't put it on the on the base of the oven because then it would burn up.

Exactly, and you you don't have a shelf because that would be a problem.

All right. And uh well, moving on on the instructions when he was preparing the pumpkin pie, he told us to lightly whisk together two eggs. So we have a verb here, to whisk.

To whisk.

So that's not only a verb, but a noun as well, right? And it's an instrument.

Exactly. And um this is a a verb we often use with eggs. So to whisk eggs. Uh you can also whisk like um sauce for a salad, so like a salad dressing. But it's a way that we stir something. And so often times we have an instrument called a whisk that um that's not like a fork, it actually looks kind of funny. It's got bars on it.

Like wire that kind of make a circle.

Exactly. And they are very thin wires. And it you usually stir very, very, very quickly. Especially if you have eggs, this will break up the egg and it's it becomes kind of like foamy.

Foamy, yeah. To make like an omelet, for example.

Exactly. So to whisk is a is a kind of it's a way to stir.

Okay. And then he mentioned some ingredients such as uh sugar, spices, and grated nutmeg. So what is this verb grated nutmeg or what an adjective grated?

Exactly. So this adjective grated means that it well, it's a kind of way to cut up something. And so uh you often hear the the term grated cheese. That means not a big chunk of cheese, but uh we push it against a board to get little pieces of it to fall off. And that's called grated cheese. Um and so in this case, we have grated nutmeg. That means that it's been kind of the nutmeg comes in in very small pieces. Yeah, pieces and we we're breaking it down.

All right, very good. And uh he also mentioned something about bringing a the the sauce to a simmering point. What is that simmering point?

Okay, simmering point is a time when you're cooking where the liquid goes from being calm to being very agitated and and moving. But it's not boiling, right? No, boiling means you have big bubbles. Like a boiling water. But simmering is where it's kind of little bubbles. There's a little bit of action on the surface of the liquid, but it's not boiling. It's in the middle between flat and calm and agitated and boiling.

Boiling. Okay, so that's the simmering point. Very good. And uh that's pretty much all of the of the interesting phrases in the dialogue. There are a lot more, but we don't really have time to cover that huge amount of rich vocabulary. So why don't we listen to this dialogue one last time?

All right, we're back. So Thanksgiving dinner, really popular. Catherine, have you ever cooked or are you into the whole Thanksgiving feast?

That's true.

Now, in many in many movies, uh they kind of mock this holiday because it's a time where um everyone gets together as you say, no matter religion, creed or or race. And uh that also causes for a lot of family members to get together and argue and have discussions about politics or talk about family problems and stuff like that. So, um what do you think of that?

All right. All right, very good. So if you guys have any other questions or doubts about this holiday because as we say, it's very common in North America and Canada. Uh you can come to our website englishpod.com and if you have any other questions or suggestions, you can leave those there as well.

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