Talking about food

神州侠客

Beth: Hello, welcome to real Easy English from BBC Learning English. I'm Beth.

Neil: And I'm Neil. In this podcast, we have a real conversation in easy English.

Beth: If you want to read along, you can visit our website BBClearningenglish.com.

Beth: Hi, Neil!

Neil: Hi, Beth! How are you?

Beth: I'm very good, thank you. How are you?

Neil: I'm pretty good, Yes.

Beth: Good, good. What are we talking about today?

Neil: Well, today we're talking about food. In particular, we'll talk about our favorite foods and how often we eat them.

Beth: What an amazing topic. I have so much to say about food. Um, you said how often, what do we mean by how often we eat something?

Neil: Um, good question. How often means how many times we eat our favorite food. So we might eat them every week, every day. Or if we really like a food, we might eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every meal.

Beth: So, Neil, what is your favorite food?

Neil: Well, that's a really difficult question, but I really like fish.

Beth: Ah, me too, I was going to say that, but actually, I really love seafood. So I think I'd say any kind of dish with seafood in it, I absolutely love.

Neil: So how often do you eat seafood?

Beth: Well, not very often, actually. I have it when I go on holiday and I have it in restaurants sometimes, but I don't really cook seafood at home. What about you? How often do you have fish?

Neil: Oh, probably a few times a week.

Beth: Really?

Neil: Maybe, yeah, yeah. We eat a lot of fish.

Beth: We sometimes have fish at home. I normally have it once or twice a week.

Neil: Right.

Beth: But I never have seafood at home actually.

Neil: Yeah. OK. So what is your least favorite food?

least favorite 最不喜欢的

Beth: Oh, I absolutely hate baked beans.（豆子）

Neil: You hate backed beans?

Beth: I think they disgusting. I can't even… the smell often even makes me feel a bit sick

Neil: Oh, OK.

Beth: So, we've talked about the foods that we really like and the foods that we don't like, but in a general week, what do you normally cook?

Neil: Often we'll eat Indian curries, but also Italian pasta dishes or Spanish dishes, and then sometimes more traditional British roast dinner kind of thing.

Beth: Yeah, I think generally we have the same at home, like we eat a lot of food from different countries but I have to say I usually cook quite a lot of pasta and quite a lot of rice at home in general just because they cook really quickly.

Neil: So, Beth, you generally eat rice and pasta dishes. What does that mean, generally?

Beth: Well, we use generally and usually and normally for habits or things that we do a lot. So, for example, if I generally cook pasta or rice, that means maybe five times out of the seven in a week, I would say.

Neil: OK, so that's most of the time. If we use sometimes, we mean that we do it less than generally.

Beth: Yeah, sometimes might be two or three times a week. I guess it depends on what you're talking about. But for example, with me, I sometimes cook fish, like I said, I have it maybe twice a week. So I would say that's sometimes.

Neil: Beth, you said that you hate baked beans. So do you ever eat baked beans?

Beth: Never. No, I can't stand them. So I never ever have baked beans.

Neil: Well, never is something that we don't do. We just don't ever do it.

Neil: I can't believe you don't like baked beans. Beans on toast is a classic.

Beth: It is, but no, not for me. Let's quickly recap the vocabulary we learnt during the conversation. We learnt often, which means we do something a lot. And we learnt how often, which we use to ask someone how many times they do something.

Neil: Usually, normally and generally, which are all ways to talk about things we do a lot.

Beth: Sometimes, which we can use to talk about things we do, but not always or often.

Neil: And never to talk about things we don't do, like eat beans, Beth.

Beth: Yes, just I never eat baked beans. Horrible.

Neil: Thanks for listening to Real Easy English. Visit our website for more activities and courses to help you with your English, BBClearningenglish.com.

Beth: Next week we'll talk about our friends.

Neil: See you then, goodbye.

Beth: Bye.