Making Breakfast

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today we've got an elementary level lesson for you all about

getting up in the morning.

That's right.

Today we're making breakfast and well, of course, many people have different things

when they're making breakfast.

Some of them are very big, others are small.

So but this is what we're going to talk about today.

So why don't we listen to the dialogue and see what they're having for breakfast today.

Smells good.

What's for breakfast?

Well, since we're getting up so late, I decided to make a big breakfast.

Nice.

Brunch.

Kind of.

So I made scrambled and soft boiled eggs, some French toast and buttermilk pancakes.

Wow, you really went all out.

Did you make any coffee?

Yeah, just the way you like it.

I also put out some cereal and muesli if you feel like having something more light.

Looks good.

I'll squeeze us some fresh orange juice.

Get the jam and butter while you are in there.

Oh, and don't forget the syrup.

All righty.

All right, we're back.

So a lot of interesting things.

A huge breakfast.

Way too big for me.

I don't like to eat a big breakfast because I feel like it makes me tired and then I don't

have any energy.

Especially if you just get up, right?

Exactly.

You need to shower and maybe have some fruit and then go to work.

But we can talk about that at the end.

There were a lot of interesting words and phrases that we heard that we would benefit

from taking a closer look at.

Language takeaway.

All right, so on Language Takeaway today, we're going to take a look at our first word

and it's an interesting word.

It's kind of a mix of two things.

Brunch.

That's right.

So this word comes from two different words.

Breakfast, b-b-breakfast and lunch.

That's right.

So brunch.

So if you have brunch, what is exactly brunch?

Well there's two ways to look at brunch.

One is the time element.

Usually brunch is later than breakfast, but maybe a little earlier than lunch.

So 11 o'clock or maybe even noon.

But the other thing is size.

Because you're putting two meals together, usually brunch is very big.

You eat a lot of food.

Okay, so it's a perfect combination of breakfast and lunch.

I'm the type of person that likes having scrambled eggs at noon.

So this is a perfect solution, brunch.

Right, you don't have to only eat eggs at breakfast, you can eat them at lunch as well.

Exactly.

This is actually something we do a lot in America for Mother's Day.

So mom wakes up late, we take her to brunch.

It's a very big special meal.

Very good.

And talking about eggs and the types of eggs that we can have, I mentioned scrambled eggs

and in the dialogue we also heard soft-boiled eggs.

Okay, these are two very important kinds of eggs.

Usually if you're in a restaurant, they will ask you how do you want your eggs cooked or

done.

And my answer is always scrambled.

This means someone mixes the eggs before they are cooked and then when they cook, they are

hard, they're yellow.

There's no white, it's just yellow and it's a little hard mixture.

But soft-boiled eggs are very, very different.

That's right, soft-boiled eggs, you actually don't break the egg or open the egg to cook

it like in scrambled eggs.

You actually put the entire egg in boiling water.

I think it's for two minutes and then you take it out and then you open the shell and

the eggs are kind of cooked, it's kind of hard in some parts but it's also kind of liquidy

in other parts.

That's right.

So the outside, the white part is hard but the yellow part, the yolk is liquid.

It's not hard.

That's right.

And actually if you want the whole egg to be hard, you can ask for hard-boiled eggs.

That's right, those are cooked for much longer.

That's right.

Okay, so we have scrambled eggs, soft-boiled eggs, we have French toast and we have buttermilk

pancakes.

Okay, so you can ask for just pancakes.

But if you want to be specific, you want to give instructions about what kind of pancakes,

you can ask for buttermilk pancakes.

And what exactly is buttermilk?

Buttermilk is a very, very creamy, eggy milk that's very, very high in fat that makes everything

taste better, I think.

This is used a lot in baking, not really in other kinds of foods.

So you can have buttermilk muffins or buttermilk biscuits.

But usually you have buttermilk pancakes and so these are very rich, very fatty pancakes.

Awesome, yeah, they taste delicious.

Alright, so now if we want to eat a little bit more healthy, we do have some cereal and

some muesli.

Muesli is a funny word, it's not a sound we make very often in English.

Muesli.

Yeah.

I think it actually comes from German.

It does look German.

Because actually the spelling is M-U-E, so you would kind of want to say Muesli or something.

Yeah, no, we say Muesli and it's basically a mixture of granola or different kinds of

fiber grains.

So just think of having raisins and maybe some almonds, granola, all mixed up and you

have this nice thing that goes well with yogurt, muesli.

It's very, very tasty and also very good for you.

And now, well, actually going back to pancakes, no pancake is possible to eat unless you put

syrup on it, right?

Well, some people might disagree.

I know a lot of people who eat pancakes with honey or with butter.

But the best, I think, is with syrup.

And syrup is basically liquid sugar and you put it on your pancakes to make them sweeter.

Actually, it's the same thing as honey basically, except that it doesn't come from bees.

Right, so real syrup, we say maple syrup, comes from maple trees and you tap the tree

and it comes out.

It's very, very, very sweet.

But we also have syrup you can buy at the store, which is man-made.

Artificial.

Yeah, it's basically just sugar.

Okay, very good.

So that's what we have with pancakes usually.

But why don't we go back, listen to our dialogue again.

Let's review all of these yummy breakfast treats and we'll come back in a bit with Fluency

Builder.

Smells good.

What's for breakfast?

Well, since we're getting up so late, I decided to make a big breakfast.

Nice, brunch.

Kind of.

So I made scrambled and soft-boiled eggs, some French toast, and buttermilk pancakes.

Wow, you really went all out.

Did you make any coffee?

Yeah, just the way you like it.

I also put out some cereal and muesli if you feel like having something more light.

Looks good.

I'll squeeze us some fresh orange juice.

Get the jam and butter while you are in there.

Oh, and don't forget the syrup.

Alrighty.

All right, so now on Fluency Builder, why don't we take a look at a couple of phrases.

Fluency Builder.

When the guy was kind of surprised, he said, wow, you really went all out.

Okay, so this comes from the phrase, to go all out.

So he went all out or I'm going to go all out.

And this means to give something your best, to do more than is expected.

That's right.

So if you go all out when you're making breakfast, it means you just, you cooked a lot or really

good and you spend a lot of time doing it.

Or for example, if it's someone's birthday and I know it's their birthday, I go all out

by buying gifts and a cake and lots of decorations and calling all of their friends and having

a party.

So this is doing everything for them.

That's right.

Okay.

And he was really surprised and he really seemed to enjoy breakfast and he said, looks

good.

Okay, this is a way to say good job or nicely done.

It's almost a way to say, I'm happy about this.

Or yeah, and obviously you can also say that the food looks delicious, so it looks good.

It looks good.

So it's a way to say, you know, well done, looks good or in this case, looks very tasty.

That's right.

Okay.

And now this is an interesting part.

He says, I'll squeeze us some fresh orange juice.

So let's take a look at this verb, squeeze.

To squeeze.

This is something you usually do with your hand when you tighten something.

So for example, your toothpaste.

Yes, you squeeze your toothpaste so the toothpaste will come out.

So in this case, we are squeezing the orange juice to extract the juice.

That's right.

So you, you hold the orange very tight, you make the juice come out and then you have

fresh squeezed orange juice.

And this is different from orange juice you buy in a store.

Okay.

So you can say, I'll squeeze us some fresh orange juice.

That means you're going to make fresh orange juice.

And this fresh orange juice that you make is called fresh squeezed orange juice.

Fresh squeezed.

You've probably seen this in the store, like some bottles, they say a hundred percent fresh

squeezed orange juice or something.

Yeah, it's good for advertising.

All right.

So very good.

A lot of great, interesting phrases there.

Why don't we listen to our dialogue one last time?

Smells good.

What's for breakfast?

Well, since we're getting up so late, I decided to make a big breakfast.

Nice brunch.

Kind of.

So I made scrambled and soft boiled eggs, some French toast and buttermilk pancakes.

Wow.

You really went all out.

Did you make any coffee?

Yeah, just the way you like it.

I also put out some cereal and muesli if you feel like having something more light.

Looks good.

I'll squeeze us some fresh orange juice.

Get the jam and butter while you are in there.

Oh, and don't forget the syrup.

All righty.

All right.

So talking about brunch and breakfast, what is your typical or ideal breakfast?

That's a hard question.

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.

So I could eat breakfast, all kinds of breakfast anytime.

But one of my favorite kinds of breakfast is a Greek diner breakfast.

Greek diner.

What does this have?

Well, we have a lot of diners or small restaurants that are very, very cheap and fast in America.

And this usually involves some scrambled eggs that are made with cheese and toast and potatoes

and bacon and sausage and a coffee.

Wow.

Big breakfast.

Very big.

But delicious.

Nice.

What's your favorite?

I also really, really like breakfast.

And I actually like having places that you can have 24-hour a day breakfast.

All day breakfast is called.

So I can have breakfast for dinner.

Right.

That's usually in America, you go to a diner because they have breakfast at four o'clock

in the morning or at seven o'clock at night.

I'm not really a coffee person.

I actually enjoy either juice, orange juice, or hot chocolate.

I really like hot chocolate.

And definitely pancakes.

Three buttermilk pancakes stacked.

And as you said before, syrup.

But I actually also put butter on it.

Gross.

I know a lot of people who do that.

They put butter on first and then they pour the syrup.

Yeah, of course.

So it's like complete, very, very fatty.

And hash browns.

I'm definitely a fan of hash browns.

Those are potatoes that are chopped very, very finely and you fry them together.

So it almost becomes like a potato pancake.

Yeah, exactly.

So a lot of great stuff.

And obviously, breakfasts around the world are different.

I know, for example, in some countries, they have the fisherman's breakfast.

So in the morning, you have black coffee, rice, and fish.

That's right.

Because you're going to work all day.

So we're really curious about how breakfast is in your country.

What a typical breakfast is like.

Yeah, what are traditional breakfasts and what is your favorite breakfast?

Let us know on our website, EnglishPod.com.

We hope to see you there.

All right.

Bye.

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