How does it taste? Learn New English Vocabulary
What kind of food do you like? Do you like food to be hot, sweet or bitter? Learn 10 adjectives you can use now to describe tastes and flavours of specific foods. Enjoy :)
Links & Episodes mentioned
Learn With Me
[124] Food and Drinks – English Vocabulary Part 1
[125] A Piece Of Cake – Plus More English Expressions
Transcript
Hey guys, you are listening to the English Made Simple Show, this is episode number 1-2-6, number one hundred and twenty six, numero cientovientiseis.
And here we are again… Welcome to the English Made Simple show, my name is Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net, and today, we shall continue with our food vocabulary. We’ll be learning more new words so I suggest you take a double shot of espresso and stay alert. I need you to be fully awake during today’s episode.
As I mentioned before, the vocabulary you learn today will come in handy – it will be useful to you if you are travelling, or if you are preparing for an English exam like IELTS for example or …. Well if you just want to show off to your friends. Either way, everyone will benefit from today’s episode.
Today we are going to learn about the Phrasal verb – Fed Up and we are going to learn 10 words which we can use to describe the flavour of various foods.
But first let me begin by asking you a question.
How are you? Oh that’s not the question I wanted to ask you. Let me ask you another question.
How many of you cook at home? And do you consider yourself a good cook?
A cook is a person who cooks. They are also known as Chefs.
Cool….
The other day I made a vegetable soup, my husband called it The Experiment, I called it soup.
I opened the fridge and I thought to myself – what do we have here? Are there any fresh vegetables here that I could use – I was looking for any type of vegetable that I could find inside the fridge, I wanted to use all the veggies before I had to throw them in the rubbish, [because that’s where they end up. In the rubbish.]
Lucky I had some more veggies in the freezer. Freezer in Spanish…. Is nevera o conjelador.
Lucky, I could use those veggies, well they are not so fresh, but anyway…
I also named the soup, I gave it a name, I called it – Carbonada a lo Pobre Milenita.
English equivalent to Soup a la Poor ol’ Milena.
I took a photo of it, I will share it with you on Instagram and Facebook page so you can go and have a look.
And the soup fed us for the whole week. Sad but true. It did feed us for the whole week.
BTW, I just used an irregular verb here, to feed someone. To feed is an irregular verb, past tense is fed and participle fed.
In Spanish to feed someone is….alimentar o proveer comida.
You can feed a person or an animal…or both.
So the soup fed us for a week – and you know what I am fed up with cooking at home. I prefer to go out and eat or buy take away – I think in the US this is called takeout.
I am fed up with cooking, I am not much of a cook. I can cook, but I am just too lazy to cook haha.
When I cook I burn salad. Bad joke, I know really bad.
Fed up is a phrasal verb by the way. It means, you are annoyed about something, you had enough and you cannot tolerate it any longer.
You are fed up with something.
For example:
I am fed up with my job.
I am fed up with slow drivers.
I am fed up with cooking.
I’d rather be watching Netflix than cooking. I’d rather be watching Game of Thrones than being stuck in the kitchen cooking. Haha
Ok I am just being a drama queen now, it’s not that bad, and I am exaggerating here of course. (That’s what I like to do…just talk nonsense sometimes)
Are you fed up with doing something? Are you fed up with someone, like your boss for example? Are you fed up with your boss?
Ok, I think it’s time we move on to the next point.
So do you know how to describe your food? This is why we are today.
When my husband prepares pasta sometimes he puts too much salt. And I say, hey honey this tastes salty.
Salty is the adjective here.
Normally when you order takeaway food, this type of food is like fast food – it’s not that healthy, – that your other food adjective that you need to know – the fast food is usually oily, greasy or fatty or too creamy as well. And these things are not healthy. Oily, fatty or greasy.
Like the chips for example, the chips are fried in a deep fryer. So they are oily, they absorb all the oil. But they are so tasty!
And if the food has no taste, or no flavour like the soup I made the other day for example, it didn’t taste yummy, it tasted bland.
Bland that’s a new word for you. Bland means – no flavour no taste.
So the soup needed something, it was missing an ingredient. It was missing salt, herbs and spices. Everything! Haha The main ingredients really.
Spices are in Spanish….condimentos
So my soup was pretty bland…ok?
Right… let’s move on amigos y amigas, I want to teach you a couple of more new words, descriptive words. Something that you could use to describe food.
You know what, I’ve never liked spicy food, and I’ve never liked hot food. But since I tried jalapenos o m g – Oh my Gosh yum, I can add japanos to anything. (even to soups haha)
Listen up amigos y amigas, hot food doesn’t necessarily mean hot – as in temperature hot – it means chilli like the vegetable – capsicum or pepper that when you taste it, it burns in your mouth. It makes you cry, hot and your face becomes red in colour.
In Spanish hot food means – comida picante. Hot food.
Just like the rock band – Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
I used to listen to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers all the time that was back in the day, when I was in the high school. I like their music.
I just can’t eat the food that is too hot. If there is too much chili. I can only eat it mild.
That’s the level of chilliness I can eat – mild.
When I go to my local Thai place, I usually order a Thai dish called Green Curry and I ask them to make it mild. Not too hot – not too chilli.
Alrighty, I hope that made sense,….
And let me add 2 more adjectives or words that you can use to describe your food.
The word Sweet and the word Sour.
If you like Chinese food, you can eat the food that is made with Sweet and Sour sauce. The sauce that is both sweet and sour. If you haven’t tried it, it’s an unusual taste but is tasty nonetheless.
The word sour is something my students have difficulty pronouncing.
It’s spelt S O U R and it’s pronounced /SAUA’ /.
Let me ask you this:
Do you like to eat lemons? If you eat lemon by itself it tastes sour – some people like that taste, but some people don’t.
Also, did you know that a person can be called sour? If someone is said to be sour-faced, they have a sour looking face haha you know what I mean – that face you get this after you bit into a lemon you make that face haha
You can describe a person to be sour-faced. Meaning they look annoyed or they are unpleasant to be around with. They are just not friendly.
If you have a friend who complains a lot and gets annoyed easily, just tell them: Shhhh Ana don’t be a sour puss. It’s gonna be fine.
Ooh, oops I forgot to tell you about the word BITTER. You can also describe a person to be bitter.
I like to drink bitter coffee which means, no milk no sugar, just black coffee. Double shot, the bitter the better I say – when it comes to coffee I mean.
Also, dark chocolate tastes bitter.
In Spanish the word bitter is almargo.
You can also describe a person to be bitter as I mentioned.
According to Weon Inteligente, bitterness – as a noun – is an emotion which encompasses both anger and hate, you can feel bitter about something or someone because you had a really bad experience with that person, or something bad happened in the past and then you feel bitter afterwards.
So let’s move onto something better.
So now we talk about the word SWEET. Yum, my favourite type of food.
Guys, remember from the last episode, anything that is not sweet is called savoury. That’s the opposite of sweet.
Nutella tastes very sweet. Ice cream is sweet. Sweet is an adjective. Great! I am such a smart cookie!
A person can also be described to be sweet. If someone is sweet they are considered to be nice and friendly.
“Have you met my friend Melanie from Goa, India? She is so sweet.” I know.
Alrighty, Sweet as! And we are about to finish for today amigos y amigas.
But before we finish amigos, I would like to send a special greeting and a hello to a few listeners of the English Made Simple Show, we have:
Julieth Alejandra from Colombia who currently lives in Melbourne and is preparing for that awful exam – IELTS exam– g’day Juelith, welcome to Canguro-land, I know you’ve been here just a few months. Wish you all the best for the IELTS exam, I know you will do well, because you are listening to the EMS show.
Damn right!
And also, a hello to Tamara from Santiago de Chile who is planning to study Masters in Economics in London! Wow, of all places! Amazing, lucky girl! You are one smart cookie Tamara.
And also from the Facebook group we have a couple of newbies – Luís Eduardo Quirino Sobreira from Brazil. Rodrigo from Santiago de Chile who just joined recently – a big welcome to you both!
And that’s it amigos y amigas, I hope you learnt something new today.
There aren’t many English textbooks that cover this type of vocabulary related to food, and I know it’s really important especially if you find yourselves amongst native speakers. That’s why I decided to do this episode.
Remember, you can check out the transcripts to all of the episodes on my website, www.englishmadesimple.net, and while you are in there you can click on the link Learn With Me to start speaking English today.
Thank you for joining me today amigos y amigas, you’ve been an amazing audience as always, thanks for listening and Stay cool, as cool as a cucumber!
You’ve been jamming with Milena, until next time, hasta la proxima!