Daily Dose of English 1
Cooking
Daily Dose of English 1
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben, and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm really glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about cooking, because cooking is something that I do pretty often, and something that I quite like to do. In fact, I think it's something that most people do often, or probably should do more often. Cooking is a pretty fundamental part of living, because everybody has to eat, obviously, and cooking is one of the best ways to eat in a cheaper way, so it's not so expensive, because going out to eat at restaurants can be really expensive, and it allows you to have more variety and interest with what you eat, because no matter where you live in the world, if you cook, I mean, it depends on what ingredients you have available, what things you can buy at the market, but you can cook a lot of different things with stuff that is available everywhere. Just a few different spices can drastically change the dishes that you make and the kinds of foods you can eat. That's one of the things that I really like about cooking, is that it lets you almost visit the entire world, especially if you have access to more specialty ingredients. Maybe some things that are harder to find in a normal market, but if you go to a specialty store then you can find a lot more things. Here for example, a lot of Asian staples, a lot of the things that you would definitely use in every Asian dish, aren't as common, so you have to go to a special store. There's typically Asian supermarkets here that have basically everything you could need for all different kinds of Asian foods, from Chinese to Japanese food, Vietnamese food, Thai food, tons of different ingredients that you might need, and then you combine that with some more local ingredients and you can make dishes that taste like they're from a totally different part of the world. But I cook pretty often, like I said, because I eat every day, like most of you probably also do. One of the ways that I cook is I meal prep, because I don't really like to cook a lot every single day, especially during the middle of the day, during my work day. And so on the weekend I do a lot of shopping and a lot of cooking to prepare myself for the week ahead. I prepare, I prep the meals. And this is a pretty common thing nowadays, people think ahead towards the week because it's a lot easier and it ends up being a lot cheaper. Because if you go out to eat lunch every single work day, not only is it less healthy, but it's also going to cost a lot more and even take more time than if you already have your food prepared from just one day of work. And it's not even a whole day, it can be a couple of hours of actually cooking. And so I try to meal prep my lunches every single day, or every single week, and other things as well if I can. Because I really don't like to spend more than 30 minutes cooking dinner. I will if I want to or have to, but I just want to have time for other things in my life. And while I do really enjoy cooking, it's a really cool hobby, I enjoy the art of it, and I really like food, and so I should enjoy cooking. Even though I do really enjoy cooking, it's just not a thing that I feel like I have time to dedicate to. It's a little hard to explain, because when I do it, it is enjoyable, but it just feels like I'm wasting time that I could do on other things, because I can cook a lot quicker, and do in just 30, 20 minutes, and have a really good meal without having to work a whole two, three hours on a meal. But doing it every so often is fun, especially if you have a nice kitchen to cook in. And I think that's one of the most important parts of cooking, is having a kitchen that makes you want to cook. Because if you have a really tiny kitchen without an oven or with one single burner, it just is going to really make the whole process a lot slower and just worse. You're going to have a worse time cooking, because there's no space, you're constantly trying to move things around, you have to deal with dirty dishes every five seconds, and so having a nice kitchen to cook in is pretty critical to having fun cooking, at least in my experience. And I think that's even more true with baking, because baking is a totally different experience. There's different rules and sort of expectations, I guess, and you need different tools and ingredients, and it's a whole different skill, really. Somebody can be a really good cook, but be a pretty bad baker, and the other way around. Somebody can be a great baker and make amazing cakes and pies and whatever, but not really be able to cook something which other people might think is fairly simple. I think I'm a bit more of a cook, a chef, if you will. I cook more often than I bake, but I do really enjoy baking. I think it's more enjoyable, actually, now that I think about it, because there's a whole process to it, it's a bit more relaxing. I used to bake a lot of bread specifically, especially during COVID, because there was a lot more time to be inside, and I probably could bake more bread here, because I work from home, and so it's not like I can just walk to the kitchen and turn the bread, because one of the best ways to make bread is by leaving it for a couple hours and then just turning it every couple hours by grabbing a bit and pulling it over itself. But obviously, if you work in an office, you can't do that, because you can't go back home every 90 minutes to turn your bread. So maybe I should start that again, honestly. It's because the bread is so good, and it's not that hard once you get used to it. I even saw a video of a guy who makes a loaf of bread every single day. It's part of his daily routine that he eats with his family, because he works from home, and so it's very easy. It takes him 20 minutes of actual work, if that, and the rest is just idle time. The bread is sitting there, the oven is heating up, or whatever it might be, plus the smell of fresh-baked bread is incredible. It's just, you can't beat it. It's so amazing, and then you put some butter and some salt on a fresh slice of still warm bread. Oh my god, it's so good. But enough of me talking about bread, because the thing that is maybe least fun or worst about cooking for most people is the clean-up process. Because cleaning up after yourself, after you cook, is not very much fun. It's slow, it feels like you're not doing anything, and you just get your hands wet, and a lot of people really don't like the cleaning up part. But I think I've sort of made peace with it. I almost enjoy doing the dishes and making everything clean again, because I feel more at peace, more comfortable with where I am and my space. And so, cleaning up is something that, to me, is part of the process and is what makes it so, I don't know, it's a different state, right? When you're cooking or baking, you're making something. You're bringing something in the world, and then when you're cleaning up, you're resetting things back to zero. You're starting over again and setting things back to where you're comfortable and having a nice space to start again in the next day, or whatever it is. And so, clean up is a pretty critical piece of the process, so think of it as part of the process. And if you don't like cleaning up after yourself, after you've baked or cooked, then maybe try phrasing it or thinking about it in a different way in your head. It might help you not feel so bad about it. The alternative to cooking is eating out, going to restaurants. And like I said, that can be pretty expensive, but also it can be an amazing experience. Kitchens and restaurants do things that are very different than you can do in a kitchen. They can make huge batches of things that you otherwise couldn't, or they can do things that take 12, 15, 20 hours to make because that's their business and that's the whole plan, whereas a home cook can't really be expected to do things that take that long. A lot of restaurants will start cooking at like 4 a.m. to have stuff ready for lunchtime. I obviously can't do that, and so going out is how I get that experience. And so I definitely do really enjoy going to restaurants. But that is everything that I have for today. That is the episode on cooking. I hope that you enjoyed listening to my podcast today, and maybe you learned a little bit of something, a word or a phrase, or maybe just thought of cooking in a different way. But thank you very much for listening, and I will see you again tomorrow. Have a good one.
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