Daily Dose of English 10
Snacks
Daily Dose of English 10
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 glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about snacks. But first, I want to talk a little bit about what I've been doing for the podcast because this is still in the early days of the podcast. I haven't released that many episodes. So just before I'm recording this, I was messing with some audio settings to try to make the podcast a little bit louder and improve some of the general audio quality. So if you notice any changes or things improving or getting worse potentially, please feel free to comment or let me know. But I'm still trying to improve the audio to make things as good as possible for all of you. Anyways, let's talk about snacks because I'm actually a little bit hungry right now. I like to snack. That's a thing that I generally like to do because it helps me to maintain my mood and feel, I don't know, to tide myself over. That's a good verb. To tide yourself over, to tide somebody over until something happens. And so in the case of snacks, you can tide yourself over until dinner. Let's say it's 3 o'clock and you're feeling pretty hungry but you just had lunch, so you don't really want to eat again. And so you're going to grab a little snack to tide yourself over. That's a word that I know a lot from growing up because I would generally, I would usually be hungry. But my parents were like, no, we're going to have dinner soon-ish, okay? Get over it. Tide yourself over, have a snack, have some almonds or something, whatever it might be. And so that's a word that I know very, very well. But now, as an adult, I sort of choose my snacks very wisely because I know it's so easy to get sucked in by the tastiest, greasiest snacks that you find at the corner store, the orangest possible Cheetos or cheese puffs or whatever, spicy chips, that sort of thing because they're colorful and they're delicious, right? They sort of take advantage of our monkey brains and give us those calories and that taste that we want. And so I like to choose my snacks a little bit more carefully to be a bit more, not necessarily healthier but less flashy and a little bit more streamlined to like what I want to actually eat. I think they are generally healthier in pretty much everything but it's not like I eat the healthiest snacks in the world. Some of my favorite snacks are just chocolate. I prefer dark chocolate is a great way. That's usually what I have like in the afternoon when I'm sort of tired and I'm maybe finishing work. It's sort of like a coffee snack that I like to have but with chocolate instead. I would say that I have coffee as a snack every so often because I mostly have coffee in the morning right after I wake up but I might have another coffee if I'm having essentially a snack in the afternoon. I think that's when a lot of people just have a coffee like that's just a normal thing but I think of it as like a little coffee snack. But then my morning snack is actually the one that I look forward to every day because I make myself sort of a, it's like a post-breakfast pre-lunch sort of thing because I have a very small breakfast so I like to have a little something and it gives me an excuse to take a break from working, to get up, to move around a little bit and then to eat something which is always nice. So I have, it's usually, it's like a bunch of nuts and simple foods like that and so I typically have some simple crackers with peanut butter just to have a little bit of something there and then I have a date which is a dried fruit with like that almond shaped pit in the middle, I don't really know how else to describe it, they're sort of wrinkly and brownish purple and then I have a bunch of different nuts in a bowl so I have candied peanuts, that's what they are and so they've got like a sort of a sugar shell. I have a few of those and I have some almonds, pecans and cashews which are my favorite. Cashews are definitely my favorite nut because they're like luxurious, I don't know, they're crunchy and thick and the ones that I get are pretty salty but not too salty, it's like a nice mix and they're just so good, I don't really know why, it's unfair. They're pretty expensive, I do definitely spend more on cashews than the average person but I do really like them, like they're a little treat of mine and I don't feel that bad about eating them because they're relatively healthy in the grand scheme of things and I found a person here where I can get the cashews for a pretty good price in my opinion, they're very reasonably priced, it's not like it's a oh my god I have to buy them all or else I'm going to run out or the price is going to go up or whatever but I feel good about buying it at that price because you can definitely find them for way more expensive in other parts and other places. So I have those nuts, the date, some cracker peanut butter and then oh some fried plantains or fried bananas, I can speak English, I promise. The fried bananas are fried plantain chips which are really good, I used to not like them growing up, I remember that specifically but now I don't know why, they're so good, I don't think they have salt on them at all, they're just fried in oil and they're bananas, I don't know, they're crispy, they're good and I get ones that are like fried lengthwise so they're like kind of long, it's almost like eating a stick of something rather than like in coin shape and so I put all that in a little bowl and I have my snack and that's one of my, that's my daily snack, my workday snack that I really like having and it gives me a nice little rest time from the rest of the day. I don't usually have other snacks throughout the day but occasionally I do, one of my other favorite ones is actually something that I prepare ahead of time but in my family we call it coconutty fudge, I've never heard of it anywhere else, it's a thing that my mom used to do when I was a kid but it's essentially just coconut oil, almonds, some cocoa powder and honey and I think it's like got some, a little bit of salt in it and some vanilla extract and that's basically it, you sort of just blend everything together and it makes and then you put it in the fridge and it gets cold and it's essentially like sort of a coconut oil base with almonds, little block of, it's almost like an energy bar thing, it's not actually fudge obviously, it's not that sweet but I don't love like super sweet things anyway so it's kind of perfect for me and it's like, it's got some energy in it and it's satisfying and so I really like it for that as like a, it sort of tricks your brain into thinking that you're having a dessert essentially even though it's mostly coconut oil and almonds which are another couple other expensive products, no, foods, yeah foods I guess, right? And so it's not the cheapest thing in the world but I cut them into little tiny squares and so that it does last me a while but I definitely like having those as a snack if I'm feeling hungry in the afternoon or something or they also serve as a good breakfast if I don't have anything else prepared. Other snacks that I like to have are gummy worms and gummy bears, that's something that I got from my grandma I think, she's a big fan of gummy bears specifically, I think she likes the sour Haribo, no just the normal Haribo gold bears but I will enjoy any gummies honestly, bears and gummy worms are definitely my favourite, I don't know why, I think the shape is just sort of satisfying to eat but that's probably the closest thing to candy that I eat is gummy worms because I really don't eat much candy at all except for around like Halloween or something but not even then, I try to avoid it because it is really good but like I don't actually feel good eating it, it's like kind of hurts my teeth and I just, not my cup of tea is another phrase that you might hear every so often for something that doesn't really work for somebody, it's not your cup of tea but yeah, so those are my favourite snacks and let me know down in the comments, what are your favourite snacks, do you have snacks that are specific to your home country or to your family maybe, is there any snacks that I should definitely try, I'd be curious to know because I'm definitely a fan of food in general and I think that like individual snacks aren't talked about enough, right, everybody talks about the famous dishes from a country, oh this place is known for this food, this place is known for this food but it's rarely like little snacks that people have throughout the day so I'd be curious to see but anyways, that's everything for today, I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a few words here and there but I will see you tomorrow for the next episode, buh bye.
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