Daily Dose of English 56
Sandwiches
Daily Dose of English 56
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 sandwiches. Delicious, amazing sandwiches. because in some ways, I think of sandwiches as being a very American food, like from the United States. I mean, there's sandwiches all over the world and they're all very good, but I have some certain sandwiches in my mind that I think of as being more American than things like hamburgers or hot dogs, because they're more regional, I guess. They're more specific to different parts of the country, and I feel like sandwiches are a large part of a lot of people's upbringing. Sure, burgers and hot dogs and other food like that is also pretty American, but but there's a different, I guess, feeling to sandwiches, at least in my opinion, partly because they're very often made at home. Making a good sandwich is part of existing, I guess, in terms of American life and culture for a lot of people. They're a very simple, quick food that is considered to be almost like a default food, if that makes any sense. Like if someone thinks of just a standard, simple lunch that a kid might bring to school, it's probably gonna be a sandwich. And that, I think, is an interesting idea. Even if you watch some old movies, especially from the 80s or 90s, sandwiches are very common in schools for lunches, especially if they're brought from home. and I really like sandwiches. I think there's a lot to them and I wanna talk about some of my favorite sandwiches and why I think they're actually interesting in a lot of ways and hopefully not get too hungry in the process of recording this episode because I'm already a little bit hungry and I know that talking about sandwiches will make me hungrier. Anyways, I think we should start with probably the most famous American sandwich, especially here, which is the PB&J, or the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is also fairly unique. I don't really know of anywhere else in the world that eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, like at all. There might be, I'm sure there is, but I feel like it's a very American thing. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are basically what they sound like. It's two pieces of bread with peanut butter and then jelly on the inside. Peanut butter isn't even a thing in a lot of places. And so, and peanut butter, well, it is a thing, but it's often not as common, right? Almost every single American household has peanut butter for many different reasons, but it's more of a rarer thing abroad or not as common or used for different things. But it's very, very common in the US. And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have just peanut butter on them usually. Nowadays, it's typically like a brand of peanut butter that has sugar in it, and so there's a bit of sweetness there. And then there's jelly, which is just berries with a bunch of sugar that's been sort of cooked down. And then you get a sandwich out of that. And those are very popular. I believe that they got most popular back in, I think, World War II, maybe one. I'm actually not sure which one it was. But in one of the world wars, American soldiers had a bunch of peanut butter with them because it was a very easy food to transport. It had protein in it, that sort of thing. And so they ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and then they got used to the flavor and they started to like it. And then when they all returned home, peanut butter became a bigger thing. It was like a normal thing to eat. I think it was part of the US culture for a while, like a little bit, but not as strong. And then there was so many people suddenly who wanted peanut butter sandwiches. that it was a big thing, and then it was like, okay, why don't you add jelly to make it da-da-da, whatever it is, and it grew from there. So now, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are very, very common if you want a quick snack, a quick food, something like that, and so, and they're very, very common in schools or I think you can even get them made for you. There's even, you can get peanut butter and jelly in the same jar nowadays in stores. You can find it in order to make your sandwich even easier. But there's a ton of other sandwiches. I think another one that I think of a lot for American sandwiches is a grilled cheese, a grilled cheese sandwich, which is, again, very simple, just bread and cheese. You can put more stuff into it. I like to add a few more things if I can. But sometimes you just want a grilled cheese. You just want cheese and bread because that's good. It's especially good with soups. Tomato soup is the most common, so a simple tomato soup, which is very red, served with a grilled cheese sandwich that you then dip into the soup and you eat it and it is very good. That's another sandwich. I don't eat those very often because they're, neither of those, because they're just not that healthy. I do like them both, peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheese sandwiches, but I just don't eat them very often. A more common sandwich that I might make is a ham sandwich, right, or a turkey sandwich or something like that where you get just essentially just lettuce and bread and meat and cheese and a couple other condiments on there, and you have a sandwich. They're very quick to make as well. They're pretty easy. Like if you get home from work or the gym or school or whatever and you're hungry, you might make yourself a turkey sandwich or a chicken sandwich or whatever it is. So those are also pretty common sandwiches. And then, now I wanna go into what I call the deli sandwiches because delis are also really common, especially in like the east of the country, although you can find them everywhere, but there's a bit more of a deli culture there. And deli sandwiches, typically you don't make at home for whatever reason. One of those being that it might be a meat or whatever goes inside the sandwich takes a long time to make. And so one of my favorite sandwiches is called a Reuben, which is a corned beef, or is it corned beef or is it roast beef? I think it's roast beef or corned beef. I actually don't remember. Anyways, it's some kind of beef that takes a long time to cook. And then sauerkraut, which is a, it's German and it's cabbage that has been fermented. And then you put a thousand island dressing on it and it goes on rye bread. If you can, it's on a bread that is actually part rye and part wheat I think and so it's like a spiral pattern on the bread and it looks very impressive and it's a pretty simple sandwich, right? You put three things inside of it plus the bread but those things take a long time to make except for the Thousand Island which you buy probably. I really like that sandwich. Whenever I can, I order one of those sandwiches because I can't order them very often, maybe a couple times a year. They're really delicious. If you have the opportunity to try a Reuben, I definitely recommend it. There's a ton of other deli sandwiches, or also known as heroes sometimes, or subs, because they kind of look like a submarine if they're on longer bread, but I don't really have enough time to go into all of them, and so I think I wanna talk about just a few more sandwiches that I think are important. One of which is a, from New York, it's called the bacon, egg, and cheese. Or if you say it in the New York accent, bacon, egg, cheese. You said to say it really, really fast is the whole point of it. Bacon, egg, cheese. Um, and a bacon, egg, and cheese is just like that. It's bacon, egg, and cheese on it. And it usually has ketchup. And then it's on a simple roll. So not really bread, it's like one of those basic rolls that you can find in a lot of places. And they serve them in, typically, in these little carts that are all over New York City. And you can find these carts and they usually have donuts, sandwiches like that, and coffee. And that's pretty much it. And it's very common for people to go get their breakfast in the morning. They get either a donut and coffee or a sandwich and coffee or whatever it is for that person. And almost everybody has their order. which I think is a really interesting piece of sort of living in New York or being in New York because they all kind of function the same, right? There's not that much difference between each of the carts. And so if you find one that you like and you kind of figure out your order, you can order basically the same thing anywhere with small variations, small differences between each of the carts. And so actually, I'm going to stop talking about sandwiches there just because I don't really have much more time. We're almost at 10 minutes. And so I want to just say that I think that if you haven't had a sandwich in a while, try making a sandwich because they're actually There's a lot more you can do with them than you might think. You can make an interesting sauce. You can try mixing things. You can add on things from your fridge that you forgot about or haven't thought about in a while. For example, I just made a sandwich yesterday. And I used some of these lovely pickles that I made because I hadn't used them in a while and it made the sandwich really, really good. The rest of the sandwich is very simple, but it felt very different because I had a little bit of inspiration and added something to it. So if you can, go make yourself a sandwich and enjoy it for me on my behalf. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. And I thank you very much for watching this one or listening to this one. And I hope that you learned a few more things. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
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