Daily Dose of English 98
Fruit
Daily Dose of English 98
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 fruit. Yes, fruit, like the food. I like fruit, and I thought I could make a fun episode. Not really much else to it, just fruit. Apples, bananas, oranges, those sort of fruits, you know. Um, and I guess I'll start with the fruit that I ate today because I like fruit. I do, but I don't really eat that much of it kind of because I forget. I tend to eat food pretty only like around meal times. So I have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then maybe a snack or two. somewhere in the day, but I don't really ever have fruit, not because it's not available or delicious or easy, but it just doesn't come to mind that often. I don't really know why, because I like it and I want to have more of it, but it's just hard to remember for some reason. Um, and when it's not being like, when I was growing up, my parents would buy fruit because they would do the shopping and they'd have, and we had delicious berries, especially in Oregon. And so it was really easy to eat fruit when it was in season. When we had some, it was just there. But now when I do the shopping, it just doesn't really come to mind. I think of my other meals. And then that's kind of it. I try to buy fruit, but I don't think of how to eat it or when to eat it or whatever, which is mostly my fault, to be clear. I'm not blaming anything or anyone. And so I have to work a little bit to get fruit in my diet, I guess you could say. But the fruit that I had today was in a smoothie. Actually, just yesterday I started having smoothies again for a breakfast item and it was really, really good. I've never really liked making smoothies that much. They're not that much fun to make, and I'm not very creative with them because, I don't know, it doesn't feel much like cooking, even though I love smoothies. Again, I'm not really sure why. I enjoy trying to cook something new and interesting and playing with flavors, and I understand it better, but there's something about smoothies that I just don't really fully understand, and I don't really know why. But I had a smoothie yesterday and today, and they were really good. And they were a lot easier to make because I just prepared them ahead of time. And it's so much easier and quicker because you just do one, two, three, and you're ready to go. And so these smoothies had a little bit of oats in them. Then there was a cocoa bean or cocoa nib pod or whatever. I don't even know what they're called actually. A little bit of cinnamon. And then some nuts, I think, yeah, it was cashews. And that was the dry part. And then there's the fruit, which is frozen, and that makes it nice and cold and thick as a smoothie. And that was a banana, two strawberries, and a date. Dates are really good. They're not even just in smoothies in general. I definitely recommend dates. I recently learned what dates actually are. They're a fruit. But they come from date palms or palm trees, which are fairly common in lots of sunny parts of the world. There are some of them here. But the trees that grow here don't really make good fruit. They're not really fruiting date palms. They have fruit, but they're not very good to eat. And so the dates that you might like eat, yeah, like eat, I guess, those are from different kinds of palm trees and they grow best in different parts of the world. So I think there's some in Mexico, but they're mostly in like the Middle East and countries in that part of the world. Although I think they can grow in lots of different places. And I don't think I've ever actually heard of anybody eating them raw, like without being dried. But I'm sure it happens right they have to be not poisonous because we can eat dry dry dry dates So like why not I guess I've just never heard of it or seen it I always eat dry dates, which are really good. They're sweet They have a nice texture and flavor to them and they're very quick and easy to do and they give you a little bit of They kind of fill your your belly a little bit anyway Yeah, they go good in smoothies too, because it adds a bit of sweetness without having to add anything like honey or syrup or whatever. So definitely recommend dates. Other fruit that I really like, here my favorite fruit is a mango because we don't really get the great mangoes in the US. They all come from Mexico or the Asian mango I believe are more grown in the Philippines. But the Mexican mangoes I think are much better. They're oranger and they're a little bit smaller and longer. I believe they're called ataulfo, mangoes ataulfo, I don't remember exactly. but they're really juice and rich with that mango flavor. And they go great on salads, alone, with chili powder. And yeah, definitely recommend mangoes. Pineapples are also fantastic. I do love me a good pineapple. There was also a bit of time where I was making, oh God, what's it called? It's a fermented pineapple beverage native to Mexico. It's not mapache, that's raccoon. Oh God, I don't remember the word. Oh shoot, I'll have to Google this. I'm gonna go crazy. Fermented pineapple drink, Mexico. Depache, doesn't even start with an M. Depache. Depache is really good and delicious as well. It's a fermented drink made with the outside of a pineapple, mostly, and then a couple other things if you want. And that's really it. It sort of just sucks out the pineapple-ness. It uses a yeast to ferment, and so it creates this really delicious flavor. You definitely recommend Depache if you can get it, especially cold. Very cold Depache is really good. But the actual pineapple fruit is also really delicious, especially with chili salt and lime. Highly recommend for sure. Those are the fruits that I am most likely to eat here in Mexico. I don't, like papaya is fine. I don't love it. It's a good dried, but I just don't, it's, I don't know. It's not my favorite. I'll eat it, but not my favorite. And I also want to jump over to the fruits that I grew up with more, because I mentioned berries already. Berries are really any fruit that is small and grows on a bush. So not a tree, but more on a bush. So blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, salmonberries, there's tons of different berries, huckleberries. and they grow really, really well in Oregon and other parts that are sort of similar to Oregon. So I think parts of California, I think grapes might be a similar breed of fruit and there's tons of grapes in California and other arid but also wet parts of the world like that for making wine. But I definitely grew up with a lot of raspberries and strawberries and blackberries. Those are the ones that are the most popular, and they grow the best out there, and they're really, really good. And a couple of years, or pretty often, actually, I would go with my family, maybe even some friends, out to pick berries. There's a lot of farms in Oregon or around Oregon where you go berry picking or fruit picking and you get a bucket basically and you fill up your bucket and you get to have a bunch of fruit for a little bit cheaper. It's not that much cheaper than store-bought fruit or buying it directly from the farm. But it's a fun way to spend the day, especially with kids that like being outside and you can find berries and eat them and it's very nice. Blueberry picking, I don't think I said blueberries in that. Freshly picked blueberries are really, really good. I don't often buy fresh blueberries in markets and stores because they're not as good as the berries that you can get. A good, fresh, juicy blueberry is just a different thing entirely. So good. There is so much more about fruit, but I'm actually running out of time on this episode, and I would recommend looking onto YouTube for a guy who tries as many fruits as he possibly can. I don't remember what the video is called, but it was like, two hours or something like that, and it's like trying 10,000 different fruits or trying as many fruits as I can. And I was like, oh, this looks kind of goofy. I'll see like 10 minutes of it. But it was this awesome story of this guy talking about fruit and his experiences traveling the world, looking for more fruit. And I definitely recommend that video and that channel because he eats as many different fruits as he can possibly get his hands on. And one of the things that he says is that it's literally impossible to eat all of the fruits in the world. There's an estimation of several tens of thousands of different fruits that exist. and many of them you don't want to eat, or they're just, they're so super duper local, this one like small place, or there's tiny little variations between them. So he's not trying to eat all the fruits, but he's trying to eat as many as he can and enjoy fruits, so. Yeah. Anyways, I'm going to leave it there for this episode. I thank you so much for watching and I would like to hear from you in the comments. What's your favorite fruit? Um, and what grows well in your country. Thank you very much. And I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye bye.
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