Tag Archives: food

What is a “veggie”?

6 October 2014Funny Stuff, The English language, Word of the Dayeating, food, health, listening, videoCristina Cabal

Well, I don’t know what I am, that’s why I have dedicated some time to finding an answer to what I am or rather to what I eat or don’t eat. For me,one of the most tiring things about not eating what everybody around me eats is having to hide the fact that I just eat differently and having everybody around me worried about what they might offer me; so, when my friends and I go to a party or birthday or whatever occasion where food is involved I ask them not to attract attention to my eating habits. I can tell you it’s not fun struggling to make people understand that I won’t eat anything cooked with meat and what is worst, trying to explain that even though they remove the chicken or the meat I still won’t eat it.
The word “vegetarian” is a blanket term used to describe somebody who does not eat meat, poultry, fish or seafood. But then, within this term there exist different sub-groups.
VEGAN . This person doesn’t eat any animal products or by products and this includes cheese, milk… some of them don’t even wear leather or wool.
LACTO-VEGETARIAN : The same as vegans but they eat dairy products
OVO- VEGETARIAN : The same as vegans but they eat eggs
OVOLACTO VEGETARIANS are by far the largest group of vegetarians
SEMI-VEGETARIAN are not vegetarians strictly-speaking as they may eat fish but not meat or the other way round.

Silly things people say to vegetarians ….. when given the chance. I no longer do.
•So what do you eat? A lot of salad?
•Can’t you just pick out the bits of meat in (insert name of dish here) and eat the rest of it?
•You should feel bad about the pain and suffering you’re causing all those plants you’re eating.
•What did you say gelatin was made of? You’re joking.

Speaking: Describing a Dish

9 January 2014Cooking, Lesson Plan: Elementary, SpeakingA2, cooking, food, slides, speaking, vocabularyCristina Cabal

Happy New Year to everybody! I am back!!! Hard to get started once again after this longish holiday. It’s been eight days now since we have let 2014 in and it is time we get down to some serious work, don’t you think?

Talking in class about food related things after some huge binge eating and drinking is not precisely what appeals to me most, but unfortunately I cannot choose.
This is an activity I am going to do with my Elementary students after some serious work practising food vocabulary.

The activity is simple. The students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of a popular dish is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible, talking about its ingredients and the way it is cooked and the other person has to guess the dish. Allow them two or three minutes and then display another picture for the other student to do the same. Below are some slides with the dishes that I am going to use.

Some useful vocab they are likely to use

Nouns: pan, cinnamon, olives, tuna, blood sausage,

Verbs: to beat eggs, to fry, to boil, to add, to stir with a spoon,to slice (apples)

Traditional Recipes from Asturias

20 March 2013freeware, Students' Cornerfood, onlinetools, recipes, students, writingCristina Cabal

.”Better late than never” or so they say.
This booklet with Traditional Recipes from Asturias was written with lots of love by my former students from the bilingual stream at IES Cesar Rodríguez and with great memories of these amazing students I fulfill my promise . I only hope you are still reading this blog, one year later!

I have used the highly recommendable tool issuu . Click to enlarge.

Word of the Day: to Lose Weight

11 May 2011Funny Stuff, Pictures, Word of the Dayeating, food, fun, losing weight, onlinetools, photograph, vocabularyCristina Cabal

Never have I seen so many people around me trying to lose some weight . Spring must be the season when we realize there is no way we will be able to hide our love handles (excess fat around the hips and buttocks, sometimes also called saddle bags– I imagine they are called this way when they are big and ugly) .

Anyway, when it is not summertime and you’re not looking your best, you can always use this funny tool to make you look thinner, even though you haven’t bothered to go on a diet to lose a bit of weight or go to the gym to sweat off your excess of baggage in the treadmill.

The tool I was telling you about is called slimpic.com and with only a few clicks, you can make yourself or someone in your pictures gain or lose weight (the point here is losing weight, we don’t need to go to the Internet searching for tools to make us look uglier, do we?).

Me, before and with 10kgs less! if only it were so easy!