Mary's Response I love to eat, but I don't like to cook—not at all. I probably don't like to cook because I'm really bad at it. When I was growing up, my mother did all of the cooking in our house. But I never did learn how to cook any dishes at all. And so when I went to college and I moved into my own apartment, I had to learn how to cook a little bit. Usually what I made were very simple instant things, like ramen noodles. I bought a lot of TV dinners. And I also bought a lot of frozen pizzas. So I didn't have a very good diet when I was in college. But I ate a lot of things that were easy to make and that were in my very small student budget.
Later on, I did try to learn how to cook a little bit. I tried to cook for a boyfriend or two. And each time I tried to cook, I would get some simple recipes that required things like marinating the meat, chopping up the vegetables, getting spices to add to the dish. And I would do all of those things. And I would spend a lot of time—maybe hours and hours—working on cooking a meal. And then in the end, it would always turn out badly. Whether I would cook it too long and it would burn, overcook it, or it would just simply taste terrible. I don't think I'm made out to be a cook.
Jeff's Response I like to cook occasionally—every once in a while. I probably cook now about three, maybe four times a week. By cook, though, I mean prepare a very simple dish. Usually it involves either rice or pasta. I like to boil pasta. And then I buy a bottle of pasta sauce with tomatoes and mushrooms and other spices. And I mix the pasta with the pasta sauce. And so I have my own Italian dish. Then I add chicken to that. And so it's like a hot pasta salad with chicken. That's my easiest dish.
I have a few other dishes that I make. I like to cook fish. I like eating fish. And so I steam the fish and then pour some hot oil over it. But generally speaking, I'm usually pretty busy. I don't have a lot of time to make up a meal. I don't know how to cook from scratch, so I need a recipe to tell me what to do. A lot of my “quote-unquote” cooking usually involves things like opening up a can of soup and putting it into a bowl and then putting it into the microwave oven. So like a lot of busy people, I don't feel like I have a lot of time to cook, and so I end up either eating instant foods, frozen foods, or going out for dinner. Someday, I hope I'll have time enough to learn how to cook properly.
Vocabulary Discussion Let's go over some of the vocabulary and expressions used in these two interviews. In Mary's interview, she started off by saying that she isn't good at cooking. The expression to be good at or to be bad at is what we usually say about how well we can do a certain thing. So, for example:
Another term that was somewhat confusing from Mary's interview and from my interview is the term dishes.
Both Mary and I said that we like to cook and we can usually cook some certain dishes. A dish is part of a meal. So a dish, for example, could be pasta salad. A dish could be ramen noodles. And another dish could be a salad. Typically in a meal you have several different dishes.
Now, the confusing part is that we also use the term dish to refer to the physical plate and bowl and cup that we use to eat. People will often say, clean up the dishes, or I need to set down, put the dishes on the table. So, that word dish has two meanings:
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