Report on “Forbidden Food” Interview
I was getting together with some friends who are very good cooks on Saturday, March 17 at 5:00 PM, so I thought it was the perfect time to interview one of them so I could write a sample report for my ESL 142 Speaking and Listening Students. I contacted our hostess, Nicole, by e-mail and cc’ed the others to ask about conducting the interview before we had dinner that night. By using Skype we were going to include Linda, a friend who now lives in Oregon, and to my surprise, she was the first to respond to my message, and she answered all my questions. I thanked her, but I told her that our teacher was really strict, and the teacher had told us to practice our speaking and listening skills, so I wouldn’t be able to use her written answers. What a shame!
But the hostess was also a good interviewee. As she set the table around 5:30, I began the interview with Nicole Wendel, a friend I’ve known since around 1982, when we both taught at John Adams. We had a few pleasant interruptions, but the interview (also pleasant of course) took about 20 minutes between 5:30 and 6:00. Another friend, Shehla, sat with us during the interview.
On the subject of forbidden foods, diet restrictions, or any food she won’t eat, Nicole said the only taboo for her was “pink slime,” anything that looked awful and wasn’t identifiable, but she also said she avoids food with antibiotics and hormones and anything that’s highly processed. I asked her to explain what highly processed food was, and she found a package of Jello and read the label to another friend and me.
I named some recent food trends like eating less meat, vegetarianism, ethnic cuisine, and unusual “insect” dishes and asked her what she thought about these trends. She said that she pays attention to how the animals have been raised. In a place like Whole Foods, they rate products 1-5 to show this. The higher the number, the more “natural” their life is. This was really interesting to me because I became a vegetarian after learning that in factory farms animals can’t even move or turn their heads or nurse their babies in a natural way. I was happy to see that some markets as well as customers are concerned about this and are trying to be less cruel. Later I looked this up and found this web site: http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2011/02/5-step-chicken-whats-in-a-number/
She said the most unusual food she’d ever eaten was guinea pig in Peru, but she also had grasshoppers (chapalines) in Oacaca, Mexico. (Later I found a YouTube video on this.
She knew about the ban on shark fins, and I explained what we’d learned in ESL 142 about why sharks are so important to the ecosystem in the ocean.
She said her favorite food is cheese, and she isn’t sure about her favorite restaurant because “I don’t like to eat out much.” Maybe that’s because she’s a very good cook, and so are most of her friends.
I asked her when she eats with her family, and she said she eats with them when she visits them in San Diego. They never have the TV on during meals. She sometimes eats alone in her kitchen.
She’s never fasted, but once, a long time ago, she gave up some foods she liked for a special diet. She doesn’t remember what she ate on her special diet. She drinks wine but not much other alcohol except for tequila from time to time. She doesn’t count calories, but she pays attention to portion or serving sizes. She never eats at McDonald’s or any other fast food restaurant except a taqueria.
She says she associates food with love because “I love food.” Her best memory of a meal was of eating outdoors. One meal was in Mexico, where she had tortillas dipped in chili sauce and heated in a large wok-type dish and filled with potato and chicken. “The whole setting was magical, night on the zocalo, chilly mountain Patzcuaro.” The other place was a dairy farm on a hike in Germany that ended in Austria. She said that she and those she was with “ate the cheese and visited the cows.”
She says she rarely cooks now. “Mostly just when I invite people over.” However she makes oatmeal every week day and eggs on the weekends.
I felt very comfortable and happy during the interview because like Nicole, I love food, and it’s fun talking about it with friends. Of course, I know I was conducting the interview in my native language, and for you it won’t be so easy, but it may help you more with your speaking and listening skills. I’m pretty good at listening, but I need to remember not to interrupt too much, and this time I remembered. I sometimes asked Nicole for clarification or elaboration, but I never asked her to repeat.
I learned something I hadn’t known about the 1-5 rating on how animals are raised.
Then Beth, a third friend, arrived with cheese, Nicole’s favorite food, and we had a wonderful meal of cheese and crackers, the Thai-influenced noodle salad I made, the asparagus and pasta and shrimp dishes Nicole made, and the mango cheesecake Shehla made. Everything was delicious, as our friend Linda could see on Skype. We didn’t want her to feel bad that she couldn’t eat the food, so we pointed out that our meal was low in calories only for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment