2015-08-05 Eat with Caution (1)

• Fugu
• Ackee
• Hakarl

What foods are you willing to try?

While an adventurous appetite is often a positive characteristic, it isn’t always beneficial. The world is full of exotic flavors and textures that sometimes require you to take your life in your own hands.

Fugu
One pufferfish, fugu in Japanese, contains enough poison to kill 30 people. Chefs are required to obtain a license to prepare it, which means two or three years of training. The best chefs, however, are said to leave just enough poison in the fish to give diners a tickling feeling when they eat it.

Ackee
Jamaica’s national fruit, ackee, just so happens to cause its “national illness,” Jamaican vomiting sickness, which is actually much worse than it sounds. Enjoy the fruit, but eat only the ripe, properly peeled yellow meat (not the toxic black seeds) to avoid a coma or death.

Hakarl 
If you’re in Iceland, you can try hakarl – fermented Greenland shark – or not. The Greenland shark has no urinary tract, so its meat is full of toxins. But not to worry – they’re removed after the shark is buried in sand and rocks and dried about six months.

Editor's Summary
Our title tells us to eat with caution.

An adventurous appetite may mean that you take your life in your hands as the world is full of exotic flavors and textures.

Today, we are looking at why our authors said that.

First, we see the fugu, or pufferfish, which contains enough poison to kill 30 people.

That is one fish to 30 people.

Chefs who work with pufferfish are required to obtain a license in order to prepare it.

That usually means two to three years of training.

For those of you who think they remove all of the poison, think again.

The best chefs leave just enough to give those who dine on fugu a tickling feeling as they eat it.

Hmm… and then, we have Jamaica’s national fruit, ackee, which also causes a national illness, which is Jamaican vomiting sickness.

If you eat this fruit, make sure that you only eat the ripe properly peeled yellow meat.

Not the black seeds, which are toxic, if you want to avoid a coma or even death.

And if you find yourself in Iceland, you might want to try hakarl, or fermented Greenland shark.

Then again, maybe you don’t.

Since the Greenland shark has no urinary tract, the meat is full of toxins.

But these are removed by burying the dead shark in sand and under rocks, and dried for about six months.

Enjoy!

Info Cloud
Teaching Topic: How Many Foods?教學主題: Food 可以數嗎？
Today let’s talk about food or more precisely the word food, is it countable?

Well, can we say two food, three food, four food? Of course, the answer is no, we can’t. Food is therefore uncountable. We cannot say, “I do not eat many food”.

However, sometimes we might see the word, foods with an s, in this usage, foods means types of food, I’m willing to try different foods, means I’m willing to try different types of food.

Sometimes I buy frozen foods, they are convenient to prepare.

So Steve likes to cook different kinds of frozen food, frozen vegetables, frozen pizza, frozen breakfast burritos.

Umm, so, it all that tends how you look at food in general o rin particular.

Other than food, we can add an s at the end of many uncountable nouns to indicate different types of something like different candies, chocolates, wines, cheeses all words that are normally uncountable.

We should know however that “foods” is not commonly used in everyday speech. We more often say different kinds of food, rather than different foods. If you went to a party, and there were different types of food from different countries, instead of saying, there were Mexican, Chinese and Italian foods, you might want to use more common dishes. For example, there were Mexican, Chinese and Italian dishes at the party.

Language Lab
caution n.
care taken to avoid danger or risk : a careful attitude or way of behaving
- The roads are icy and slippery. Drive with caution!
a warning telling someone to be careful
- The police officer only gave the driver a caution because it was his first offense.
caution v.
to warn or tell (someone) about a possible danger, problem, etc.
- We were caution by the neighbor for being too loud.

texture n.
the way that something feels when you touch it
- The moisturizer has a silky texture which makes it easier to apply.
- The walls of the Mexican restaurant have a rough texture.
- I like the creamy texture of the corn soup.

toxic adj.
/ˈtɑːksɪk/
containing poisonous substances : poisonous
- The area surrounding the factory was contaminated with toxic waste.
- Toxic chemicals were found in the fish in the coastal area.

ferment v.
/fɚˈmɛnt/
to go through a chemical change that results in the production of alcohol
- Leave grapefruit juice to ferment for a certain amount of time, and it will turn into wine.
- Cheese ferments faster when stored at a higher temperature.

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