What is your comfort food?

What is your comfort food? I dare you to NOT think of the answer. Too late? I bet your favourite dish is already in your mind. Maybe you are even seeing a memory or a person attached to this dish. Is it something your mother made when you were sick? Something you eat at Christmas? Is it sweet or salty?

Healthy…probably not

Chances are your comfort food is not too healthy. Right? Generally speaking, comfort foods are hardy, starchy and fatty. All great words that describe food. And that is exactly what you will find in this Insider Food video featuring 20 different people from 20 different cultures describing their comfort food.

But it makes me happy

Food makes people happy, conjures memories, and heals us when we are sick or sad and is often the heart of most celebrations. It is also a super fun thing to talk about. It ties in food, feelings, events and people, thus a nice integrated vocabulary exercise. The perfect Whole Language exercise.

While you listen

This video is chalk-a-block full of vocabulary, so I made a Google docs handout available through Teachers Pay Teachers to help collect the essential ideas. Or you can try this cool interactive worksheet. Of course, if you are working with more advanced students, you might want to ditch the handout and just let the students note what they can. Rember you can turn the CC on and slow down the video.

Google Docs Handout

Pre Discussion

  • Just to get the food words flowing, do a Mind Map
  • What is your comfort food?
  • Why?

The Video: 20 Comfort Foods From around the world

Discussion

  • Which story did you find the most interesting?
  • Which dish have you tried?
  • Which dish would you like to try?
  • What do most of the dishes have in common?
  • What were some of the reasons the dishes were considered comforting?

How do you poach an egg?

  • Level: A1-A2
  • Handout on TPT
  • Media: Video
  • Language focus: food, verbs, cooking, imperative

How do you poach an egg? Yes, that is my discussion question for today. Easy right? In my humble experience, poaching an egg is one of the harder cooking skills I have ever had to master.

It’s Authentic

But aside from the culinary anecdotes, the mmmEnglish YouTube channel prepares cooking lessons with the goal of teaching English. Now I know it goes against the Whole Language Approach to use adapted materials, but I think this video has got all the authenticity features of first language material and is a great resource for beginner ESL material, of which I don’t have a whole lot.

So if you are looking for an authentic way to teach food words or cooking verbs or just a good listening exercise that focuses on process, this is a short, slow, clear and useful video. Especially if you are trying, as I am, to make the perfect poached egg. Bon appétit!

Teaching Notes

I made a handout to go with the video and put it on Teacher Pay Teachers (0,99$). But if you want to just watch and discuss, you can use the discussion prompts included in this post.

Handout on TPT

Warm UP

Do a quick Mind Map of all the food words your students know. Perhaps you could also prompt a few cooking verbs.

The Video: How to Poach an Egg by mmmEnglish

Discussion Questions

  • What are the ingredients?
  • What tools are needed?
  • What are the steps?
  • Complete these sentences:
    • The water is perfect when it has small________ but it is not boiling.
    • The yoke must be _______but not hard.
    • Toast is just a ________that has be toasted in the ______
    • ______butter on the toast.
  • Make a list of all the cooking verbs. Can you put them in another sentence?
  • Now it’s your turn…think of an easy recipe you could share with the class.

What is in your food?

We live in a fast paced world with all kinds of conveniences. Food taking a huge chunk of the convenience market, many foods are processed and packaged to serve. If food and nutrition are a topic of interest to you and your students, you might find this National Geographic article about Henry Heinz rather interesting.

Pre discussion

  • What concerns do you have about food?
  • What do you look for when you read the labels on packaged foods?
  • What are your ‘rules of thumb’ when food shopping?

The article: How Henry Heinz used ketchup to improve food safety

  • Mind Map the main points of the article
  • What were some of Heinz’s values?
  • How did that affect his products?
  • Do you think today’s food producers are concerned about the same things as Heinz?
  • What can food producers learn from this story?
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