2007年12月1日 星期六
Nov. 30, Friday
Yesterday Cindy, Elisa, Winnie, Erica and I went to night market for dinner. Every time we go to night market, we always eat steak. But this time, we wanted something different. Later, we decided to eat “Mongolian Barbecue”. It was our first time to eat this. All of us didn’t know what kind of food it is. When our dishes came, we all dumbfounded. We couldn’t believe that Mongolian Barbecue is just a dish with little meat and two or three kinds of vegetables stir-fry together. The most important thing is that it cost us one hundred dollars but we didn’t eat anything worthy. We all decided not to eat Mongolian Barbecue anymore.
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"went to the night market" is correct usage.
"Every time we go to night market, we always eat steak." This is a good example of saying the same thing twice: "every time" and "always" mean the same thing here. Another way of saying this is "Whenever we go to the night market, we eat steak" or "We always eat steak when we go to the night market".
While "All of us didn’t know " is understandable, it isn't idiomatic English. It's also verbose. The natural and idiomatic expression is "None of us knew".
"we were all dumbfounded" is how to say this. That "were" is necessary because "dumbfounded" is an adjective, and when the predicate complement is an adjective, the verb is usually the "be" copula.
"stir-fried", not stir-fry.
Serious misusage of "worth" versus "worthy" in "but we didn’t eat anything worthy." It has to be something like this: "but it wasn't worth it". "Worthy" is used in the same way as "deserving" is used.
Live and learn. That's what the moral would be if your story were an Aesop's fable. Another possible moral to your story is "Always ask before you ask for". If you don't know what something is, before you order it, you should ask what it is. That way, you won't be surprised.
A third moral to your story is "Never judge a dish by it's name", which is similar to "Never judge a book by its cover". Words are supposed to be used to describe things, yes, but sometimes the descriptions are enlightening and sometimes they are misleading. "Mongolian Barbecue" sounds exotic and special, but it misled you into expecting something quite different from what you got. I wonder what you thought it might have been. That would be interesting to know. What did you think it was? If you want to make your paragraph twice as interesting, you must include that information.
There's a food called "head cheese" in English that is not at all a cheese:
"Head cheese (AmE) or brawn (BrE) is in fact not a cheese, but rather a terrine of meat from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow) that would not otherwise be considered appealing. It may also include meat from the feet and heart. It is usually eaten cold or at room temperature as a luncheon meat. It is sometimes also known as soucemeat, particularly if pickled with vinegar. Historically the cleaned (all organs removed) head was simmered to produce a gelatin (formed from the collagen in the bone) containing any incidental meat which came off the head. The more modern method involves adding gelatin to meat, which is then cooked in a mould." [From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cheese].
I also learned from reading Laura Ingalls-Wilder's book Little House in the Big Woods that "hasty pudding" is not pudding at all but cornmeal mush. Again, from Wikipedia:
"Hasty pudding is a pudding or porridge grain cooked in milk or water; Indian pudding is an American variant made with maize.
Since the 16th century at least, hasty pudding has been a British dish of wheat flour cooked in boiling milk or water until it reaches the consistency of a thick batter. In some regions, it refers to an oatmeal porridge.[1] In the United States, it invariably refers to a version made of ground maize or corn.
Hasty pudding was used as a term for an oatmeal porridge in England when Hannah Glasse wrote her 18th-century book The Art of Cookery.
The North American version, also known as corn mush or Indian mush, in its simplest form is corn meal cooked slowly in water until it thickens. It may be eaten hot, or left to cool and solidify. Slices of the cold pudding may then be fried. Hasty pudding was once a popular American food because of its low cost, long shelf life, and versatility, and was eaten with both sweet and savory accompaniments, such as maple syrup, molasses, or salted meat. Count Rumford, an American inventor who disapproved of the Revolution and went to live in Europe, still liked his hasty pudding, hot, in a bowl of milk." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_pudding]
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