FOOD TIMETABLES

We all know that when foreigners come to Spain they get surprised by our timetable. We, spanish people, do everything later than most of the people in the rest of the world. We go to work later, we eat later and we go out to have fun later too.

We are used to this and we also get surprised when we travel. Sometimes we think that our timetable is better because we make the most of our days, just because we go to bed later than anyone. But is that really true?

In general, we have a light breakfast before going to work or to study, like a coffee or a glass of milk. We do our normal breakfast about 11 in a bar close by. Our lunch is usually at 2 or 3, and an abundant one. We might have something to eat in the early evening and a big dinner at 9 or 10 at night.

Do you think that our times to eat are the best?



In Spain we stop everything to eat. We stop working at 2 and go home to eat. Having a big lunch about 2 or 3 in the afternoon makes one feel sleepy and need a "siesta", a typical Spanish short nap. Some believe that everyone takes a siesta in Spain. But unfortunately we are not that lucky. Most of our jobs in Spain don't allow us to sleep after eating. After eating so much we must be ready to go back to work, which I think makes it difficult to work properly.
Also during this time public establishments close for some hours and reopen about 4.30 or 5. But public organizations and banks close at 2 and don't reopen, which can be a problem for people who work during those morning hours (which usually happens).

So do you think that this break in the afternoon is a good one? Does it make it possible for people to rest to go back to work properly later? I don't think so. I think that this timetable keeps us busy the whole day and gives us no free time to enjoy during the day. This is why we have to enjoy life so late, especially during weekends. That means going to bed much later, waking up later, eating later and making the rest of the things later as well.


In England, for example, the eating timetable is very different.

In the morning, they have a big breakfast, usually some sliced
bread with butter and jam and cereals.
During the weekends they might eat their popular English Breakfast.

After that, differing with us, they have a light lunch at 12 or at 1 at latest, which allow people keep working inmediately after having eaten. It usually consists of a salad, or sandwiches and some fruit. Children and adults eat lunch outside. They might take some food from their homes or buy something already made; there are many shops where you can find them.

They don't stop everything to eat as we do. They have half an hour to eat and then go back to work. In most cases, they finish working at 5 or 6, which makes it possible to make the best of their day.

It is also habit to have a snack before dinner, called "tea break", the popular english tea time. Dinner (also called "supper") is their biggest meal and takes place at 6 or 6.30. It typically mixes different kinds of food (salad, vegetables, potatoes).

One can cook without being in a hurry, resting a little bit and enjoy his/her day after supper. Also, they don't go to bed with a full stomach.





What do you think now? Is it not better to have a light lunch and keep working after? Stop working earlier and have dinner calmly? Enjoy life during the day?

In Spain, I always see women running to the bakery everyday at 2, nervous about what to cook and how little time they have. Do you know the cause of our timetable? War.

Spain became a destroyed country. It was impossible to maintain a family with only one salary, so men had to work 2 different jobs, one in the morning and one in the evening.
Married women weren't allowed to work in that period, so they cooked in the morning and evening for when the men returned from each job. They had enough time to cook a big menu, but now things have changed. Men and women both work, but the timetable has not changed at all. And it can be crazy.

By Clara Jiménez García

DO YOU LIKE COCKTAILS ?

Do you like cocktails? If you don’t, you are going to love them, when you read and see this new post.
A cocktail is a preparation of a mixture of different drinks in different proportions, which usually contains one or more types of alcohol with other ingredients like juice, fruit, honey, milk or cream, spices, etc. There are also common ingredients in cocktails, carbonate drinks or soft drinks, soda and tonic water. Sometimes they can be decorated with different fruits or funny objects. Normally they are drunk with a straw.

The English word comes from “cock’s tail” which means rooster’s tail. In Queen Victoria’ s period, English merchants of precious wood including “logwood” arrived to the port of San Francisco de Campeche in Mexico. They drank wine and liquor without mixing in taverns. Sometimes they drank called “dracs” of rum or other alcohol. They were composed drinks that merchants scrambled with a metal spoon which might give a bad taste to the drink. One day the saw the “barman” used a thin and smooth roots from a plant called “rooster’s tail” (by its shape)to avoid the bad taste. Merchants asked him what it was, and he answered in his language “cock’s tail”. Then it was popularized the use of this term.

(Logwood)

Do you know this information? Me neither, I think that is very interesting.
Now I let you some kinds of cocktail that you can taste in some bars, pubs… They are the most popular.
Bloody Mary, Caipirinha, Dry martini, Gin tonic, Long Island Iced Tea, Manhattan, Mojito, Negroni, Old fashioned,Red Margaret, San Francisco, Tom Collins, etc.

By María José Gómez

THE PRESENTATION OF OUR BLOG IN CLASS

Our happy group in the presentation! =D

ÁNGEL:

 Hello!  We are here in order to sum up the presentation of our blog, in which have contributed María José Gómez, Esperanza Reyes, Clara Jiménez, Nuria María Ortiz and me, Ángel Barbecho.  At the beginning we were a group of seven people, now we are only five, but it’s not a pity for us!

First at all, we’ve done several meetings to build this web. It has been a great task, because we had the opportunity of knowing more each other!

The first thing we did on our blog was choosing a title and then a wallpaper that suits. We called the blog “Shut Up & Eat Now!”, as a common expression both in English and Spanish, related to language and food. Then we chose this wallpaper, with the spoon representing the food, the keys representing technology and the words on the keys meaning language! We also decided to put bright colors, in order to transmit joy and happiness!

The content is actually varied. We’ve been talking about funny recipes and their relationship with language, also about technological products as Blackberry, Android or Apple, and why are they called like that…We have written about many things, so we invite you to look at them! 

MARIA JOSE:
In our blog there are also some things apart from the posts that we have created and published. At the beginning you can find some photos about delicious chocolate, but you don’t look at them so much or you’re going to get hungry
Next you have some videos. There are videos about “Fast food” that I know that all you love it. I can see that you’re getting fatter and fatter because of you going to McDonals. So in those videos you can find funny information about it.
We have created a survey to know what plate do you like most, and to try that our blog has participation from students.
Our blog has a web visitor counter too, to know how many people visit it. In one month we have achieved 650 visits and we hope that this number increase.
And finally you can see a description about our group in which we include the name of the components of the blog, and the followers of it. I invite you to be one of them. Thank you very much.

ESPE:
Our group decided to start to write about dishes with funny names and their recipes. Obviously all the recipes have been cooking by our members. I can recomend you "jacket potato" a dish which was cooking by Angel and to be sincere it was great. If you want to taste it but you are not good at cooking, you can go to the famous seville's restaurant "papasá". They offer you a great variety mixes of it. On the other hand, probably the most funny name for a dish is spotted dick. Clara cooked it for us, and although its name seems not to be really tasteful, believe me, it is delicious.

Secondly, we decided to write about food's etymology. Maria Jose wrote a post about the diferent names of typical food in England and the United States. It sounds really interesting because it can be very helpful for us if we are going to travel to both countries. We should known that although some dishes are the same in both countries, they can be called with different names in each country. Other post was the history about "afters" in England. It is something really interesting because it means dessert. Here, the story of the word is also related with the typical English sweet "After Eight", which has also its own story and it has became one of the symbols of English culture.


NURIA:
Why is our blog the best? It’s simple, because it has a little bit of everything. We started to talk just about food and by relating to the origin and also about how they were cooked. Of course, they are not simple recipes, they are strange, unusual in our country and funny but it didn’t last very long because we didn’t want to bore you.

Then, gradually, we started to relate food to technology (because this subject is about that, isn’t it?) However, if you think about it… Does Technology have to do with Food? Yes, it does.

So, I think that this kind of post is the best way to get up to date with Technology because maybe, technology for many people can be boring (to me, for instance) but with these funny posts relating to food you can learn and amuse and specially you can show off with your friends and fancy yourself as a cool guy. ;-)

But the most important is not that we, the creators of the blog, think that our blog is the best, but you finally learn something with our posts, entertain with it and of course you like it. Thank you. =)


CLARA:
As my friends have said, after having written about different funny recipes we changed the theme a little bit to make our blog a better one and more varied, so we started to talk about other things like etimology, we added some gadgets too, to make it funnier, but we have also talked about a really important thing in our lives nowadays as it is technology, of course, relating it to food and language. Do you love technology? You must, because technology is everywhere and we need it for everything, and I bet you would die if technology dissappeared suddenly!
What would you do without having a mobile phone? Do you know how they work? What do you know about their operating systems? Are you android's fans, iphone's fans, blackberry's fans? Whatever you are you can find information and curious things about each one in our blog that I am sure you will like!
So as you have seen we have really useful things for you here, so as to buy a new mobile phone, or if you are going to travel to England or US you can know exactly which word you have to use! Or simply you can learn about new and interesting things... Also, do you want to get fat? Or rather, do you want others to get fatter (and uglier) than you? We have the best, the most unhealthy and the most delicious food for that! Just make our food for them, everyone will find them irresistible! So we hope you enjoy our blog and if we don't have something that you need, just tell us and we will! Or we will try at least! Thank you!

With Gabriel Amores, our professor of New Technologies applied to the English language.

Bloody Mary

“One Bloody Mary, please!!!” you could hear or order for instance in a pub but… have you stopped to think what you have ordered?! A person, and the worst… bloody :S
Okay, now it can seem to be that it’s not shocking because it’s said in English language and it could go unnoticed but if you translate it to Spanish…: “Una de María la Sanguinaria/Sangrienta, por favor” This is not the same, isn’t it??

Well, in this post I want to show you why this drink is called so.
All starts when Tudors family reigned. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was the successor queen.

Mary I just reigned for 5 years (1553-1558) but it was time enough in order to she came by the nickname “Bloody Mary”. But why this horrible nickname? It's simple, because she tried to re-establish Catholicism as the religion of the land by killing people who weren’t Catholics or didn’t want to convert themselves to the Catholicism.


Well, right now, we already know the story about the Mary's nickname but the question is: Why is a cocktail called of this way?!
It's said that this cocktail born in 1920, in a local pub from Paris called "Harry's New York Bar", a hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates.

One night one of the barmen, Ferdinand Petoit, mixed for a cocktail, vodka with lemon juice, tabasco sauce and Worcestershire or Worcester sauce (It is a fermented liquid condiment and it's used to flavour meat or fish dishes.).
Then, he added tomato juice and salt and pepper. The mixture was so explosive that local customers named it "Bloody Mary" like queen's nickname.

By: Nuria María Ortiz Sánchez

Why Steve Jobs called Apple to his company? What is the origin of the Apple logo?

   The company logo represents an apple with a bite taken out of it. Why this symbol has it been chosen?

 Steve Jobs was a fan of apples. During a period of his youth and before the creation of Apple. Inc., he was eating a lot of apples!

Furthermore, the founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were Beatles fans, whose productions company is called Apple Corps.

Also the apple bit take-out of it appears elsewhere on the last album of the group as a symbol of the end of the adventure.

 Another theory is that according to Steve Jobs, Apple was so named because Jobs was coming back from an apple farm, and he was on frustration diet. He thought the name was “fun, spirited and not intimidating”.

Today Apple logo has inspired a wide range of desserts, not only dishes with apples:

Published by Group 5

What about Blackberry?

Have you ever heard about  BBs? Of course you did. Everyone has one or has a friend who has one! Is it trendy? Is it fashion? It could be, but all the users agree that it’s useful!

The range of Blackberry phones were created by the Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM) in 1984. They are identified as smartphones, because they have e-mail service integrated within the phone. 

As a market, Blackberry uses Blackberry App World, where you may find thousands of applications in order to complete the phone and make it more interactive.  The most popular exemplar is the Blackberry Curve 8520, which has been the most demanded by the customers.

Have you noticed the peculiarity of the phone’s name? Yep! It’s food again!

There are two different reasons that could explain the meaning of its peculiar name. One of them you may find that is quite weird, although it is actually a fraud, the meaning could be very interesting.

The realistic one is the following: initially, these phones were only made in black though nowadays you can buy them in many different colors. Apart from the color, the keypad can also remind us of the little spots the fruit has; so the name came from the similitude between the mobile and the blackberry.

Another explanation would be the metaphor made between a fetter and how people use the phone.  When slavery was something quite prevailing in the USA, new slaves used to carry fetters with a big black ball in order to ensure that they don’t run away from the cotton fields. This fetter used to be called Blackberry because of the ball and it “similitude” with the fruit. It is said that people who own a Blackberry could be quite addicted or dependant on the phone so it is for that reason that this explanation could suit though it is offensive and not very probable!

By Ángel Barbecho Ortega

AFTER HAVING UNDERSTOOD AFTERS ETIMOLOGY: "AFTER EIGHT MINT"

Hello ladies and gentlemen!

I'm back again... for this new post I have been thinking what to write about. And as in my first post I will continue talking about sweets. But in this post I will play with the etymology.

To start with... what do we know about the word "after"? It could be a preposition, an adverb and a conjunction. Although this blog could be an excuse to talk about language and food... at the first sight this word is not so related with food. But this word could change its grammatical meaning if we add an extra -s in the final position. Instead of "after" we will obtain "afters" and in this sense the new noun is intimately related with meals. For British English "afters" is the synonym of "dessert".
Now is when I will go to start to speak about the etymology of the word "dessert". This term comes from French "desservir" which means: to clean the table and to serve. The term was introduced in England in the mid of 1600. While "dessert" is use in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, "afters" is the correct term used in the United Kingdom and some other commonwealth’s countries as India. The word "afters" is found in Modern English.

Certainly, everybody knows that British English has words and expressions different from the rest of English variations. But why did British countries decide to call to dessert "afters"? The thing is that British manners are known to everybody in the world and they are also related with meals. They could be divided into three: breakfast (7.00-9.00), lunch (12.00-13.30) and dinner (18.30-20.00). Well, dessert or afters are a part of dinner. They are a sweet food eaten at the end of it. For this reason British decided to change the term dessert to afters. It was reasonable to do that because it makes allusion to food after dinner. But there is another theory which says that they take their name from their inventor, Sir George After, the Fat Bastard of Brighton.

Now, is when everything is connected with the beginning of the post, the etymology is already explained but what I was referring to is one of my favourite’s sweets: "After Eight Mint". It is easy to know now why they are so called like this. After eight is the meal that we eat after dinner, and it has already stopped at eight. And Mint is because their Flavour.

"After Eight Mint" was introduced in 1962 and they were created by Rowntrees and they appeared in York, England. Later, in 1988 Nestlé started to produce them.

 They are recognize after-dinner chocolate throughout Europe. "After Eight’s" symbol of a clock set the appropriate time, this is linked with sophisticated dinner parties. The dark cartoon conveyed the image of elegance and luxury and it was associated with a style of living which might seek or advice by many.

Nowadays "After Eight Mint" has become a symbol of England and millions of tourists each year try to look for one souvenir box of it when they go to England.

                                                                                                             by Esperanza Reyes

AT MEALTIMES...

Hi English Philology students! I have found an interesting thing about food and language to show you. Pay attention and be careful with some words, when you search the meaning in the dictionary because some of them can be said in two different ways depending on the variety of English. I am talking about British English and American English. Surely you have seen this words a lot of times in dictionaries:  "X (AmE), Y ( BrE)".

There are a lot of words that can be said in a different way, depending of British English or American English, accent, but I am going to show you the words of food. They are some examples:

BRITISH ENGLISH	AMERICAN ENGLISH	TRANSLATION SPANISH
Annised	Anise	Anis
Aubergine	Eggplant	Berenjena
Biscuit	Cookie	Galleta
Chips	French fries	Patatas fritas
Joint	Roast	Carne asada
Potato Crisps	Potato chips	Patatas en bolsa
Sweet	Candy	Caramelo
Maize	Corn	Maíz
Beetroot	Beet	Remolacha
Candyfloss	Cotton candy	Algodón de azúcar
Cornflour	Cornstarch	Maicena
Lettuce	Romaine	Lechuga romana
Courgette	Zucchini	Calabacín
Double cream	Heavy cream	Nata rica en grasa
Prawn cocktail	Shrimp	Cóctel de gambas
Icing sugar	Confectioners’ sugar	Azúcar glas o en polvo
Mangetout	Pea	Guisante/Chícharo
Plain flour	All-purpose flour	Harina común
Skimmed milk	Skim milk	Leche descremada
Swede	Rutabaga	Nabo
Titbit	Tidbit	Golosina
Toffee apple	Candy apple	Manzana caramelizada
White coffee	Regular coffee	Café con leche
Wholemeal bread	Wholewheat bread	Pan integral

 

 So depending if you are in England or in America, you have to use the words of the first column, or the words of the second one. In the third column you have the meaning of the words in Spanish.

 I consider that it is an interesting post that I want to share with you, because you can travel to Great Britain or United Stated and you must know which word you have to use in each place.

See the difference with this image, the same word, but different food!

By María José Gómez 

SWEET ANDROID OPERATING SYSTEMS

Now I'm going to talk a bit about Technology.
I have decided to explain something about Android, partly because it classifies its versions with names of food, and partly because I like Android.
I guess you all know that Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, but do you know the difference, for example, between Android and iPhone iOS? If you don't I will try to explain it to you in an easy way.

The iPhone operating system is iOS (derived from Mac OS) and it is a closed-source software, that is, the main written piece of programming, also known as the source code, is held by the developer, and only they can make any changes or study it. It limits the availability of the source code, and the end-user is not actually purchasing software, but purchasing the right to use the software.

On the other hand, Android's operating system (a fork of the Linux Kernel) is a free and open-source software, that is, the source code is available to the end-user. Users can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. They have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1).
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

Free software takes into account the ethic and philosophical aspects of freedom, making a special emphasis on software moral aspects. Sharing the code is a source to achieve the main goal, and doing this you can give the community a chance to benefit from your changes. It is a system of cooperation. Also you don't have to ask for permission to do all those things, for it is free (you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer", because this can be a problem for understanding due to the ambiguity of this word in the English language). Another important thing is that "free software" does not mean "noncommercial". It is a matter of freedom, not a matter of money. You may obtain it for free or paying, and distribute it for free or charging a fee for distribution. But it has a low price, which is an advantage for users to get it and work with it.

Those are some of the reasons why I like Android. It is a system which is always improving, and one can see that through its different versions, each of them developed under a code name based on a dessert item, (based on different versions of Linux kernel) released in alphabetic order, and each one including several new features.
Google stuff want to make us green with envy with those sweet dessert names, and only the fact of thinking of Android versions whet our appetite!

The sweet versions of Android are the following:

Cupcake: to sweeten the first version born in 2009, it received the name of a delicious dessert, who doesn't like cupcakes? I would have got this version of Android simply because of the name! But I bet it deserved to be called like that! The reason they chose that name is supposed to be only a kind of joke, to make it funnier. But if you are curious I will tell you that cupcake is only a piece of cake, the size of an individual portion, (that is why it is called "cup" and "cake"), and some time later, using a different tin it would become a muffin.

Donut: This second version born 5 months later included several improvements, like "text to speech", which allowed any Android application to "speak" a string of text, or the organization in categories of Android Market apps. It also fixed reboot errors in the OS and improved some photo and video features. But just because of the name, Android fans would have updated this version called like the most popular breakfast in US. Again, if you want to know something else about donuts (or “doughnuts”, the more traditional spelling), it is said that they were introduced into North America by Dutch settlers, when they founded New Amsterdam (the actual New York) in the XVI century. It was changing through time and finally it got its hole as the way it is known now.

Eclair: it came out at the end of 2009, and included some new improvements, like in the browser or in the virtual keyboard and in Google Maps and the calendar. It has also a delicious dessert name of French origin, and it is speculated to be first made by Antonin Carême, the famous French chef. They are usually made with choux pastry, filled with cream and glazed with chocolate.
Here you have a video of the delivery of a huge eclair outside the Google Campus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwENZ388XY&feature=related

Froyo: It meant a great advance in the operating system at the end of 2010. It improved speed and browser support among other things. Its name is an acronym, that is, it is made combining the initial letters or parts of a series of words, in this case, the first syllable of "frozen" and the first syllable of "yogurt", becoming a pronounceable name. It is a frozen dessert containing yogurt, and was introduced in New England in the 1970s, called "Danny" debuted from Dannon, (the actual "Danone") It tasted like raspberry and it was healthier than ice cream, and lower in fat, but it began to be made with more sugar due to consumers complains about its tart taste.

Gingerbread: This version was also a good one, including improvements on copy and paste functions, facial recognizement and interconnection with social networks. Gingerbread is much known due to the popular fairy tale about a cookie's escape from pursuers and who is eaten by a fox. Being also one of the most popular Christmas desserts in US, the gingerbread man has been used as the item for this version.

Honeycomb: In 2011 we had a portion of honeycomb, with important changes and more different to previous versions, user's interface refinements and more striking animations appeared, created specially for tablets. This dessert consists of honey-flavored corn cereal bits in a honeycomb shape. What can be sweeter than a honeycomb dessert? Knowing the fact that honey is made by bees using nectar from flowers, it must taste delicious!

Ice Cream Sandwich: A mixture of Honeycomb tablet, Froyo and Gingerbread smartphone software to make a delicious Ice Cream Sandwich. This is the last version of Android, which is, of course, an improved version, with a completely different UI, brigther colours, a more futurist aspect and many other improvements on the interface, adapted for both tablets and smartphones, becoming a link between the two. This last version deserved the name of a nice dessert, like it is the case of this frozen confection composed of a layer of ice cream, usually vanilla, "sandwiched" between two chocolate cookies, usually rectangular in shape, which can catch anyone's eye.

I can't wait to see the next version and know its name. It will start with "J", what dessert are you thinking about?

I hope you have liked this post, and now you are allowed to go and get some food, because I bet you have become angry after reading this!




P.S.: Here I also leave you a video about Linux, a very interesting one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrCsq2yPjfU


By Clara Jiménez García