更新日期：2012-12-31浏览次数：971次所属教程：
听力原文
In the UK, we throw away more than 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year. At least half of that food is perfectlyedible. One reason for this is a problem withportions – we keep on cooking more than we can eat. And most people just scrape their plates into the bin at the end of the meal.
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| Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson recommended goose fat |
Our ancestors didn’t have enough money to waste it discarding perfectly good food. They were thrifty and knew how to cook up something from odds and ends of food the next day. And the UK’s Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, wants us to learn some of those old skills again.
He criticises celebrity chefs, saying, “Cookbooks in the 1970s and 1980s always had chapters on using up scraps and leftovers. But this stopped in the 1990s.” And if the media is part of the problem, maybe the media can be part of the answer. Mr Paterson wants celebrity chefs, like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, to give us more recipes using leftover food.
Celebrity chefs are very influential in the UK. Shops frequently sell out of ingredients they use in their recipes. When Nigella Lawson praised goose fat for making roast potatoes,sales soared. And veteran cook Delia Smith has boosted sales of so many different ingredients over the years, the ‘Delia effect’ is now in the dictionary.
There are some traditional British recipes using leftovers. ‘Bubble and squeak’ is fried up leftover vegetables from the Sunday roast dinner. Bread and butter pudding is traditionally a good use for stale bread.
But modern British lifestyles and left-overs don’t go well together. We hear about food safety, and are scared to use food past its best. Once, people could buy food as they needed it. But in the last 50 years, small local shops have closed, and people do a whole week’s shopping at the supermarket. It’s hard to plan your menu a week in advance, which leads to waste. So it seems it will take more than TV chefs to persuade Britons to love leftovers.
Glossary 词汇表
edible 可食用的
portions 份量
scrape their plates 把盘子刮净
bin 垃圾桶
discarding 扔掉
thrifty 节约的
cook up something (盛饭)再做
odds and ends 零零碎碎的剩饭
scraps 残羹剩饭
leftovers 残羹剩饭
celebrity chefs 名厨
recipes 菜谱
sell out of 一售而空
ingredients 佐料，成份
goose fat 鹅油
sales soared 销售直线上升
veteran cook 老厨师
boosted sales 促进销售
stale bread 陈旧面包
lifestyles生活方式
don’t go well together 不匹配
past its best过期
menu 菜单