Why you should watch Food and Health Videos at videojug.com

What makes this site so useful for learners of English is that there are not only tons of short, educational (and often entertaining) videos on how to do and make all kinds of things, but also a handy list of "things you will need" and a set of written instructions as well.  You can hear how the words are pronounced and are more likely to remember them because you see/hear them being used in context. Definitely a smart way to improve your vocabulary while learning some useful things.

Here are two of the topics we are covering this semester:

• FOOD
• how-to-make-american-apple-pie
• Listen and jot down some useful vocabulary. Or simply follow the recipe and make the world a better place :)

• healthy-eating

• HEALTH
• how-to-give-a-chinese-massage#
• Try it out on a friend. I'm sure they'll appreciate it!

Vocabulary: Food and Kitchen

Two colorful ideas for improving your food vocabulary

●       Little Explorers (Enchanted Learning)

How many of these simple FOOD words do you already know and which ones are new for you?

●       Picture dictionary (very thorough!)

Don’t worry. You don’t have to know every single word here, but the more you know the easier it will be to talk and write about this topic.

How to quickly become familiar with the words needed to write and talk about food

1. Go to simplyrecipes.com/index/ look at the alphabetized list ingredients. 
2. Click on the yummy words!

WARNING!  Do not do this if you are hungry and have no food in the fridge!

As American as apple pie: Typical American food

As American as apple pie

Have you ever heard this expression? Is it really so prototypical? What is the equivalent in your language that compares a country to a food item?

Every once in a while Hofer here in Graz will sell what they think is American food. What do they sell? And does anyone ever actually buy those hamburger buns?!

After perusing the index of a book called American Dish : 100 Recipes from Ten Delicious Decades, by Merrill Shindler,  I typed up some of the food items on the list that I remember from my boyhood in the States. If any of you have been across the pond, please add a comment telling us what you actually bought and ate over there that you wish was sold here.

Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

Barbeque

Birdseye Frozen Foods

Brownies

Buffalo Chicken Wings

Caesar Salad

Campbell’s Soup

Cheerios

Cheese Whiz

Chocolate Chip /Toll House Cookies

Chop Suey

Chow Mein

Club Sandwich

Coca-Cola

Cocktails

Corn dog

Dagwood sandwich

Decaffeinated coffee

Dressings  (Ranch, Russian, Thousand Islands, Blue Cheese)

English Muffins

Fish sticks

Fortune cookie

Fritos

Granola

Häagen-Dazs

Heinz  Ketchup

Hershey bar

Hot dog

Iced tea

Instant Coffee

Jell-O

Kellogg’s Cornflakes

Life Savers

M&Ms

Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese

Meatloaf

Miller Lite

Minute Rice

Oreo

Peanut Butter

Pop-Tarts

Pringles

Reddi-Whip

Reuben Sandwich

Rye bread

Spam

Tropicana

Tuna Noodle Casserole

TV Dinner

Velveeta

Weight Watchers

Source: adapted from "American Dish" : 100 Recipes from Ten Delicious Decades, by Merrill Shindler  You can read a few pages at amazon and get two recipes that will make your mouth water, especially if  you have a sweet tooth.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1883318106/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

So what does a successful Food Magazine article look like?

Wow! We sure have a lot of articles now in our Food Magazine! Over 170!

The quality varies of course, but we can learn from the ones that past students have written.

The ones below are all about food culture in the United States.

TASK: 

Read all 5 titles and then decide which one you would click on if you only had time to read TWO articles. Explain your choices.

As you read the articles, think about just what it is that makes them successful. Make a few notes of any ideas that might help you write a successful article yourself. One that stands out. One that people will really enjoy reading. One that people will finish and say "More, please!"

• Sophie’s American Pies
• David’s Scandinavian Influence in Minnesota's cuisine
• Julia’s Let me go to prison, I want good food
• Josepha’s School lunch - Is all hope lost?
• Sarah’s For the love of the South - A tribute to the Southern cuisine

Successful Irish Food magazine articles

In no particular order, here are some of the articles that I liked for various reasons.  While they are certainly not all perfect, there are aspects of each that I quite like.  What about you?  Which of the articles below do you like best and why?  Are there any that you don't like much?  If so, why?

• The Irish Tea Debate: Barry's or Lyons?
• Simple, Easy to Prepare and Fresh Every Day: Soda Bread
• What the Irish really eat (By taking an Irish family as an example)
• Are craft beers taking over Ireland?
• Debunking the myth of alcohol as a common ingredient in Irish dishes
• Ireland – The “Green Tiger”
• The traditional Irish breakfast?!
• Irish-Austrian Breadventures
• Popular Irish food bloggers
• Forget Murphy's law, here comes Murphy's Ice Cream
• Around the world at dinner time!
• The cross-border shopping madness of the Irish by Sabine Pajic
• Irish Stew by Dominik Berger

Inspiration

One thing we learned both from discussing blogging with you and from reading your blogs is that you sometimes have problems coming up with topics to blog about.  For this reason, we have created an inspiration tag on this blog, which we will use every time we are posting about topics that might inspire you to blog.  Anytime you're stuck for an idea, click on the inspiration label to the right and read through the posts for topics you could write about.
Our very first piece of inspiration is coming at you right now.  Ready?  This piece by blogger and author Molly Greene lists 101 Fabulous Blog Topic Ideas.  It's one of the best lists I've come across, and I really think there's something for everyone on there.  Which category do you think you'd be most interested in using ideas from?

Feedback on SUK1 WS14 blogs

What made the successful posts successful?

• personal topics -- If, for example, you write a book review, tell us about YOUR experience of reading the book.  If you write about giraffes, don't tell me how tall they grow to be - I can find that on Wikipedia - tell me about your experience of seeing giraffes on a safari.  Your reader is interested in YOUR thoughts, experiences and ideas, not in a rewritten version of an article they could read elsewhere.
• new information --We're all here because we love learning.  :)  Tell us about something you know but that we may not yet be familiar with.
• well-written
• honest
• humour
• carefully-chosen pictures and videos
• links to further information
• correctly labelled posts - With our new course blog, make sure that you not only use the labels we have requested you use, but also label your posts with key words from your post so that others with the same interest can easily find it.  There is no limit to the number of labels (tags) you can use.

Here are a couple of things that drove us crazy:

• posts that were not spellchecked
• posts that were clearly not original
• posts that were Wikipedia-like/encyclopedic
• posts that were an extremely long brain dump