Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

INTERVIEWER:
Do you cook Guyanese?
WOMAN:
Yeah, mostly, yeah. . . . We are, we are, uh, in fact, 
sometimes we even call Guyana West Indian, I guess 
because of the British, um, infl uence. We speak English; 
we consider ourselves part of the West Indian culture, 
and that’s what I cook mostly. In fact, that’s what I, that’s 
what we cook, West Indian food, mostly.
INTERVIEWER:
So what-what are the main dishes that you 
cook?
WOMAN:
Well, we have a thing called 
pelau
, which is rice 
and chicken and pigeon peas. Uh, you-you cook that all 
up together and-and that’s a main meal—you just have 
that with a salad.

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INTERVIEWER:
Uh-huh.
WOMAN:
Th
en we have a Guyanese meal that you call pep-
per pot, which is all diff erent kinds of meat together and 
you put in it something that we call 
cassareep
, which is, 
um, the, you-you put the cassava out to dry and then you 
squeeze it.
INTERVIEWER:
Uh-hmm.
WOMAN:
Uh, and they make, the juice of that is called 
cas-
sareep
, if you leave it to ferment for a—I’m not sure how 
long but for a while—and that’s what you use, and you 
put that in it and it, and it turns brown so it’s a very, very 
brown meat, and you eat that with white rice or what-
ever. And, of course, you must have your fried plantains, 
ripe plantains, you must have fried ripe plantains. And 
curry is another one of our-our, um, our-our dishes, um, 
and you eat that with either rice or with, uh, something 
that we call 
roti
, which looks like a, something like a pita 
bread, but just-just a little diff erent but just like a pita 
bread.
7. FOOD PHASES
WOMAN:
In general? Um, I’m not very picky with food. I 
basically like everything. Um, I’m not a big meat eater 
but, uh, other than that, I eat pretty much everything. 
I, uh, I go through phases. Sometimes I-I’m into Italian 
food, and then I go through a phase when I’m really like 
into Th
ai food or—I like Asian cuisine a lot. And I also 
like, like the Southwest food, like, um, Austin is a great 
place for food, um, because they have that 
Tex-Mex
food, 
but it’s very good. Th
ey have just wonderful, wonderful 
Mexican restaurants in Austin. And I also like, like, uh, 
I lived in Arizona for a few years when I went in gra—, 

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