Category Archives: From shopping

There are some expressions that you will hear so many times when you go shopping (grocery, clothing, electronics, car, etc.) Also there are very useful things you wish you would know such as name of the vegetables, etc.

17 Oct

one pound burger and slider

1 pound burger (source: sports.webshots.com)

This afternoon, Jessy and I went to a restaurant, called Fuddruckers, with friends for lunch. They are specialized in hamburgers, claiming that they serve world’s greatest hamburgers. One thing I noticed was that it is possible to order different sizes of hamburgers. You know what is the biggest size they have? It is one pound. I will get back to you about how big one pound hamburger is. Instead, let me talk about pound again! If you go to a grocery market in the United States, they sell a lot of stuff, including fruits, meats and cheeses, based on weight. The unit of weight here in the U.S. is pound whereas it is either kg or Geun(근) in Korea. Now… you would expect that they will write like “$10/pound.” In reality, you would have a hard time to find “pound” as a unit of measure written on anything in any of the grocery markets in the U.S. Instead, you will see “lb.” For example, in the fruites section, they would put a sign like, “$2/1 lb” in front of grapes. I was wondering why they use “lb” instead of “pound.” Based on the information on Wikipedia, it is originated from Roman word, libra. The word pound is originated from its Germatic adoption of latin phrase, Libra pondo. So, when it comes to writing, they use “lb” but when it is the time to speak, then they say pound.

Now, how big is the one pound hamburger? It is huge. For your information, 1 pound is 0.45 kg. When Korean people go to a restaurant to have meat together, 2 – 3 people share 1 Geun (0.6 kg), which is around 1.3 pound. But when you talk about 1 pound here, it is only the weight of meat but hamburgers have bread, vegetables and sauce. Combined, it would weigh probably around 1.2 pound. I am not sure how many people can finish that burger. I think my friend Phil can. Phil, can you? Have you tried? Now, on the other hand, there is a very small and tiny burger, originally created by White Castle restaurant chain. It is called, slider. I do not know why they called it slider in the first place but it is really tiny so that you can actually put the whole thing into your mouth and finish. Some of the restaurants here in PA have slider on their menus. So, if you found slider on your menus next time you are in a restaurant in the U.S., you should try it. But please remember to ask them how many of them are going to be in your plate. Chances are your order would include 4-5 sliders which are almost the same as a half pound hamburger.

23 May

Monday! Monday!

Bread and Butter. Yummy!

Tomorrow is Monday. Yay! Haha… I know! I know! You are not really excited about Monday. But, let’s be positive, shall we? It is a new day and you are still alive and have a job to support your family. And, most of all, you are healthy enough to be at work. But don’t forget to have breakfast? There is a study that says skipping breakfast can reduce productivity rate by 50 – 75%. What do you usually eat for breakfast? I usually eat fruit, bread, and egg (sunny side up), of course, with a cup of coffee. I actually am not sure about what other American people eat for breakfast? Pretty sure they drink coffee. Maybe, bagel or soup? What do you have, my friends? Oh, maybe cereal, right?

Before I come to the U.S., I did not like bread a lot and always ate rice with soup every morning. But, now that I am here in the U.S., I do not eat rice as much as I used to eat. Instead, I eat bunch of different types of bread. Maybe, on average, I would have bread two times a day. You know, like bagel, peanut butter jelly, sandwich, sub, burger and pizza. Well, you name it. There are so many foods in which you can find bread. Now, no wonder why there is an expression, “breadwinner”? You might be able to infer the meaning of it from the context. That is right! It means the member of a household who earns all or most of the income. Even though it seems very obvious, I was still very curious about the origin of the expression and I found one very interesting one. It says, “Back in the day, those who did not work participated in contests where the prize was always bread.” Sounds reasonable but not sure this is true or not. What do you think? Well, are you a breadwinner or the breadwinner in your family?

Similar to this, “bread and butter” means basically your main source of income. For example, “tips are the bread and butter for waitresses or waiters in restaurants.” A lot of people from other countries where people do not pay tips have hard time to adjust themselves to this tip system. But, here is the information for you. At the moment, $7.25 per hour is the minimum wage in the U.S. But it is $2.13 for the tipped employees. So, if you do not pay tips to them, basically they cannot make their ends meet. So, please do not feel get ripped by paying tips. In general, percentage of the tips expected to be payed are different during the day. For dinner, it is usually 20% whereas 15-18% would be enough for lunch or brunch.

22 Mar

Potatoes, eggs and cheeses

Where: restaurants.

Moving to foreign countries is hard in so many ways. One of the hardest parts is food. In America, if you go to a restaurant or bar, take a few minutes to look around to see what people are eating. I mean really closely and carefully. Chances are you will see potatoes, cheeses or eggs from almost any table. Or maybe you will see one of them from any person’s menu. So, today, I would like to share some of the scenarios with you so that you can have some ideas what you will go thourgh if you have to order any food in America.

1. Let’s say you order from a brunch place : Many of the menus would have eggs. The followings are the different types of eggs you can order. (scrambled, over-easy, over-hard, sunny-side up) My favourate is sunny-side up. What is yours?

2. Let’s say you order a burger from a bar : They might ask you whether if you like cheese or not. If your answer is yes, then “What kind of cheese do you want?” is the next question you would get. These are the most common cheeses you will see in American bars or restaurants. (American, Swiss, Cheddar and Provolone) Sometimes, I ask the server “What do you have?” to make sure I order one they have at the moment. My favourate is Provolone. What is yours? Oh, they also ask about your meat like “How would you like your berger?” Then it is actually the same thing when you order steaks. (Well done, medium well done, medium, medium rare or rare)

3. And, if you order any main menu in restaurants, there is usually a side. And it is mostly potato. Of course, they will ask you! Now, you should get the pattern! They will ask you like, “What kind of potato would you like?” There are french fries, home style fries, mashed potato or baked potato with sour cream. (Am I missing something?) 

If you order french fries separately as like an appetizer, they might also ask you, “Do you want cheese with it?” Then, if you say “Yes I do”, sometimes, they also ask you, “Do you want it to be on top of the fries or separate?” What? Still did not get it? They will ask you forever!

There is also sweet potato fries!! Yummy!

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen in America if there is no cheese and potato. It will be a chaos.

Oh…. I almost forgot. These days hot (spicy) food is getting famous in the U.S. So, if you go to any of Asian restaurants, they will ask you the spicy level. The question is “How spicy do you want?” It is a scale of 1 to 10. (1 is the mildest and 10 is the hottest!)

I thought about the reason of this continuous questions and selection process for ordering food. I think it is because of the culture and history of the U.S. America is the country of freedom. People love to choose and would like to have the freedom of selection. Let’s suppose that if you go to a restaurant and every menu has fixed ingredients. Thus, if get to pick only a food from the menu! I am pretty sure that restaurant will fail in America. Well, but this is only my opinion. I am curious about your thoughts on this.

03 Mar

ordering subs

Where: sub place like Subway or Quizno’s

Around 4 years ago, here I am at the Carnegie Mellon University, so proud of myself about going to one of the best universities in the world. Well, not really. So, one day, after I finished my morning classes, I was so hungry. I was more than ready for lunch. Looking around South Craig st, I found the Subway store. Well, it looks like it would be really fast and easy to order a sub. So, I went in, there was a long line. What?? How come people are waiting here? What the heck? I decided to line up. Then, I saw many people asking something about their subs. I spoke to myself, “Guys, it is just a sub. What are you asking for? Just get anything they give you.” Here comes my turn. I ordered something like Chicken….. whatever. And the employee started asking me so many questions.

1. Which bread do you want? sometimes, this is even shorter. “wheat or white?”

2. Do you want it to be toasted? or “Toast?”

3.What kind of cheese do you like? Here you need to know the name of the cheese. Oh! I like provolone cheese. But then I know Jake will make fun of my pronunciation of provolone. So, I will go for swiss cheese.

4. What do you want to put into the sub? This is the worst part. You should know all of the names of them. The easiest answer is “Everything!”  Then your sub becomes really thick like stuffed chicken. Can anyone comment about the name of the stuff? Seriously, I cannot remember all of them. Oh I know tomato and lettuce.

5. Then again, what dressing do you want? At this moment, I am like, “dude put anything you like”

Why is it so hard to have just a sub? Give me one! You know what! Now, I am so proud of me because I can order a sub without any issue and even more I can be picky about the stuff I want to have. Am I becoming an American?

02 Mar

do you want room for cream?

Where: coffee shop.

Well, it is kind of lame that I had hard time to understand what the employee is asking to me. But when I went to coffee shop to order a coffee, the employee asked me this question. I had to say, “Sorry??.” In Korea, I did not get this question at all. I think it is because the coffees are served with cream in it. Well I cannot remember exactly now.

So here in America, there is a separate stand where you can find a few different types of creams you can put into your coffee. You will find like “whole milk” or “half and half” on the stand. Then, once you get your coffee, you can put these into your coffee. I think if they do not ask the question to you and you do not ask them to leave a room for cream, they assume that you do not want to put cream in your coffee so that they give you a coffee full of the cup.