Who taught: Teresa

A cook holding a cooker (source : http://vspages.com/)

Do you cook? I personally do not really cook much other than ramen noodles. I am a way better cook than Jessy when it comes to ramen noodle soups. Speaking of cook, one of the questions I used to have on my English exam when I was a middle school student was the difference between cook and cooker.

Cook can be a verb as well as a noun. We all know what it means as a verb. As a noun, it means a person who prepares or cooks food. What is cooker? A cooker is an appliance used for cooking food. It sounds like I am preaching to the choir. You would be like… “Hey Terry! I know what they means. What’s the point? Do you think I did not pass my middle school English?”

Let me tell you this! I have a friend who has been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years (And, she got a bachelor’s degree.) and she still use “cooker” instead of “cook” to mean a person who prepares food. My guess is that she would distinguish them correctly when she writes but when she speaks she just do not have enough time to find the proper word. So, do not assume that you will be able to find correct words while you are speaking just because you know words. Knowing is totally different from speaking. To be able to speak with a good speed, you gotta speak aloud and think aloud in English as much as you can. Please, do it! Don’t just think that you want to do it! You gotta do practice English.

Well, I got sidetracked. The reason why I brought cooking stuff up is because of this expression I heard from the Mentalist, a CBS TV show that I enjoy watching.

Teresa who is a detective on the show said, “Let’s not interrogate now. Just let him stew for a while,” after she caught a suspect. As I heard her saying, I thought, “Hmm… Interesting! Stew? He is not cooking. It sounds like let him think but there gotta be more than that.”

So, I looked it up and apparently there was more. It is not just simply thinking. It means that let a person to think about something bad that has happened or something stupid he/she has done.

When is the best time to use this expression? I think if your children did something bad or stupid, then you can let them stew instead of helping them out to fix the issue. Sometimes, it is better to let people stew so that they can learn from their mistakes. Who am I talking? I think I should let me stew on stupid things that I have done so far. Maybe, we should all have some time to let all of us stew.