- 西柚不是西游
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Blackberry Jam 黑莓酱的故事
By Donna Teller 堂娜•特勒
"....and the weekend promises sunshine and southerly breezes. Make the most of it!"
“……周末预计会阳光明媚,并刮起徐徐的南风。 尽情享受吧。”
The weatherman"s cheery voice came from the TV, precariously perched on a pile of books, the only way she"d yet found for its cable to reach the socket. Piles of books, papers, magazines had always been a feature of Maggie"s lived-in kitchen and they had grown in the dark days since January. But recent weeks had found her more able to cope with her situation and a measure of organization had returned to her life.
气象员愉悦的播报声从电视机中传来,只见这台电视放在一堆书上,摇摇欲坠,这样放是因为唯有如此她才能将电视插销接到插座上。玛吉的厨房就没有闲置过,它有一个特色,那就是永远堆满了成叠的书、报纸和杂志,而从一月开始,这些东西在那些暗无天光的日子里越积越多。可最近几个礼拜,她可以更好地适应自己的处境了,生活又恢复了一些条理。
But, like the TV, it was a delicate balance. To the outside world, she seemed cool and collected; inside she felt deeply vulnerable. Strategies had been adopted for coping, new routines found, places that would stir painful memories strictly avoided.
不过,就像放电视机一样,这是一种微妙的平衡。在别人看来,她似乎是淡漠而又镇静的;可内心当中,她却感到极其脆弱。她想方设法来适应,培养了一些新习惯,对那些引发伤感回忆的地方是坚决避而不去的。
However, this was a small town and some places could not be ignored. Like the moor which looked down on her every time she opened her front door. Over the years, she and Mike had spent many hours walking on it, marking the changing seasons, content in each other"s company.
可是,这是一个小镇,有些地方是回避不了的。就好比她每次打开前门都会看到高耸的高沼地。很多年来,她和迈克一年四季都会在高沼地上花上很多时间来散步,两个人相互陪伴很是惬意。
Late summer had always been a busy time as they followed in the footsteps of countless couples before them and gathered in the harvest for jam.
昔日的晚夏时节总是一个忙碌的季节,他们会跟随着无数夫妇的脚步,在丰收来临之时前去采摘,为制作果酱做准备。
The forecast helped Maggie to make up her mind. Despite misgivings, the attraction of the moor in the late summer sun was too strong. It had to be faced one day on her own; it was too beautiful to stay away forever. The time had come to lay this ghost to rest and picking a few berries would keep her mind occupied. Decision made, Maggie turned off the TV and went to help with homework.
天气预报帮玛吉下定了决心。尽管有顾虑,但在晚夏阳光的照耀下,高沼地的诱惑太大了。早晚有一天她需要独自面对;那儿太美了,不可能永远将其置于身外。是时候来做个了断了,而且采摘浆果可以使她忘却一切。下定了决心的玛吉关上电视,辅导孩子做功课去了。
Saturday dawned bright and clear. Resisting the desire to turn back, Maggie drove along the familiar lanes that lead to the parking bay at the foot of the hill. The walk to the top seemed longer, steeper. She was out of breath, her legs ached and her heart pounded.
星期六的黎明,天空晴朗而又明亮。抑制住返回去的冲动,玛吉开着车,沿着熟悉的小路一直行驶到山脚的停车场。通向山顶的路似乎变得更长、更陡。她上气不接下气,腿部作痛,心砰砰直跳。
But at last the path emerged from the trees and stretched away in the sun. On either side, the brambles clambered over heather and gorse, laden with clusters of fruit, ripe for picking; a riot of black and green, purple and yellow.
但是,路终于从树林中显露出来,笔直向前,直至消失在阳光中。路的两边,树莓攀附在石南花和金雀花之上,挂满了串串果实,果子已经熟透,就待采摘了;黑色和绿色,紫色和黄色,编织成一片缤纷色彩。
She need not have worried. The moor seemed to welcome her back like a long-lost friend and her spirits rose. Taking a deep breath of the clear air, Maggie deftly took a bag from her pocket and started to pick, stopping every now and then to straighten her back and enjoy the familiar view. With stained fingers and scratched hands to show for her efforts, the bag slowly filled with the dark, plump fruit.
她本不需要担心的。高沼地似乎就像对待一位久未谋面的老朋友一样欢迎她的归来,而她的情绪也高涨起来。玛吉先是在清新的空气中深深地吸了一口气,然后熟练地从口袋里掏出一个袋子,开始采摘,她时不时地会停一下,挺挺腰,欣赏一番这熟悉的景致。她的努力有了结果——手指变得污迹斑斑、双手出现了划痕,而袋子也渐渐放满了这种色黑肉厚的果子。
Horse riders and walkers exchanged greetings as they passed. After a while, a solitary figure appeared on the path behind her, pausing and stooping occasionally, yet catching up quickly.
骑马者和路人在相遇后互致着问候。过了一会儿,一个孤单的身影出现在她身后的小道上,时而驻足,时而弯腰,可是又总能快速地跟上来。
"Do you want to add these, then?"
“那你还想要这些吗?”
The voice startled her, quieter than before but unmistakable. She hardly felt the pain of the brambles tearing into her hand as she jerked upright.
这个声音吓了她一跳,虽然声音比原来更加轻柔,但肯定是那个声音。当她猛地站起来,她几乎都没感到树莓勒疼了她的手。
"What on earth are you doing here?"
“你在这里到底要干什么?”
"Thought I"d find you here, first weekend in September. Do you want these?" He ④held out a handful of berries, then tipped them into her bag. "Perfect day - are there any bilberries?"
“我想,在9月的第一个周末,我能在这里找到你。你想要这些吗?”他拿出一把浆果,然后把它们倒入了她的袋子里。“美好的一天啊……这儿有越桔吗?”
How could he be so calm, so casual, when anger was welling up inside her? She wanted to rage at him for spoiling her perfect day, but the words in her head wouldn"t come out.
"I - I haven"t looked."
“我……我还没找呢。”
"Let me have a bag, I"ll go see." Mike made his way across the heather to the dense, low-lying bushes and started to move the leaves aside to seek out the hidden fruit.
“给我一个袋子吧。我去找找。”迈克跨过石南花,朝浓密低矮的灌木丛走去,开始拨开树叶寻找隐藏的果实。
- tt白
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Dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food but sometimes of a strongly-flavored one, such as some cheeses. The word comes from the Old French desservir, "to clear the table." Some common desserts are cakes, cookies, fruits, and candies.
The word dessert is most commonly used for this course in U.S., Canada, Australia, and Ireland, while sweet, pudding or afters would be more typical terms in the UK and some other Commonwealth countries. According to Debrett"s, pudding is the proper term, dessert is only to be used if the course consists of fruit, and sweet is colloquial.
Although the custom of eating fruits and nuts after a meal may be very old, dessert as a standard part of a Western meal is a relatively recent development. Before the rise of the middle class in the 19th-century, and the mechanization of the sugar industry, sweets were a privilege of the aristocracy, or a rare holiday treat. As sugar became cheaper and more readily available, the development and popularity of desserts spread accordingly.
Some have a separate final sweet course but mix sweet and savoury dishes throughout the meal as in Chinese cuisine, or reserve elaborate dessert concoctions for special occasions. Often, the dessert is seen as a separate meal or snack rather than a course, and may be eaten apart from the meal (usually in less formal settings). Some restaurants specialize in dessert. In colloquial American usage "dessert" has a broader meaning and can refer to anything sweet that follows a meal, including milkshakes and other beverages.
One of the earliest known sweet foods is honey
A cake is a form of food that is usually sweet and often baked. Cakes normally combine some kind of flour, a sweetening agent (commonly sugar), a binding agent (generally egg, though gluten or starch are often used by vegetarians and vegans), fats (usually butter or margarine, although a fruit puree can be substituted to avoid using fat), a liquid (milk, water or fruit juice), flavors and some form of leavening agent (such as yeast or baking powder).
Cake is often the dessert of choice for meals at ceremonial occasions, particularly weddings, anniversaries and birthdays. There are literally thousands of cakes recipes (some are bread-like and some rich and elaborate) and many are centuries old. Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure; Baking utensils and directions have been so perfected and simplified that even the amateur cook may easily become an expert baker. There are five basic types of cake, depending on the substance used for leavening.
In the United States and Canada, a cookie is a small, flat baked pastry. In most English-speaking countries outside North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have different meanings—a cookie is a bun in Scotland, while in North America a biscuit is a kind of quick bread.
Contents [hide]
1 Origin
2 Etymology
3 Description
4 Classification of cookies
5 Biscuits (cookies) in the United Kingdom
6 See also
7 Notes
Origin
The earliest cookie-style cakes are thought to date back to 7th century Persia A.D. (now Iran), one of the first countries to cultivate sugar (luxurious cakes and pastries in large and small versions were well known in the Persian empire). According to historians, sugar originated either in the lowlands of Bengal or elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Sugar spread to Persia and then to the Eastern Mediterranean. With the Muslim invasion of Spain, then the Crusades and the developing spice trade, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe.[1]
Etymology
Its name derives from the Dutch word koekje which means little cake, and arrived in the English language through the Dutch in North America. It spread from American English to British English where biscuit is still the more general term.
Description
Cookies can be baked until crisp or just long enough that they remain soft. Depending on the type of cookie, some cookies are not cooked at all. Cookies are made in a wide variety of styles, using an array of ingredients including sugars, spices, chocolate, butter, peanut butter, nuts or dried fruits. The softness of the cookie may depend on how long it is baked.
A general theory of cookies may be formulated this way. Despite their descent from cakes and other sweetened breads, the cookie in almost all its forms has abandoned water as a medium for cohesion. Water in cakes serves to make the base (in the case of cakes called "batter"[2]) as thin as possible, which allows the bubbles – responsible for a cake"s fluffiness – to form better. In the cookie, the agent of cohesion has become some variation of the theme of oil. Oils, be they in the form of butter, egg yolks, vegetable oils or lard are much more viscous than water and evaporate freely at a much higher temperature than water. Thus a cake made with butter or eggs instead of water is far denser after removal from the oven.
Oils in baked cakes do not behave as water in the finished product. Rather than evaporating and thickening the mixture, they remain, saturating the bubbles of escaped gasses from what little water there might have been in the eggs, if added, and the carbon dioxide released by heating the baking powder. This saturation produces the most texturally attractive feature of the cookie, and indeed all fried foods: crispness saturated with a moisture (namely oil) that does not sink into it.
Classification of cookies
Eight types of cookiesCookies are broadly classified according to how they are formed, including at least these categories:
Drop cookies are made from a relatively soft dough that is dropped by spoonfuls onto the baking sheet. During baking, the mounds of dough spread and flatten. Chocolate chip cookies are an example of drop cookies.
Refrigerator cookies are made from a stiff dough that is refrigerated to become even stiffer. The dough is typically shaped into cylinders which are sliced into round cookies before baking.
Molded cookies are also made from a stiffer dough that is molded into balls or cookie shapes by hand before baking. Snickerdoodles are an example of molded cookies.
Rolled cookies are made from a stiffer dough that is rolled out and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. Gingerbread men are an example.
Pressed cookies are made from a soft dough that is extruded from a cookie press into various decorative shapes before baking. Spritzgebäck are an example of a pressed cookie.
Bar cookies consist of batter or other ingredients that are poured or pressed into a pan (sometimes in multiple layers), and cut into cookie-sized pieces after baking. Brownies are an example of a batter-type bar cookie, while Rice Krispie treats are a bar cookie that doesn"t require baking, perhaps similar to a cereal bar. In British English, bar cookies are known as "tray bakes".
Six types of cookiesFried cookies including traditional cookies such as the zeppole as well as a newer American trend of deep-frying ordinary drop cookie dough.
Commercially-produced cookies include many varieties of sandwich cookies filled with marshmallow, jam, or icing, as well as cookies covered with chocolate which may more closely resemble a type of confectionery.
Biscuits (cookies) in the United Kingdom
A basic biscuit (cookie) recipe includes flour, shortening (often lard), baking powder or soda, milk (buttermilk or sweet milk) and sugar. Common savoury variations involve substituting sugar with an ingredient such as cheese or other dairy products. Note that this is not the only type of cookie in England. In the UK the term cookie often just refers to chocolate chip cookies or a variation
- 小教板
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Are you ready for you dessert now?
看到你用完了正餐,服务生会问你“您准备用甜点了吗?” 如果你是一名服务生该如何问客人呢?你可用以下句型:
Good Evening. May I help you?
Here"s the menu.
Would you like a drink first?
May I have your order now?
Would you like to order now?
May I serve the dessert now?
Would you like to have seconds?
菜上齐后,常常需要对客人说:
Enjoy you meal.
Have a good evening.
Have a good time.
如果你是食客,要求服务生来提供服务,如同我们麻烦其他任何人一样,语言通常都该非常客气,应用到的大部分都是我们前面章节中有关礼貌用语的各种句型:
A table for two, please.
We"d like to order now please.
Would you please pass me the salt?
Would you pass us another menu?
What kind of dessert do you serve here?
What kind of vegetables do you have here?