I love to cook on my barbecue (also be spelled “barbeque” or abbreviated “BBQ”) grill in the back of my house.

Here’s a photo of me getting ready go cook some hamburgers (and don’t worry, I cook them before I eat them!).

Since summertime is the part of the year when many Americans cook their food on a BBQ grill, I thought I’d share a short excerpt (small section of a book or written text) from our Daily English #829 lesson related to a few common terms used to talk about barbecues. (This lesson, plus 1,800+ more, is included in our Unlimited English membership.)

In this section, I’m talking about a conversation between two people (named George and Sophia) at a BBQ.

Enjoy!

George says, “The meat won’t taste very good if I don’t baste it with my special sauce each time I flip it.”

“To baste” means to use a small tool that looks often like a brush to put the sauce on.

Sauce is a heavy or thick liquid, over the food so that it doesn’t become too dry.

George needs to “baste” the meat with his special sauce each time he “flips it.”

“To flip” here means to turn something over. So, if you’re cooking a hamburger, you cook one side, and then you flip it over, you turn it over, and cook the other side.

Sometimes, jokingly, we talk about people who work in hamburger restaurants like McDonald’s as “flipping burgers.” The term is also used to describe a job that doesn’t pay very well and is probably not very interesting.

Sophia says, “Okay, how about if I get the corn on the cob ready for grilling?”

“Corn on the cob” is corn, the vegetable, that comes still attached to the hard inedible – what you don’t eat – part of the plant. You take the outside of the corn off – what we call the “husk” – and you’re left with the “corn on the cob.”

The “cob” is the middle part of the plant, the hard part that you don’t eat.

“Grilling,” you probably know, means to cook something on top of this metal device called a “grill,” and is usually done outside.

Okay, now I have to go finish my cooking!

~Jeff

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How do Americans use their middle names? It seems like an easy question, but it can get a little confusing.

I explained some of the rules in our Unlimited English lesson, Cultural English #457. (All of our Cultural English lessons include questions and answers about important expressions, idioms, and phrasal verbs in English.)

You can read the transcript below and listen to the audio file here:

“Our second question comes from Gary in China. Gary is confused about English names.

Well, many people are confused about English names, Gary, so don’t feel bad! He gives the example of a famous English author, Beatrix Potter. Her full name is Helen Beatrix Potter.

He wants to know if we should be calling her Helen Potter, or Beatrix Potter, or maybe her real name is  . . . Harry Potter? (No. I don’t think so!)

Well, the question has to do more generally with middle names and when they are used as first names.

Many Americans – maybe most Americans, I’m not sure – have a middle name, and that middle name goes on their official legal documents. My middle name is Lawrence; my full name is Jeffrey Lawrence McQuillan.

Now, some people don’t like their first name, and they may decide to use their middle name as their first name. Now, legally their name doesn’t change, typically, but in terms of how they like to be known at school or at their work can really depend on the name that the person decides to use.

Here in the land of Hollywood, a lot of actors and actresses change their names, and sometimes they decide to use their middle name as their first name.

You may have heard of someone called Brad Pitt. Well Brad Pitt’s real name is William Bradley Pitt. Brad is a short form of the name Bradley. He uses his middle name.

You may also know Jose Antonio Dominguez Banderas, but he really goes by the name Antonio Banderas.

And there is another actor, not my favorite, by the name of Ashton Kutcher. His real name is Christopher Ashton Kutcher, but he decided to drop the first name and just use his middle name as his first name!

There’s really no logic to this. It just depends on the person and whether he or she likes his or her first name. Some people use their first name, but just the initial.

So, instead of calling me Jeffrey Lawrence McQuillan, you could call me J. Lawrence McQuillan, or J-Law.”

Want more of these cool explanations? Become an Unlimited English Member here. We have more than 500 Cultural English lessons, each about 30 minutes each.

That’s more than 250 hours of English explanations! Plus you get more than 400 hours of Daily English lessons, too.

Give it a try here.

~Jeff