Hi, this is English Teacher Fred. I’m just finishing up a great meal. Just a minute. Excuse me. Oh wow; my wife is the best cook in the world! See? Here’s my empty bowl.

I love Vietnamese food! I love Asian food. I’m American; I live in Vietnam and one reason I love to live in Asia is because I love Asian food. I can eat rice every day. If I don’t eat rice every day, I feel like I haven’t eaten, you know?

Bread, wheat- I like to eat sometimes, maybe once or twice a week. But I love Asian food every day: rice, vegetables, fish, meat… It’s the best.

How about you? What kind of food do you like? Another really great thing here in Vietnam is here- my glass is nearly finished; the ice is all gone. But coffee: oh wow! Coffee in Vietnam is really good! Really delicious, especially if you like strong coffee. They really make it strong here and it’s very delicious.

Coffee is a strong flavor, as opposed to, for example, tea would be a weak flavor. It’s difficult to describe but you can imagine strong and weak for flavors. Coffee is strong; tea is weak.

Let’s talk about five flavors. There are five flavors- what are they? How about coffee? Coffee is bitter. It’s bitter: b-i-t-t-e-r. Coffee is bitter so you add sugar to it. Also chocolate is bitter. Coffee, chocolate; here in Vietnam they have a bitter melon that’s also bitter.

Another flavor is sour. A lemon is sour. It makes you pucker your lips. It’s sour- s-o-u-r: sour. That’s number two.

Number three is sweet. Sugar is sweet. Candy is sweet. Sweet: s-w-e-e-t.

So we have bitter, sour, sweet; and another one is salty. Salt tastes salty: s-a-l-t-y. British people like to say “savory”. British: savory; American: salty. But they have the same meaning.

And one more, the last one, number five is… What is it? Let’s see, we’ve got bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and one more would be spicy like chili. Hot chili. Do you like spicy food? Chili is spelled c-h-i-l-i. Chili is hot: ooh, hot- spicy!

What kind of food do you like? Do you like Asian food? American food? I’m American but I don’t like American food. Sometimes a nice hamburger if it’s good-quality, I like it, you know, sometimes. But not every day. Not hamburger, pizza, french fries every day- no thank you. When I have a hamburger I want a good one, you know? I don’t really like the ordinary cheap fast-food hamburger. No, thank you! I love Asia; I love Asian food.

How about you? What kind of food do you like? I just felt like talking about food for a few minutes, okay? This is English Teacher Fred here in my online classroom in Vietnam. I’ve been teaching English in Vietnam since 2001. Come by my website! It’s called EnglishTeacherFred.com.