Handy Italian words for speaking at dinner in restaurants, and reading menus

Flag of Italy.

The three colours of the Italian flag, green white and orange, are used in a starter in restaurants, called the tricolore meaning the three colours. Green could be vegeble or salad. White could be cheese. Red could be tomato.

 Italian - English

a noi non piace

anatra - duck

bianco - white

carote - carrots

dieta - diet

dopo - after

e - and

ecco - see / look / here you are (giving or showing something)

felici - happy

frutti - fruit

frutti

funghi - mushroom(s) (think of fungus. In English we say mushroom omelette, but you receive more than one mushroom. The Italian uses the plural, ending in i). 

grazie - thank you (think of grateful)

ho bisogno di - I need

incidente - accident

insalata - salad

lei - she

lui vuole - he wants

mi scusi - excuse me

molto - much / very

molto gentili - very kind

nero - black

opzioni - options

pepe - pepper

pesce - fish

(il) petto - breast (eg of chicken, or chest in hospital)

pollo - chicken

prego - (in answer to grazie) you're welcome / not at all

rosso - red

salmone - salmon

segno - sign

(in) segreto - a secret

signore - sir

sono - I am

sono a dieta - I am on a diet

subito - straight away

troppo - too much

tonno - tuna

verde - green

vino - wine

vino bianco - white wine (For wine to drink, or white wine sauce on food. The adjective goes after the noun in Italian, as in casa mia meaning my house)

vitello - veal

vogliamo - we want

vuoi - do you want

English - Italian

accident - incidente

after - dopo

and - e

black - nero

carrots - carote

do you want - vuoi

duck - anatra

excuse me - mi scusi

fish - pesce

green - verde

he wants - lui vuole

I am - sono

I am on a diet - sono a dieta

I need (I have need of) - ho bisogno di 

many - molto

mushroom(s) - funghi

options - opzionni

pepper - pepe

red - rosso

salad - insalata

salmon - salmone

she - lei

sign - segno

sir - signore

straight awa y/ immediately - subito

too much - troppo

tuna - tonno

thank you - grazie

veal - vitello

we want - vogliamo

white - bianco

white wine - vino bianco

wine - vino

You're welcome - prego

Useful Websites

Duolingo

Wikipedia - Italian language

Wiivoyage Italian phrasebook

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Belated Birthday dinner at the Tanglin Club, Singapore

Covid-19 Restaurant Restrictions Eased

The Tanglin Club restaurants in Singapore were closed in early June 2020 because of Covid-19 restrictions. When the restaurants reopened it was only for tables for two. As soon as the previous restrictions were lifted the available bookings were snapped up. We spent ages changing days and trying different times which we didn't want to be sure the restaurants really were fully booked at the popular times and not showing fully booked due to a glitch or the booking site not being updated. 

Time and Space

In the end, we booked for 6.30 although we wanted to eat at 7, reckoning that by the time we ordered drinks it would be getting on for seven. On the night in the large Churchill Room restaurant the tables were widely spaced out and all set for two, very different from the usual layout. The restaurant was never completely full. We guessed that the bookings were limited not because of too many diners, but because of too few staff.

 

Entry

Your taxi drops you outside the front entrance. Up a flight of red carpeted steps. Temperature control past an automatic machine. In the olden days doorman used to open the front door. Now your credentials are checked carefully.

The Churchill Room restaurant has a picture of Winston Churchill by the doorway.

Decor Of Orchids

The Tanglin has an orchid display outside in the hallway. The centre of the Churchill Room has another orchid display. A third orchid display was at the side.

Set Menu Choices

The menu online was not the same as offered in the restaurant, but gives you an idea.  

We started by ordering drinks. I had a glass of Prosecco. My husband ordered a reasonably priced Champagne.Then a glass of red wine.

Complimentary Bread

We were brought a little bowl of breads. The white bread roll with seeds was hot. Melted the butter. The black bread I saved for later. 

The crisp in a tall triangle contained blackened sesame seeds and was delicious, very more-ish. Crispy, salty, tasty.

Complimentary Amuse Guele

Dice size vegetarian mousse with contrasting green peas.

We chose two different starters and main courses and desserts. 

Choices included

Starter

Salmon mousse. Mushroom soup. Foie gras. 

I liked the salmon. That was my choice. 

I was disappointed in the foie gras. Just another smooth pate and less flavour than chicken liver pate. If I had to pay extra for it, I would not.

Main Course

Beef.

Barramundi Fish. 

Pork - excellent. 

Vegetarian option.

Main course - Served Under Domes

Served smartly under domes which are lifted simultaneously. No serving one person who has to wait feeling frustrated for the other person to be served. Nor one person starting and being told off for not waiting.

Dessert

I chose the mango mousse dessert, with ice cream. I thought the fruit was a healthier option.  Mango - excellent choice, looked great.

Why not the chocolate desserts? I admit I hesitated. Mango was a change from chocolate, which we eat a lot of at home and are offered at almost every restaurant and coffee shop location. Chocolate we could eat later at home. 

One of the options was salted chocolate. That must be very tasty, and salt is an ingredient of savoury chocolate dishes featured in a film about France. Sugar and salt does not sound healthy. 

Vanilla ice cream, often tastes of nothing. Or it is drowned by the chocolate flavour.

Nonetheless, I was hoping my husband would opt for one of the chocolate desserts. I told him so. 

He retorted, "It's my birthday dinner. I want to choose what I want to eat."

My husband chose the cheese board. It looked great. Wooden platter. Several cheeses, hard and soft, including a blue cheese. Circular crackers. Some grapes. 

He said the cheeses were a bit industrial. He is a connoisseur when it comes to cheeses.  He buys from speciality cheese shops such as the Cheese Arc. He looks online.

My dessert came up with the happy birthday words written in chocolate and a candle in a blue candle-holder.

More Photos will be added shortly.

Useful Websites

https://www.tanglinclub.org.sg/

http://www.thecheeseark.com/locate-us/

About the Author

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is Vice President Public Relations of Braddell Heights Advanced, and Tampines Changkat Advanced, speakers' training club which are part of Toastmasters International. The USA has several Spanish speaking as well as the English speaking clubs. You can pick up Spanish from buying or reading online their Spanish clubs welcome pages and manuals. 

In The USA, UK, Singapore and worldwide, there are many clubs which are English speaking, as well as Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Tamil, Malay.

The inauguration of Tampines Changkat Advanced was Tuesday 29th 2021, online on  zoom. Their meetings are on the fourth Tuesday evening of the month. They hope to hold meetings with a few people meeting physically, the others online, as soon as the Covid-19 conditions allow.

You can find the club through their Facebook page as well as through Toastmasters International find a club. 

https://www.facebook.com/tampineschangkatadvTMC

The meetings are free for visitors. Visitors can watch, and join in speaking by introducing themselves and volunteering to do a 2 minutes impromptu  speech in table topics.

If you wish to join for a year, it costs about 190 US dollars, to have monthly meetings online, a mentor, a magazine, and one of the 11  Pathways, consisting of 14 projects. Each project starts with 3 speeches of your choice of subject, lasting 4 to 6 minutes, then 5 to 7 minutes. The Pathways include the most popular Presentation Mastery. I chose  humorous speaking as my second Pathway, costing 20 dollars. Then my third was a leadership course. Come and see for free.

The club also has meetings in person in Singapore

You can also contact my other club, smaller Braddell Heights Advanced, which is a cosy little club with more chances to speak.

Login through bha.learncool.sg/meet/bha 

That will link you through to Zoom or googlemeet. 2 pm to 5 pm.

BHA meets the first Wednesday evening each month, starting at 7 pm Singapore time. 

Then an extra meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon, starting at 2 pm Singapore time.

To check your time zone,  

https://24timezones.com/difference/singapore/ 

Meetings will be on Wed July 7th and  Saturday July 17th.

Contact either of these or other clubs through Toastmasters International Find a Club.

World's Weirdest Statues And Monuments to See: From Alice and Aristotle to Mushrooms and Waltz

Angels, bottles, Fruit, guitars, whatever you like, somebody, somewhere has made a statue to it. Usually advertising local produce. Why not? The USA, Canada, and Australia are especially fond of giant monuments.

Here they are, first alphabetically by type, to track them down by subject matter, then by country for convenience of visit.

Alice in Wonderland: Central Park, New York, USA;



Australia.

Statue of Alice, Rymill Park, Adelaide, Australia.

Angel of the North, UK.

Aristotle, Aristotle, Aristotle Park, Greece.

Bean (Pinto Bean), Canada.

Duck, Canada. Mallard Duck at Andrew, Alberta.

Guitar, Australia.

Mermaid (Little Mermaid), Copenhagen, Denmark.

Mushroom monument in the village of Vilna, (not  the city of Vilnius,) Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Sunflower, Bow Island, Albert Canada.

Sphinx of Giza, Egypt.

The Thinker, by Rodin, in Copenhagen, Denmark. (I have seen this in at least two other places.)

The Waltz. France 
(In French, La Valse.)

What To See Where
America: Alice in Wonderland
Australia: Alice in Wonderland
Canada: Alberta: Antelope, Bear, Beaver. Bee, Bison, Cowboy, Cowboy Boot, Crow, Crown, Dinosaurs, Duck. Elk, Moose, Mushrooms. Pig, Piggy Bank, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Sunflower, Swan, Teepee
Denmark: Little Mermaid; The Thinker.
Egypt: The Sphinx
France: The Waltz
UK: Angel of the North.

Useful Websites
http://www.bigthings.ca/alberta/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue

About the author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting the first Wednesday of the month, Usually on Zoom. But the other Wednesdays have workshops on app learncool.sg

Incoming president Faith from Wed July 15th 2020 change dates and platforms so please contact the club.

Latest is only two meetings each month.

For meetings learncool it is quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites On Speaking and Languages

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
translate.google.com
duolingo.com

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/vi/en/Learn-Vietnamese

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

Other Useful Posts By Angela Lansbury Author

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html 

Please share links to your favourite posts

Mushroom Coffee

It is not just mushrooms but mushrooms mixed with coffee. Seen at Vitafoods exhibition in Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

I thought it was coffee made from mushrooms, but I think it was coffee with added mushrooms.

ART Assumption Pathway Restaurant

Problem
Where to find a cheap, quick meal? Where to find a catering college restaurant?

Answers
In Singapore just across from Cashew MRT station on the Downtown line you'll see the Assumption Pathway School, a Catholic institution started decades ago as the sign on the interior wall tells you. The school is run for those not able to attend mainstream schools and includes a restaurant as well as a bakery department underneath.

The restaurant is open Monday to Friday in term time, for lunch from 12-3 and for tea.

Story
We went there for the second time in January 2017. We had tried to phone but got an answering machine. When we arrived at the gate to sign in the security guard assured us that the restaurant was open. The restaurant is large and we had no problem getting a table as late as 1.45.

We were seated straight away and given the menu. The set meal consisted of a starter - mushroom soup, a main course (four choices) and a dessert. The vertical triangular information display on the table says they aim to welcome you with a smile and to deal with you within one minute.

We ordered our meal immediately because it was late for lunch and we could see straight away that we did not want the sandwich nor the vegetarian option and we wanted one of each of the other two options. However, the disadvantage of ordering straight away was that we had no time to check out any drinks.

Hot bread, a steamed white bun with a sweet glaze, came with a pat of salted butter to melt on top. I really liked the fact that the bread was hot, and the sweet glaze. My companion was less enthusiastic and said it was like a McDonalds bun.

We tried two different dishes, fish, and boneless chicken. The chicken came with mushrooms in sauce. Both meals included carrots and mashed potato. The fish was good, tasty with a nice sauce.

The chicken was fine, a kind of pate of lumps pressed together, good for me as I hate fighting to get chicken off the bone and I do not want to upset my delicate teeth nor fillings on a chicken bone.

I like mashed potatoes. I thought the carrots were too hard but my companion loves crunchy vegetables and thought they were good. (You can't please everybody.)

Highlight of the meal was the dessert. Ostensibly a little cup cake, with a scattering of walnuts. This was the one dish of the three which had a design. Also the little cake contained ground walnuts which matched the walnut pieces on the plate.

Coffee or tea was included. The filter coffee came up with hot milk in a mini-jug and wrapped white or brown sugar sachets.

A three course lunch is quite filling. They keep the same menu for about three months. The main course has four choices, although one is only 'a sandwich'. If it's the sandwich shown on the deli counter, it's more like a subway roll than a triangular sandwich. I wonder whether the sandwich can be heated. Not that you want hot food in Singapore.

Afterwards I looked at the take away counter next to the till. I spent a dollar on a crumble cake. I could have bought pineapple rolls in a plastic container, a traditional Chinese New Year delicacy, for S$20 (twenty Singapore dollars).

The room is large and bright. With season decorations. Toilets at the back through an automatically open door with a push button on the wall.

You walk in through the school cafe with benches. Then up a flight of stairs. Not for the disabled. The place seems geared up for the mentally challenged but not for anybody physically challenged. There may be another way up, but it is not obvious.

Notice the herbs growing in troughs outside the front door of the restaurant. I missed them on the way in but noticed them on my way out. The herbs are labelled with their names.

Who Or What Is This Place Most Suitable For?
Budget meal. Fast meal. Supporting local, Catholic school.

Who or What Is This Place Least Suitable For?
Anybody who can't cope with stairs and wants an obvious, nearby lift.
Anybody who wants to sit and linger over lunch.

Tips
They say last orders at 3 pm. After that you will soon be able to order tea.
In addition to the lunch, you can buy a slice of cake to take away.
You can order cakes including one design of birthday cake with Happy Birthday on it. They require five days' notice for a birthday cake.

ART
Assumption Restaurant For Training
Lunch 12 noon-3 pm. Tea from 3pm to 5 pm (last order at 4.30pm)
30 Cashew Road, Singapore 679697
The ART tel +65 6892 6187 (during operating hours)
APS tel +65 6879 3900 (during office hours)
Website http://www.aps,edu.sg/theart
Facebook https://www.facebook.com?APStheART
email the.art.aps@gmail.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Books on Amazon and lulu.com

(Photos being added shortly.)

Budget lunch and support a school in Singapore

The Assumption Pathway School Training Restaurant

The school in Cashew Road a few steps uphill from Cashew Road MTR on the new Downtown line opened a few days before at the start of this year.

The restaurant is in a building behind the wide front block.

The decor is white and clean and modern. Nifty tables are square to seat four comfortably with semicircles on all four sides hinging up to make a circular 6 seater table.

From 12 until 3 midweek you can order the $13 set meal. We enjoyed a free hot roll and butter followed by our starter, soup of day, which was mushroom soup with tasty garlic croutons.

My main course was chicken and salmon, ample potions of both, with potato cooked in a ramekin, and crunchy free vegetables.

You can order non-alcoholic cocktails for about $3 to go with your meal. Coffee or tree is another extra. (You can also buy pastries, stainless steel mugs with lids, and Chinese seasonal delicacies such as a jar of pineapple pastries at $12.)

Dessert of the day was pandan, green subtly flavoured local plant, attractively presented in a circle of red strawberry or raspberry sauce.

The waiters were keen, almost too keen, trying to remove one person's plate before the other person had finished. I think this might be Chinese style, clearing away empty plates, as would be done at a buffet. In the UK when we eat Russian style, in a series of courses, starter, main course, dessert, it would be wrong to rush the slower eater by removing the other eater's plate.

We had enough leftover food to take home. No problem wrapping it up. The deli counter by the door serves cakes to take away, so plenty of containers. Most restaurants, except buffet restaurants, are geared up for diners who want food to take away.


Please share with your friends.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

French mushrooms, mushroom picking, making quick, easy mushroom soup

We were given mushrooms by a French woman who was on a group holiday and kindly gave mushrooms to everybody in the group. A mixture of champignons, or button mushrooms, and ceps, also known as porcini.

The French go out gathering mushrooms. A French pharmacist will have a book or poster identifying mushrooms which are safe to eat. In any case, local people will know their local mushrooms.

In English supermarkets we can buy the small button mushrooms which are a handy size for cooking or adding to a salad at lunchtime. We can also buy the big flat mushrooms you can stuff like a bowl for a starter or lunch or vegetarian meal.

From time to time you see those small headed mushrooms with the long stalks.

What you never see in supermarkets are the pretty red mushrooms so loved by illustrators of children's books because the mushrooms are colourful and attention getting. Think of the red as a red light saying stop. They are deadly poisonous.

On a press trip I met a girl who had worked on a food magazine. I asked if they had ever made any mistakes or got any complaints. She said once an outside illustrator had added a photo of the poisonous mushroom to the page of mushroom recipes.

My jaw dropped in horror. I asked, "Did you get any complaints?"

"No."

I was even more shocked. "Did anybody die? All your readers!"

"No. We did get some feedback much later. A reader said she'd tried three supermarkets and nobody stop stocked them. And our local supermarket manager said he'd had lots of requests for a mushroom he couldn't get from any of his suppliers."

Meanwhile, remembering this story of the magazine and the mushrooms, I looked suspiciously at mushrooms which popped up, uninvited, in our garden in England. I don't think I have a photo. 

But these mushrooms grew on a doormat in England. We did not risk eating them. Does anybody know what they were?

Safe or not?
The first thing I did was google safe and poisonous mushrooms to be sure our friendly supplier in France had not made a mistake.

Then we looked for recipes. We made a big 'soup' of mashed up mushrooms. A mixture of cep and champignons. The mushrooms were so tasty!

Wikipedia says champignons are known in English by the popular name button mushrooms.

On the way around my internet search I came across advice on what to do when gathering mushrooms.  It said you take care of three things. Two are:

1 Use a wicker basket so the mushrooms can drop their 'spores' as you carry them, to create more mushrooms.
2 You do not pick the small mushrooms, only the larger ones, for the same reason, to ensure a crop from the spores released by the full size mushrooms.

Who'd have known! So next time you drive through France and see the mushroom pickers with their baskets, or hunt for mushroom recipes, or pick or grow your own, think of the mushroom gatherers in France.

The most famous and delicious mushrooms are truffles with a smokey flavour. Very expensive, but a little goes a long way. You could buy a teeny pot as a present for yourself or another member of your family, then make a mushroom omelette for everybody.

Mushroom soup is easy to make. You hardly need a recipe. Just wash them, chop them up, simmer gently in butter. No need to add water if you have lots of mushrooms and want a thick 'soup' like a dip. Add water if you want a thin soup, which the French call a 'consommé'. The recipe we looked at suggested adding a herb, thyme. We did not have fresh herbs so we added dried thyme.

I looked for a list of mushroom names. The plant sites have pages and pages of mushroom names, very comprehensive, and who would have imagined that there were so many. But the lists are so long you cannot find what you want and grow bored. The cookbook site I have mentioned below was more useful to me.

I was surprised to see in addition to the prized internationally known French truffle, there are also Texas truffles. I thought I'd add them because they will be news to my English readers and of interest to my readers in the USA, and American readers are more numerous so I always look for something to interest those living in the USA.

Later a cook given the mushrooms lunched on a British favourite, bacon, egg on toast and mushrooms.

Mushroom Names
champignon
cep
French truffle
fly agaric (red and poisonous)
Texas truffle

http://www.wildmushroomsonline.co.uk/Wild-Mushrooms-in-France/index.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iFi3YrIo7o (How to grow your own mushrooms from spores)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore
http://www.mssf.org/cookbook/names.html
http://www.wildmushroomsonline.co.uk/Identifying-Edible-Mushrooms-The-Cep/index.php

To identify mushrooms from pictures:
http://www.first-nature.com/fungi/~id-guide.php

Angela Lansbury, BA, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.