My name is Andrew, and this is bonus episode 50 — amazing! 50 episodes — of the Culips English Podcast. Thanks for joining me here to start off the week on the right foot with an English study session, I think we can all agree that having good habits can help us to reach our goals faster.

And that’s why I’m here, to help you set the tone and get ready for a successful week of English learning ahead. Now, there’s a 100% free transcript for this episode that you can get by clicking the link in the description or by visiting our website, which is Culips.com.

You can get the transcript as a PDF file or as a clickable interactive transcript. So please check it out because it’s an awesome learning tool. And of course, if you’re looking for more great content to improve your English skills with, we’ve got you covered. We have hundreds of lessons on our website.

Plus, if you’re a Culips member, you can get the helpful study guides and transcripts for all of them, along with tons of other benefits as well. And I want to give a shout out to all of our members right now, because we love our member community. And without them, we couldn’t make Culips.

Now one of the great bonuses that Culips members get is an invitation to the monthly live streams that I host each month. And speaking of the live stream, we have our April edition coming up very, very soon. In fact, it’s happening this week, on Tuesday, April 25, at 8pm Korean Standard Time.

And if you’re a Culips member, I would love for you to join me for the live stream. The topic for this month is talking about our English language highs and lows. So, I want to talk about our successes and failures, learning English, but I’m crossing my fingers, we’ll spend more time talking about our wins, as opposed to our failures.

But I’m hoping that we’ll have a good discussion and share some funny and interesting stories with each other during the stream. So, I’m very excited and I hope to see a bunch of people from our member community there.

Guys to join, you just need to log into your Culips account and follow the link from the dashboard. And with that being said, I think it’s time to get started with this episode. So, let’s dive in, and I’m going to tell you a wild story about finding a lost Culips episode deep in the dark corners of my hard drive last week.

So, let’s get started with the story now. Here we go.

I spent some time last week doing something that I hate doing, which is cleaning. Actually, I don’t mind cleaning in general. But I don’t really like doing this type of cleaning, which is digital cleaning. So, organizing the files on my hard drive.

In fact, I’m actually usually pretty good about keeping all of my files and data well organized, especially files that are related to Culips. But you know, over time, some things get a little messy.

And I need to go through my hard drive and tidy things up every once in a while, just so that it’s nice and organized. I usually do this every six months or so. And I think just like it’s a good idea to do a deep clean of your house a couple of times a year, it’s also good to do a deep clean of your digital life a couple of times a year too.

So, I did that last week. Last week, I did some digital spring cleaning. And while I was doing my digital spring cleaning, I came across some files from 2021, a couple years ago, for a Simplified Speech episode about fusion food. And fusion food is what happens when we combine dishes or ingredients from different countries or culinary traditions to create a new dish, right?

So, if you combine Mexican food and Indian food, for example, then that would be a fusion food. Now what was weird about that episode that I found on my hard drive is that all of the files were just raw audio recordings of me and Kassy. The episode wasn’t edited or processed or anything like that.

It was just the original recording files. And since these files were over two years old, I couldn’t remember exactly what was happening with that episode. So, I checked back through the spreadsheet that I use to organize all of our Culips episodes, and I realized that we never released that episode.

So, that means that sometime a couple of years ago, Kassy and I recorded a conversation about fusion food, but it fell through the cracks, and I forgot about it. By the way, that’s a great idiomatic expression that I just used, to fall through the cracks.

If something falls through the cracks, then it means that it has unintentionally been overlooked or neglected or forgotten. So, that episode about fusion food fell through the cracks because I totally forgot about it, and it was unintentional. Of course, I didn’t mean to do that.

So, I was excited to find this lost episode on my hard drive. I immediately sent the files over to our awesome audio editor, Marshal, and I asked him to turn them into a Simplified Speech episode for us. Well, Marshall did his thing. He worked his magic, and a couple days later, he messaged me back.

And he told me that he put the episode together, but there were a few problems. The first problem was that the episode was very short. Now, maybe you’ve noticed, I’m not sure, but in general, here at Culips, we try to make our Simplified Speech episodes around 20 minutes or so.

That seems to be the sweet spot that many of our listeners like, 20 minutes of content. However, that episode, the fusion food episode was much shorter, it was only around 10 minutes long or so. So that wasn’t very good.

The second issue was that towards the end of the episode, Kassy’s mic started picking up some noise from the traffic outside of her apartment. And that also wasn’t very good. That means that those parts had to be cut out and removed, because it was too difficult to hear Kassy over the traffic noise.

So, for many reasons, really, it seemed like this fusion food episode was never going to see the light of day. And after listening to the episode, I actually agreed with Marshall, that it wasn’t really suitable for an official Culips release.

But at the same time, that seemed like a shame, because it’s not like the episode was terrible or anything. It was just short, and maybe not a full, complete episode. And that’s when it hit me! I realized, aha! I can just play that episode for you here in this bonus episode.

It’s perfect content for a bonus episode, I believe. So today, that’s what I’m going to do. And I think you’re all in for a special treat because I’m going to play that lost Simplified Speech episode from 2021 for you all right now. Like I mentioned before, the topic for this conversation is fusion food.

So, I’m going to play the episode for you now. And then after we listen to it, I’m going to break down and teach you about one of the must-know phrasal verbs that you’ll hear me use during my conversation with Kassy. So, let’s do it. Without any further ado, here is the lost Culips episode about fusion food. Let’s take a listen.

Today, I’m joined by my cohost Kassy. Hey there, Kassy.

Kassy: Hey, Andrew, what’s up?

Andrew: I am a little bit hungry, Kassy, I got to say. Kassy, you and I had a little pre-chat about the topic for today. And it got me hungry.

Kassy: Yeah, me too.

Andrew: What are we talking about today, Kassy?

Kassy: Today, we are talking about fusion food.

Andrew: All right. So, I think we should start with a definition, Kassy, that’s probably a good place to begin, right? So, what is fusion food?

Kassy: Fusion is kind of like combining two or more things into one. So fusion food is combining two types or two different countries’ foods into one totally new food.

Andrew: Exactly. So, for example, if you took Chinese food and mixed it with Brazilian food, that would be fusion food, right?

Kassy: Yeah. Chinese-Brazilian fusion.

Andrew: Now, I’m curious. Have you ever tried eating fusion food before?

Kassy: Oh, yeah, many times. But one of my favorite fusion foods I ate in Portland, Oregon at a Japanese-Mexican fusion food truck.

Andrew: Wow. That’s a mouthful!

Kassy: Yeah, that is a mouthful.

Andrew: Japanese-Mexican fusion food truck. Now, I’ve been to Portland a couple of times myself. And I know that the food trucks there are really popular. Maybe we even visited the same place because when I was in Portland, I went to a kind of food truck food court, if you could call it that?

An area where maybe 30 or 40 food trucks were parked, and you could walk through this area and choose what kind of food you wanted to eat because every truck had a different kind of food.

Kassy: I was gonna say that Portland is just full of food trucks in many different areas and lots of fusion food, but the one I went to, they had a really interesting food on the menu. It was a sushi burrito.

Andrew: Sushi burrito? Oh, yeah. Because it’s Mexican and Japanese fusion, right?

Kassy: Yeah. So instead of the tortilla it was the sheet of seaweed and rice.

Andrew: Ah, I think it’s called nori.

Kassy: Ah, maybe nori.

Andrew: Nori, maybe. English pronunciation.

Kassy: And then instead of having, you know, the salsa, and tomatoes, and meat, it had sashimi like raw fish, and then avocado, some Asian cabbage and really delicious Asian sauce flavors, I’m not sure the names of.

Andrew: OK, so to me, it sounds almost just like a big sushi roll. Like what was the Mexican part of it other than the word burrito?

Kassy: A sushi roll, you know, is like bite-sized and very thin. But what made it like a burrito was the size. It was really fat and thick like a burrito but tasted like sushi. And when I first got it, I was a little nervous. Like, oh, this is way too big. It’s gonna just taste like a giant glob of raw fish in my mouth. But it was really refreshing.

Andrew: OK. Wow, it actually sounds pretty good to me. You know, I love sushi. It’s one of my favorite foods. I’ve never tried a sushi burrito. But if I ever have the opportunity, I think I would like to try it.

Kassy: Yeah, you totally should. Actually, I think Asian food and Mexican food mix really well together to create uh lots of different types of fusion foods. Don’t you agree, Andrew?

Andrew: Yeah, this is another food that I haven’t tried. But I’ve heard about it because well, I sometimes watch food shows on TV. And for whatever reason these days, there are a lot of famous chefs who come from a Korean-American background.

And they’ve experimented a lot with mixing American foods with Korean food. We’re talking about Mexican food, but there are so many Mexican people in the USA and Mexican food is so readily available in the USA, that we could almost consider it like an American staple, right?

Like the taco is kind of a staple of America now. I’ve heard of these kinds of kimchi tacos. So, kimchi is a fermented cabbage that is prepared with a red pepper paste sauce and very spicy and sour at the same time. Probably the most famous food in Korea, the most well-known Korean food.

Koreans eat it every day. So, these chefs have kind of remixed the taco so that there is kimchi inside of it. Yeah, this is another really interesting way to pair Asian food with Mexican food.

Kassy: Yeah, I’ve never had a kimchi taco, but I have had kimchi, tater tots and tater tots are another really delicious street food in America. They’re like fried potato wedges, I guess. And on top they had fried kimchi and then Sriracha sauce, which is also really popular in the US these days. I think that comes from Vietnam, correct?

Andrew: Yeah, Vietnam or Thailand? I can’t exactly remember, but somewhere in Southeast Asia, and I’m sure either our Thai listeners or our Vietnamese listeners are screaming at us right now, “It’s our sauce! It’s our sauce!” Sorry, sorry, guys.

Maybe you could send us a message to let us know if Sriracha sauce comes from Vietnam or Thailand. You know, now that I’ve lived in Korea for several years, Kassy, I’ve noticed that my palate and the foods that I enjoy have started to change, and I’ve started to eat a lot more Korean food and crave Korean food.

While at the same time, I’m less and less interested in western food and the kinds of foods that I grew up with. And a great example of this is kimchi in fact. Because when I first came here, I didn’t really like kimchi. I would eat it, I forced myself to eat it, because, well, it was just the polite thing to do.

It’s a ubiquitous food here. It’s everywhere. Many Korean people eat it every day. So, there was no getting around it, I kind of had to eat it. And at first, I struggled. However, now several years later, I love it, and I crave it and I want to eat it all the time.

And so, because my palate has changed, I’ve thought about mixing kimchi with different foods and making my own kind of fusion foods. Like sometimes I think this sandwich would taste better if there were kimchi on it. Or even to go back to our Mexican example. While we were just talking there, I thought about how delicious nachos with kimchi on top could possibly be.

Kassy: Oh, those would be good.

Andrew: Do you have any examples of that? Have your tastes evolved a little bit since you’ve been abroad? And have you remixed any of the food that you eat?

Kassy: You know, I can’t think of it right now off the top of my head. But I do have a friend who was kind of the reverse. They came from America, and they moved to Korea. And while they really like Korean food, they love ranch dressing.

So, every time they go to the US they buy like bottles and bottles of ranch dressing and then bring it back over and put it on everything in Korea.

Andrew: What is ranch dressing for our listeners who don’t know?

Kassy: It’s just like a really creamy, white salad dressing. But Americans put it on everything. I don’t know, hamburgers, french fries, hot wings, whatever, you name it, they love it.

Andrew: It’s just a creamy dressing, right? And people use it to dip many different types of foods in to make them more creamy or more delicious, I guess. And it’s a food that many people are addicted to just like the friends you mentioned. Many people will put it on everything, right?

Kassy: You know what’d be a great fusion food, maybe like a ranch-kimchi french fry.

Andrew: We may have to start our own restaurant here.

Kassy: That’s a good idea.

Andrew: So, what did you think? Did you enjoy that conversation about fusion food? I hope you agree with me that it was better to include it here in this bonus episode than just throw it out altogether, right? I think so. Actually, listening to that episode made me feel pretty hungry.

I think once we wrap things up here, I might go and try to find something to eat. I doubt I’ll be able to have a sushi burrito, but it’s likely that I can find something with kimchi in it. So, I’ll probably go with that instead.

And now it’s time for this week’s vocabulary lesson.

Before I eat, I want to teach you about one of the phrasal verbs that I used in that fusion food conversation. And in my opinion, this is a really must-know phrasal verb. It’s a common one that English speakers use every day. But it can be difficult because it means different things in different contexts.

I think there are probably four or five different ways that English speakers use this phrasal verb. But today, I’m just going to focus in on one and especially the one that I used in the context of that fusion food conversation. So, the phrasal verb I’m talking about is: to get around.

To get around and it means to avoid or escape something. OK? So, it’s to get around something. That’s the construction that we use. And just so you know, this is a phrasal verb that must follow that pattern. We have to say it like to get around something. We can’t say to get something around.

It always must be to get around something. So actually, in that fusion food conversation, I used this phrasal verb in the negative form when I was talking about being unable to avoid eating kimchi in Korea. So as many people know, kimchi is a staple of the Korean diet.

And if you live in Korea, you’re going to eat kimchi often. There’s no getting around it, there’s no escaping it. So, I want to play that conversation clip for you again. So, you can hear me use the phrasal verb in context a couple of more times. So, let’s do that now. I’m going to rewind, go back, and play it for you again. Here we go.

So, in that clip, you heard me say there was no getting around it when I was talking about eating kimchi while living in Korea, just because kimchi is such a common food here. So, in other words, that just means that I can’t avoid eating kimchi while I live in Korea, because it’s so prevalent in Korean cuisine.

So now that we know that to get around something means to avoid or escape something. Let’s hear how English speakers use this phrasal verb in their everyday lives by listening to some example sentences. I’ve got three prepared here for you. And we’ll start with the first. Here we go.

Let’s break that example sentence down. In that example sentence, we hear about somebody’s parents who traveled to Mexico. And I guess they don’t speak Spanish because there was a language barrier. A language barrier means that people can’t communicate easily because they don’t speak the same language.

So, this speaker’s parents probably let’s say they were English speakers, and of course, Spanish is spoken in Mexico. So, there was a language barrier. But the parents got around that language barrier. They avoided it, they escaped it, how? By using translation apps on their phone.

Let’s break this example sentence down. In this example sentence, we hear that the speaker unfortunately, was never able to get around her fear of public speaking, she was never able to move past it, to avoid it, to escape it. It was one of those fears that stuck with her her entire life.

Even though she tried to overcome that fear, she was never able to do so. She was never able to get around that fear of public speaking, unfortunately.

Let’s break this final example sentence down. In this sentence, the speaker avoided a problem, escaped a problem. How? Just by downloading a software update. So, we could imagine maybe that he had a problem with his computer or his smartphone.

And he fixed that problem, escaped the problem, avoided the problem, by simply updating his software. And hey, it’s true. Sometimes, if we update our software, our computers or our phones, or our tablets work better. Sometimes they don’t, sometimes things break. But sometimes problems are solved with a software update.

So that brings us to the end of another bonus episode, a milestone episode really, because this was number 50. If you’ve been here with me for all 50 episodes, then I want to give you a big digital high five. Yeah, because that’s amazing.

And even if you haven’t been here for all 50 Bonus episodes, I do want to congratulate you on making it all the way to the end of this episode because you put in some time and effort here today to improve your English. You’re doing the right thing and taking the right steps towards reaching your fluency goals.

And I have a deep respect for people like yourself, who are putting in the work to make their life better. So, awesome job and don’t stop now carry this good energy and this momentum forward. And let’s have a productive and successful week of English Learning all week long.

Culips members, don’t forget about our live stream on Tuesday evening at 8pm Korean time. I’ll see you all then. And for everyone else. I’ll be back later in the week with another brand-new Culips episode. So, until then, take care and I’ll talk to you all soon, goodbye!