I want it to be very, very lean.

Michelle is preparing dinner.  She asks John for help....

Michelle: John, can you do me a favor?  Can you help me cut this chicken?

John: At your service.  How do you want me to cut it?

Michelle: I would like half of it cut into slices, and the other half diced.

John: OK.  Half sliced and the other half diced.

Michelle: Oh, by the way, I want it to be very, very lean.  Not even a shred of fat. 

John: Got'cha.  Cut off the fat.

20. Make up dialogues based on the following situations:

1. An irritable husband is sitting at dinner and criticizing his wife's cooking. He is trying to teach her the way this or that dish should be cooked though he knows very little about it. The wife is doing her best to defend herself.

2. A hostess is treating a lady-visitor to a meal. The visitor keeps repeating that she is on a slimming-diet; that she never eats anything fattening and that, in general, she eats like a little bird. Yet she helps herself to this and that very heartily.

3. A slow waitress is taking an order from a hungry and impatient client. All the client's efforts to order this or that dish are refused on all kinds of pretexts: the pork is fat; the beef is tough; they haven't got any more potatoes in the kitchen; the ice-cream has melted; the cook has a tooth-ache, etc.

4. Two very young and extremely inexperienced housewives are advising each other as to the best way of feeding their husbands. One of them is inclined to take the line of least resistance and to serve only tinned food for all the meals. The other points out that tinned food alone will never do and suggest other ways of solving the problem.

For advanced students.

21. Put each of the following colloquial words or phrases in its correct place in the sentences below.

the salt of the earth full of beans

a butter-fingers nuts

a piece of cake peanuts

money for jam the cream

cup of tea in a jam

a vegetable sour grapes

1. Throw it to me! Oh, I've dropped it! I am _______.

1. I said I'd pay him today, but my money's in the bank and it's just closed. Now I'm______.

2. That's a high salary for an easy job. It's .

2. He never wants to do anything interesting. He just sits around all day. He's a bit of _____.

3. To me $1,000 is a lot of money, but to a millionaire it's ____ .

6. That firm only employs the very best graduates. They only take ______.

7. I think people who help the old, sick and homeless are _____.

8. He's a bit tired and lifeless now, but after a nap he'll be ______.

9. She now says she didn't really want the job that she failed to get, but I think it's just ______.

10. That's a crazy idea of hers. She must be ______ .

11. She likes literature and classical music. Discotheques are not her ______.

12. The exam was very easy. It was ______.

22. Use the colloquial words and phrases from above in the sentences of your own.