美語情景對話 第191期:堅果農場 Nut Farm

Marion: While I traveling in Australia I went to visit my friend Nicola, um, she's teaching in a school on the East Coast of Australia, so I went to visit her about a month ago and she's staying on a farm, she lives on a macadamia farm, so my friend and I went to visit her and stay at her place, so as part of the deal we had to go out and pick macadamia nuts for two hours every day, so usually we'd get up quite early in the morning and we'd go out and pick macadamia nuts for about an hour, and then just before it got dark in the afternoon or the evening we'd go out and pick nuts again for another hour. It was a lot of fun I think mainly because, you know, it wasn't a proper job. We could take our time and we always had a laugh and a joke while we were there. Um, it was really nice to work outside, for awhile, you know, to work in the sunshine and also I'd never worked with macadamia trees before. Before I'd left Ireland I don't think I'd even heard of macadamia trees, cause I think they're a nut that's native to Australia. I know they're very popular in Hawaii as well. I think they were first cultivated for, for profit reasons in Hawaii. Yeah, so macadamia nuts are really, really tasty, so they're very popular as souvenirs from Australia, so you often get chocolate covered macadamia nuts, or macadamia cookies to bring to your friends when you come home from Australia. What else can you get with Macadamia nuts? You can just eat them on their own as well, they're very, very tasty. When we came back for breakfast, we used to bring a handful of macadamia nuts with us and use the nut cracker to open them up cause they've got a very very hard shell, so even if you throw them on the ground, it's very difficult to open them up, so you have to have a nutcracker, to really crush the shell, and once you open them up inside, they're very white, very pale in color and they almost look like nuggets of white chocolate. It's quite strange and they have a real creamy taste to them, so they're, yeah, probably one of my favorite things to eat in Australia.

瑪麗恩：我在澳大利亞旅遊的時候去拜訪了我的朋友尼古拉，她在澳大利亞東海岸的一所學校教書，我大概一個月前去拜訪了她，她住在農場裏，一個堅果農場，我和我的朋友去看望了她，而且住在她那裏，作爲條件，我們每天必須有兩個小時出去採摘堅果，通常我們早上很早起牀，然後外出一小時採摘堅果，之後在下午或是晚上天黑之前我們會再次外出一小時採摘堅果。我認爲那非常有趣，可能主要是因爲這並不是一件正式工作。我們通常會不緊不慢地進行，而且採摘的時候經常有說有笑。嗯，在戶外工作真的很舒服，你知道，在太陽下工作一小會兒，我以前絕對不會跟堅果樹打交道。在我離開愛爾蘭以前，我想我根本就沒聽說過堅果樹，因爲我認爲堅果是澳大利亞特有的。我知道堅果在夏威夷也很普遍。我認爲它們最初是因爲利潤而被種植在夏威夷的。堅果真的非常非常好吃，在澳大利亞它們像紀念品一樣受歡迎，在你從澳大利亞返回家鄉的時候你可以買堅果巧克力或是堅果餅乾送給朋友們。你還可以買到用堅果做的什麼？當然你也可以直接吃堅果，真的非常好吃。我們摘完堅果回來吃早飯的時候，通常會吃一些堅果，要用夾碎堅果的鉗子來剝殼，因爲堅果殼太硬了，即使你把它們扔在地上，也很難把殼剝掉，所以必須要用夾碎堅果的鉗子來去掉堅果殼，把殼去掉以後，你會發現這些堅果肉非常白，顏色很淡，看起來就像白巧克力。很奇怪，它們嚐起來像奶油的味道，這是我在澳大利亞最喜歡吃的食物之一。

重點講解：
1. take one's time doing sth.
不着急；不慌忙；慢慢來；
eg. 'Take your time,' Cross told him. 'I'm in no hurry.'
“慢慢來，”克羅斯對他說，“我一點都不急。”
eg. He took his time answering, knowing that he must select his words with great care.
他意識到自己必須言辭謹慎，於是不慌不忙地回答着問題。
2. native to
（動植物）當地土生的，原產地的；
eg. Many of the plants are native to Brazil.
這些植物中有很多原產地在巴西。
eg. Chipmunks are native to America.
花栗鼠產於美洲。