Are you learning a new language? Do you like to cook? I do, but I like to eat even more.
PIcking up recipes in a new language is one of the best ways to learn about a new culture (and even learn a little about your own in the process) while deepening your understanding of the language.
Cooking Spanish recipes and eating with native Spanish speakers is by far my favorite way to immerse myself in the language. I can spend all day talking about food in Spanish, cooking food in Spanish, watching people cook food in Spanish. Sometimes I'm so deeply in the zone that I forget I'm thinking in my second language.
To begin with, you have to read, and for a recipe to turn out well, you need to understand the recipe perfectly. No cutting corners! This is a fantastic opportunity for detailed reading practice, so keep your dictionary handy. If you find a recipe that you love, making it regularly will help you commit the vocabulary to memory as well as pick it up in other contexts.
I've always found kitchen vocabulary to be very beautiful across languages. I love the music of words like "olla," "taza," "pomelo," and "granada" in Spanish, and I'm constantly on the lookout for more beautiful words to use while cooking. It's a joyful discovery on many levels, and it will help you navigate your day-to-day life much more smoothly. Our lives do revolve around food, after all.
Cooking and eating with native speakers in your second language is a fabulous way to improve your speaking while getting a feel for how people actually eat and live in their homes. You can see what their parents and grandparents made, but also what they decided to change. How they needed to evolve. What's so important that it has to stay the same. Sometimes, you see traditional and modern techniques at odds. Sometimes you see things you never imagined that people might eat (in my case, boiled lamb brains!).
Food goes deep with people on an individual and collective scale, and you may hear lots of heated discussions about seemingly simple questions. Onion or no onion? Blended or chunky? Fried or steamed? Peanut butter--what's that?
When you sit at one of these tables, it's much more than a delicious meal. Food connects us in new and surprising ways. Sometimes we find foods that speak even more deeply to us than our own recipes that we've been cooking for years.
Try a new recipe this week in your second language. It's ok if it doesn't go perfectly, you can try it again. It's all an experiment, and it's all a beautiful part of your language journey.