Recounting and Interpreting Details
1. How does the writer describe his cooking skills?
2. How did the writer end up with three dozen of eggs that he didn’t really need?
3. How many attempts at boiling eggs had the writer made before calling his friend? Why weren’t they successful in each case? Did he try different methods?
4. How many attempts did the writer make after calling his friend?
5. In what way did he boil water in each case? What method was less wasteful?
6. How did the writer solve the problem of timing?
7. Why wasn’t the last attempt successful?
8. Why hadn’t his friend mentioned in her instructions that eggs fresh from the refrigerator shouldn’t be put into boiling water?
9. Why did the writer cook so many eggs at a time?
10. The writer calls himself “a pretty fast learner”. Do you agree? Prove your point using details from the text.
11. Find the phrase “I probably should plan better, but you just never know what jewels are going to fall into your lap…” in the 4th paragraph. Can you explain the irony in this phrase? Can you find any other instances of irony in the text?
12. How does the writer see himself? Can you make any inferences about him as a person from this text?
Creative Follow-up Work
I. What would you do in this situation? (Finish the story)
II. Tell the episode with the phone call briefly from the friend’s perspective.
III. Text 1 “Luncheon” was written in the first half of the XX century by a brilliant and world-famous short story writer. Text 2 “Cooking skills” is a real life anecdote written in 2010 by an Internet blogger. Both texts are related to the topic “food”. Can these texts be compared in any way? Can you see any similarities between them? What are the differences? Study the “Glossary of Literary Terms” for clues (see Appendix 4).
IV. Find as many words and expressions related to the topic “cooking” in the text as you can. Use them to make up a short story of about 150 words.
1 Foreman, George – U.S. boxer