365个英语简短小故事-125. The Lovely Banana

What a wonderful fruit the banana is, popular all over the world. Its three colors tell you how ripe it is. Green means go, as in go find another banana. Yellow means eat me. Brown means eat me but don’t bother chewing before you swallow. The only thing that would make a banana more user-friendly is if you could eat the peel. Plus, a banana is neat to eat. When you bite into it, you don’t have to worry about juice squirting all over yourself and your dinner neighbors (like oranges or grapefruit, for example). And it’s a silent food—you can chew it all you like without driving your neighbors crazy with crunching¹ sounds (like apples or carrots, for example). Finally, it’s easy to cut—you don’t need a steak knife. You can slice it with a fork or a spoon, if you like.

You’re never too young or too old to eat bananas. Babies eat mashed³ bananas before their teeth grow in. Great-great-grandparents eat mashed bananas after their teeth fall out.

The banana is versatile⁴. You can fry it, bake it, mash² it, or eat it raw. You can slice it and put it on your breakfast cereal. At lunchtime you can snack on a raw banana, or make a peanut butter and banana sandwich, or eat a bag of dried bananas. You can add a banana to your ice cream for dessert and call it a banana split. You can order a healthful banana smoothie at your local smoothie store. On weekends you can order a banana daiquiri at your local bar or restaurant.

Here in the US, we get most of our bananas from Ecuador and Costa Rica, although the fruit reportedly originated in Asia. Bananas give us lots of potassium and vitamins A and C, and hardly any sodium⁵. The price of bananas hasn’t changed much over recent years—they’re still about 65 cents a pound, despite rising gas and labor⁶ prices. If that’s too expensive, you can still get three pounds for a buck⁷ at many dollar stores.

 

1 crunching   

v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的现在分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄

参考例句：

• The horses were crunching their straw at their manger. 这些马在嘎吱嘎吱地吃槽里的草。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The dog was crunching a bone. 狗正嘎吱嘎吱地嚼骨头。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 mash   

n.麦芽浆，糊状物，土豆泥；v.把…捣成糊状，挑逗，调情

参考例句：

• He beat the potato into a mash before eating it.他把马铃薯捣烂后再吃。
• Whiskey,originating in Scotland,is distilled from a mash of grains.威士忌源于苏格兰，是从一种大麦芽提纯出来的。

3 mashed   

a.捣烂的

参考例句：

• two scoops of mashed potato 两勺土豆泥
• Just one scoop of mashed potato for me, please. 请给我盛一勺土豆泥。

4 versatile   

adj.通用的，万用的；多才多艺的，多方面的

参考例句：

• A versatile person is often good at a number of different things.多才多艺的人通常擅长许多种不同的事情。
• He had been one of the game's most versatile athletes.他是这项运动中技术最全面的运动员之一。

5 sodium   

n.（化）钠

参考例句：

• Out over the town the sodium lights were lit.在外面，全城的钠光灯都亮了。
• Common salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine.食盐是钠和氯的复合物。

6 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

7 buck   

n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃

参考例句：

• The boy bent curiously to the skeleton of the buck.这个男孩好奇地弯下身去看鹿的骸骨。
• The female deer attracts the buck with high-pitched sounds.雌鹿以尖声吸引雄鹿。