meat's only every third layer,

[Scene: Monica and Rachel's, Monica is on the phone in the kitchen.]
Monica: Aunt Syl, stop yelling! All I'm saying is that if you had told me vegetarian lasagna, I would have made vegetarian lasagna. (pauses, listens to person on phone) Well, the meat's only every third layer, maybe you could scrape.


Source: Friends TV series


1) "the mean is only every third layer" does this sentence mean "the mean is just on the entire third layer"? I don't get the use of "every" here!
2)I looked up "scrape" and does it mean that "remove all the meat using the edge of a knife or a stick"?

Thanks

it-is-niaz said:

[Scene: Monica and Rachel's. Monica is on the phone in the kitchen.]
Monica: Aunt Syl, stop yelling! All I'm saying is that if you had told me vegetarian lasagna, I would have made vegetarian lasagna. (pauses, listens to person on phone) Well, the meat's only every third layer, maybe you could scrape.


Source: Friends TV series


1) Does "the meat is only every third layer" mean "the meat is just on the entire third layer"? I don't get the use of "every" here!

Every third means the third, the sixth, and the ninth. (Lasagne doesn't usually have twelve or fifteen layers.) It's funny because it's not a practical solution.

(We don't say every second. We say every other: every layer, every other layer, every third layer, every fourth layer, and so on.)

2) [space] I looked up "scrape." Does it mean [delete that] "remove all the meat using the edge of a knife or a stick"?

A knife. Why use a stick?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

You're welcome!

it-is-niaz said:

[Scene: Monica and Rachel's, Monica is on the phone in the kitchen.]
Monica: Aunt Syl, stop yelling! All I'm saying is that if you had told me vegetarian lasagna, I would have made vegetarian lasagna. (pauses, listens to person on phone) Well, the meat's only every third layer, maybe you could scrape.


Source: Friends TV series


1) "the meat is only every third layer" does this sentence mean "the meat is just on the entire third layer"? I don't get the use of "every" here! Neither do I. I don't know how many layers Monica's lasagna consists of, but more than four layers would be more than mine. 2)I looked up "scrape" and does it mean that "remove all the meat using the edge of a knife or [STRIKE]a stick[/STRIKE] other utensil"? Yes.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Y

Every second layer (or whatever) is also possible.

Monica is a chef with her own restaurant (in some seasons) so it wouldn't surprise me if her lasagne had a lot more than four layers.

Yankee said:

Y

Click to expand...

Y not?

GoesStation said:

Every second layer (or whatever) is also possible.

Click to expand...

Ouch. Got me. I confess: Yes, it is. I guess I just like other better.

If your doctor asks if you drink alcohol, you might say "only every now and then", which is sort of a meaningless non-answer when you don't want to confess you drink frequently.

Monica is trying to suggest something similar, in a feeble attempt to down play the meat content. Of course, the humor here is that it obviously doesn't work quite so well with lasagna, because regardless of how many layers there are, meat is in 33% of the dish!

The scraping bit is also funny, because anyone who objects to eating meat also doesn't want to eat the fats and flavors of the meat which would have permeated into the sauce and other layers. It's not just the actual meat they want to avoid. Picking out the meat doesn't make it vegetarian friendly.

Skrej said:

. . . The scraping bit is also funny, because anyone who objects to eating meat also doesn't want to eat the fats and flavors of the meat which would have permeated into the sauce and other layers. It's not just the actual meat they want to avoid. Picking out the meat doesn't make it vegetarian friendly.

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My vegetarian wife picks the pepperoni off pizza. She likes pizza too much to resist.

(New York-syle pizza, anyhow. Anything else isn't really pizza.)

I imagine one or two Italians might not fully agree with you there. :crazyeye:

And several vegetarians would take issue with your wife calling herself vegetarian! ;-)

Probably easier to argue with the vegetarians than with his wife.

One has to choose one's battles carefully.