Month: May 2003

Recipe: Carrot Cake

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Someone brought in some carrot cake to work the other day. It was moist and savory with a rich cream cheese frosting — it was some of the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. I was a bit sad that I wouldn’t be able to ask for the recipe, as it just appeared anonymously in the break area.

Luckily, the cake came up in some water-cooler conversation and just I happened to be talking with the person who baked it. She happily agreed to e-mail the recipe to me:

Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups grated carrots
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
  • 1 1/4 cups oil
  • 1 tsp. vanilla

Preparation:

Cook at 350 for 30 min — if you do it in a cake pan — I end up cooking it for at least 45 minutes, but check it at 30 min, then every 10 min afterwards. [Yeah, that’s exactly how she wrote it. As you’ll notice, she doesn’t specify a pan-size, but I recall that it may have been 13 x 9 (?)]

Frosting:

  • 1 package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 stick butter, softened
  • 1 16 oz box of powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and cream cheese together, add vanilla, slowly add powdered sugar.

Unrude Use of “Shut Up!”

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Via ObscureStore, apparently the “unrude use of ‘Shut up’” is catching on:

Not too many years ago, the unrude use of "Shut up!" might have baffled linguists and just about everybody else. But the term has now made its way from schoolgirl chatter to adult repartee and into movies and advertising. People use it as much to express disbelief, shock and joy as to demand silence. In some circles, it has become the preferred way to say "Oh my God!" "Get out of town!" and "No way!" all at once.

A recent ad for Hyundai's Elantra shows a young woman sparring with a dealer. "Shut up!" screams the woman, who pokes the man in the chest each time he points out a feature that sounds too good to be true.

Editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary are considering a new entry for "Shut up!" in the next edition. "I think we should add it because it appears to be widespread," says senior editor Erin McKean. Already, she has mulled possible definitions: "used to express amazement or disbelief" and "oh, so true!" […]

The pop-culture rise of “Shut up!” is amusing in itself, but I think I’m even more amused by the linguists’ phrase “unrude use of ‘Shut up!’” ;).