Maggie Mae’s Corner

Today’s Featured Recipe: Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• ¼ cup butter
• 1 ¼ cups vegetable oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups grated carrots
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 inch pan.
2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar, and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
4. To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.

Lost Words of our Youth

I received this email from my son-in-law and thought that it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane with those of us over 60, I hope you enjoy!

Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word murgatroyd?
Lost words from our childhood: Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really!

The other day a not so elderly (65) (I say 75) lady said something to her son about driving a jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said, “What the heck is a jalopy?”
OMG (new phrase)! He never heard the word jalopy!!

She knew she was old but not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included “Don’t touch that dial,” “Carbon Copy”, “You sound like a broken record,” and “Hung out to dry.”

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie.

We’d put on our best bib and tucker to straighten up and fly right.

Heavens to Betsy!

Gee whillikers!

Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Holey moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley!

And even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop, or a pill.

Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell?

Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back, Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, or, this is a fine kettle of fish, we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink and they are gone. Where have all those phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw!

The milkman did it.

Hey! It’s your nickel.

Don’t forget to pull the chain.

Knee high to a grasshopper.

Well, Fiddlesticks!

Going like sixty.

‘ll see you in the funny papers.

Don’t take any wooden nickels.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills.

This can be disturbing stuff.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging.

See ya later, alligator!

After while, crocodile.

Toodle oo, kangaroo.

Test your Inauguration IQ

1. Which president was lassoed on the parade reviewing stand?
   • A. Andrew Jackson
   • B. Theodore Roosevelt
   • C. Dwight Eisenhower
2. Which future president lost his hat at Zachary Taylor’s inauguration?
   • A. Franklin Pierce
   • B. James Buchanan
   • C. Abraham Lincoln
3. Who held the most inaugural balls, at 14?
   • A. Richard Nixon
   • B. Bill Clinton
   • C. Barack Obama
4. Which president’s inauguration was the coldest, at 7 degrees?
   • A. Harry Truman
   • B. John Kennedy
   • C. Ronald Reagan
5. Which president’s inauguration was the warmest, at 55 degrees?
   • A. William McKinley
   • B. Franklin Roosevelt
   • C. Ronald Reagan
6. Who was the first president to wear long pants rather than knee breeches at his inauguration?
   • A. James Madison
   • B. James Monroe
   • C. John Quincy Adams

Answers

1. C, Eisenhower, in a stunt with a rodeo rider, in 1953
2. C. Lincoln, at an inaugural ball in 1849
3. B, Clinton, in 1997
4. C, Reagan, in 1985, but it was moved indoors
5. C. Reagan, in 1981
6. C. John Quincy Adams