Hmmm....Amish Friendship Bread.

[j_cheney]

Finished the first draft of Iron Shoes. Came in at just under 31K, and I'll probably zip it out to the brave people who actually said they wanted to read it in the morning. First draft, folks, remember that!

asakiyume had a lovely note earlier about snarkiness by Merriam-Webster (regarding principle/principal). In a separate incident, I got into a discussion regarding my own word rantiness. (Gee, you didn't realize I had word issues? Where have you been all this time?)

My big ones?
1)Further(furthest)/farther(farthest)
You can walk far, farther, or farthest. These are words for distance. You cannot walk fur, further, or furthest.
2) Enormity/enormousness
Enormity denotes terribleness. It is not a reference to SIZE. You use enormousness for that.
3) Continuous/Continual
Any Calculus teacher can tell you the difference between these. You almost never mean 'continuous.' Almost never. If you don't know the difference, it's easiest to stick with continual.
4) Prodigal/Returning
Wait, those two don't look alike! No, they don't. Nor do they mean the same thing.

Those are the ones that I'm most likely to jump on in a critique. Which are your bugaboo word mistakes?

And, as hinted, the Amish Friendship Bread recipe

Amish Friendship Bread
(I don't know where this recipe comes from. The presence of a Ziploc bag in the recipe hints that it's not an ancient Amish secret.)

Starter:
1 C sugar
1 C flour
1 C milk

Allow the starter to stand for 10 days in a Ziploc bag with as much air worked out as possible. "Mush" once daily. (In other words, massage the bag for, say, two minutes once a day.)

After 10 days, put starter mix in a bowl and add:

1 C oil
1/2 C Milk
3 eggs
1/2 t vanilla
1 t salt

In a separate bowl, mix:

2 C flour
1 C sugar
1/2 t soda
1 large box vanilla instant pudding mix

1) Mix ingredients in each bowl, and then add dry ingredients to wet and mix well again.
2) Grease 2 loaf pans & coat with cinnamon and sugar.
3) Divide batter between pans and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the top.
4) Bake @ 325 for 1 hour.


That's what I've got. If someone has a link to a better version, put it in comments, and I'll check it out.

This makes a very rich and dense bread. I personally like mine plain with sugar and cinnamon, but I've seen recipes that add nuts, chocolate chips, etc.

Comments

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Lie/Lay. One takes a direct object, the other doesn't.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

And sadly, that's the one I'm most likely to struggle with. (And for GrammarCheck to get wrong, as well, I've noted.)

When I'm not sure, I check that one with jjschwabach. She always gets it right. ;o)

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Lie is intransitive, and doesn't take a direct object.

Lay is trasitive, and does.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I think that the confusion stems from the past tense, in most cases, as lie becomes lay and lay becomes laid.

Ok, that just sounds weird.

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

What, you don't like me talking about a continuous distribution? Or a continuous function?

I accidentally get nailed on discrete/discreet. I mean, in Physics we deal with discrete cases and discrete spectra, which is the oppositve of continuous by the way, so...

Stanley Schmidt at Analog kindly pointed it out to me, and we've had a conspiracy of physicists ever since. (grin) And I think my own personal in-house grammar queen, Mrs. Dr. Phil, has hung around me too long because she didn't spot the discrete/discreet mismatch either. (double-trouble-grin)

Dr. Phil

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

You missed discrete/discreet?

I had a mantle/mantel once that I must have missed fifty times before my mother commented on it. It's terrifying how often something like that can get past one.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

Finished the first draft of Iron Shoes.

*\o/*

In a separate incident, I got into a discussion regarding my own word rantiness.

Hurrah! I helped inspire (part of) a blog post!

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

You are awesome!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I too like the Amish friendship bread just plain---and I don't even add the instant pudding, because when I got the recipe, I just couldn't believe that the Amish used instant pudding! (But maybe they do; I really don't know...) Whatever, it does make a delicious bread.

Enjoyed your word snark, too :D Another one it made me think of is historic/historical. The first is generally used to mean momentous and of special note in history, whereas the second is generally used to mean "relating to history".... but, that's only generally....

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Yes, I didn't thing the pudding was an ancient addition either...

I can definitely see people messing up historic/historical ;o) (Not me, of course)

[displacedtexan.livejournal.com]

Data. I hate it when people "correct" me and change the usage to "data is".

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

So very true ;o)

[spcpthook.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately my cookbooks are in my storage shed. COming from a Pennsylvania Dutch area I have several cookbooks with recipes for Amish Friendship bread which don't include things like ziploc baggies and instant pudding. My daughter's been wanting me to dig them out. Maybe we'll go look tonight.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I'll bet you do! MMmmmm ;o)

[matthewsrotundo.livejournal.com]

Unique.

It means one of a kind. Not unusual, strange, or even rare. One of a kind. Something cannot be "very unique."

Beg the question.

It doesn't mean "raise the question." If you mean to say "raise the question, say it. If you don't know the very specific meaning of "beg the question," don't use it.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, advertising people know that the more adjectives you layer onto something, the more 'special' the common man thinks it is ;o)

Therefore, we run across 'totally unique' 'very unique' 'extremely unique'....all those lovely combos.

I don't ever use 'beg the question' because I'm not sure of the origin. I'll look it up now.

[gabriel-writes.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this one counts or not, but I get hung up on enquire/inquire.

As far as the "friendship," bread goes, I guess it would have to depend on how conservative their particular bishop is as to whether or not a ziploc baggie would be considered proper or not. Many of the recipes I have seen attributed to the Plain People seem to use plenty of Campbell's soups...

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

enquire/inquire...I wonder if that's a British spelling problem.

We have Mennonites this far south, and they aren't at all adverse to using store bought products.