April 4, 2003
Last Week's Question - (paraphrased from Lori W) What is the nature (or ingredient) of "Devil's Food Cake" that has caused it to fall from the glorious state of "Angel Food Cake"? How and why did this fall from grace occur?
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Your Answers -
David W - Well, we're up north of the Badlands these days. It gets cold. No reason in going outside unless you're going somewhere warm. This, as a side note, has made us quite fat at the hip and ankles and with near perfect sweet teeth. When you speak of the "nature" of the cake, the one ingredient that took the Devil his demise, served with shining tuning fork and angel's milk, I think it's best just to mention the one thing, the only thing, that completes the transformation: cacahuatl.
Main Entry: ca·cao
Function: noun
Etymology: Spanish, from Nahuatl cacahuatl cacao beans
Date: 1555
1 : the dried partly fermented fatty seeds of a So. American evergreen tree (Theobroma cacao of the family Sterculiaceae) that are used in making cocoa, chocolate, and cocoa butter -- called also cacao bean, cocoa bean
2 : a tree having small yellowish flowers followed by fleshy pods with many seeds that bears cacao
Yes, it's true. Betty Crocker, just another minion really, folds the devil's pods into her batter. Sssssssssssss...
That's something NO angel cake can do!
Marc A -
response of marc adin: this is an offensive question and I repudiate it as rascist in tone and reality. I guess the devil's inherent "blackness" caused the black cake to fall from the pure aryan state of whiteness and glory. only angels are white so the devil must be black, as is the darkness of her soul as reflected in her cake's name and color. it happened because...may I guess here? because the angels were tempted by the evil and its darkness, as personified by the touch of evil represented by the color "black."
I am repelled by the nature of this question and the fact that it was put up on this site. this question reeks of sophomoric racism, and I shall not participate in this webzine from this moment foward.
[ editor's response - I've thought about this response to some time, mulling over whether my question was indeed threaded with latent racism. If it was, it was certainly unintended, and I apologize for any offense it may have caused.
That being said, I don't think it was. First off, this response is assuming that "blackness" is equated with "evil" often times in our language because of imbedded racism. Now this is possible, and I'd warrant it's even probable (I haven't done the research to either prove or disprove it). But the etymology of our language and the roots of our culture are far too complex for an armchair intellectual to draw such straight and easy parallels as "darkness=evil=racism". That's just too easy.
But let's ignore those complexities for a moment and assume the responder is correct, that there is some latent rascism. Does that make the question in and of itself offensive? Many of our words derive from unsavory connotations, but now are completely innocuous. Should we still be responsible for every previous usage of the word? I don't know...it's tricky on a number of levels.
I'm going to stop here, because this isn't the forum for lengthy exposition. Marc A. brings up good questions, but I think the hostile and aggressive nature of the response is both unwarranted and more offensive than how the original question ever could be construed.]
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This Week's Question - Okay, this week I'll attempt to return back to the harmless and sophomoric. There's enough strife every else without bringing the QotW into it. So: Why did "peas and carrots" become such a (relatively) vegetable popular mixture? What unites those two vegetables in a way that, say, "radishes and mushrooms" will never match?
Don't be bashful, Send in your Answers!
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