Friday, April 17, 2015

A healthy post





To my delight my colleague Dave brought in homemade cinnamon buns to share with his co-workers yesterday. I'm one of his co-workers! I'm like, actually, his favorite co-worker, but don't tell the others. The cinnamon buns were accompanied by a tub of buttercream. Dave was emphatic about his buttercream. "This is real buttercream." He wanted us to know. "Butter and powdered sugar. There's plenty. Apply it generously."

Okay. 

I enjoyed these cinnamon rolls. The buttercream was particularly good, but I foolishly refused to heat the things up and so stole some of the pleasure from my treat. One of my other co-workers emerged from the break room to say delightedly that he had taken "a healthy amount of buttercream".

I enjoyed this curious use of the word "healthy". I appreciate a word whose appropriate uses can actually run opposite to itself. As you well know the most common meaning of the word "healthy" is "good for you" or "imparting good health". But here it has evolved from that meaning to mean instead "large" or "of goodly size".  So, a healthy portion of buttercream, that is a healthy portion of a huge chunk of butter mixed with half a bag of refined sugar, would, in one sense, be a small portion. But a healthy portion of it also means a large portion. I just think someone could have a lot of fun with that, I mean, if they were a really, really good blogger, maybe just a little better than me.






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