Covid-19 lockdown check-in

[Maladict]

Are pounds and inches the same everywhere?

Inches are relative to the beholder.

[HVC]

Interesting - apparently UK and US measurements are the same for ounces and pounds and then start diverging. So a pound is 453g here and there

This would be useful if US cookbooks didn't use cups as the measurement which can present challenges

You don't have measuring cups in the uk?  Or I guess if you do, cups isn't a measurement on it.

[Sheilbh]

You don't have measuring cups in the uk?  Or I guess if you do, cups isn't a measurement on it.

They exist. But they're not used as a unit of measurement generally, I think probably because they're not that universal. So I cook a lot and can bake, but I don't have measuring cups. I have a set of scales and a jug.

I am  stupid and it took a lot longer than it should have for me to realise it but it drove me crazy when I realised that you couldn't just convert a cup measurement to x grams, which has made some US cookbooks I have challenging. More modern ones seem to include cup measurement and weight.

[Duque de Bragança]

Austria uses metric of course, but has a minor quirk. When ordering cold cuts at the deli counter in a supermarket you will not order in grams but dekagrams instead, or deka for short, i.e. instead of 60 grams of prosciutto you'd ask for 6 deka of it.

Heh, never seen dekagrams used everyday life before.

When I was a kid, some grocers still used the Spanish pound.

So Spain has stopped using the arroba (@) and the almud? Allahu akbar!

[The Larch]

This would be useful if US cookbooks didn't use cups as the measurement which can present challenges

Or a bewildering amount of different kinds of spoons. 

[The Brain]

In Sweden recipes still use a lot of various spoons etc, but they are standardized to milliliters etc (unless you read some grandmother's old recipe).

[The Larch]

Austria uses metric of course, but has a minor quirk. When ordering cold cuts at the deli counter in a supermarket you will not order in grams but dekagrams instead, or deka for short, i.e. instead of 60 grams of prosciutto you'd ask for 6 deka of it.

Heh, never seen dekagrams used everyday life before.

When I was a kid, some grocers still used the Spanish pound.

So Spain has stopped using the arroba (@) and the almud? Allahu akbar!

Arrobas are really old-timey.  I just had to check that it's 11'5 kilos. Apparently it corresponds to how much stuff a donkey can carry.


in Galicia we used to have a really particular unit for field size, the "ferrado" (somehow equivalent to the Castillian "celemín"), which changed from one village to the next. It amounted to the minimum size of a field able to produce a certain amount of cereal (between 12 and 20 kilos, depending on the particular cereal), also called "ferrado". It is still used informally by older people in the countryside.

[Grey Fox]

I hate having to weight liquids when using recipes from european sources. Either tell me cups or ml quantity, ffs.

[Sheilbh]

I hate having to weight liquids when using recipes from european sources. Either tell me cups or ml quantity, ffs.

1g of water = 1ml

Same would go for most liquids used in cooking.

in Galicia we used to have a really particular unit for field size, the "ferrado" (somehow equivalent to the Castillian "celemín"), which changed from one village to the next. It amounted to the minimum size of a field able to produce a certain amount of cereal (between 12 and 20 kilos, depending on the particular cereal), also called "ferrado". It is still used informally by older people in the countryside.

I think the origin of acre is similar. It's the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day

[Gups]

No idea about quarters. Also obvs I use imperial for human heights. So thinking about it, it's basically imperial = human size measurements, distance and things that are measured in pints and metric = everything else.

Imperial for everything except temperature for me but reasonably bilingual

[celedhring]

I hate having to weight liquids when using recipes from european sources. Either tell me cups or ml quantity, ffs.

1g of water = 1ml

Same would go for most liquids used in cooking.

Yeah, I love how they tied volume to weight of water, metric system

[The Brain]

Why in the fuck would anyone use weight for liquids?

[garbon]

I hate having to weight liquids when using recipes from european sources. Either tell me cups or ml quantity, ffs.

I use my scale.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, I love how they tied volume to weight of water, metric system

Beautiful French rationalism

[HVC]

Yeah, I love how they tied volume to weight of water, metric system

Beautiful French rationalism

But then they went too far and messed up the calendar. that was the turning point of the revolution. all was lost on that crazy day.