Look Mom! No measuring cups!

It's been quite a while since I've been able to post because during the flurry that was our youth weekend I managed to get sick. Then like any good girl with out insurance I tried avoiding the doctor for a few days and finally had to break down and go (found out it costs me nothing to go to the walk in center here and I could make an appointment so all I paid for was my prescription which only cost 7.20 pounds if you wondered. Try doing that for under 10 dollars in the states... that's for another blog) .

I have thoroughly explored and been won over by the metric system in my kitchen! "GASP!" I have for the past 3 months been trying to navigate both my American cookbook measurements, and the measurements I get all of my food and any new recipes in. Now, don't get me wrong I have nothing against my cups but I have found some very nifty uses for the grams and kilos I get here. Luckily I was blessed enough to find a digital scale in the house when we got here so my first attempts at "British" cooking weren't too painful. But since then I've improved a bit and learned to use the scale to it's full advantage.

For a girl who loves to bake, as you may well know if you've read my previous posts, I have spent an awful lot of time washing up the multitude of cups and half cups and measuring spoons that my baking leaves behind. The wonderful thing about my scale is that now I can simply lay down a sheet of grease proof paper (or baking parchment, or cling wrap) set the scale to zero and spoon on my first ingredient to where I need it then dump it in the bowl I'm using. The great part is that I can use that same paper to measure all of my ingredients because I won't be dipping it into anything so when I'm finished all I do is ball up the paper, put it in the bin, and go on about my merry way with no cups to clean. Or... Or... and I really love this one... I can set the bowl on the scale and set it to zero measure in my first ingredient, then set to zero again and measure in my second ingredient and so on! Hooray!!!! That is, as long as you carefully monitor as you put things in the bowl other wise you wind up trying to scoop sugar out and all you get is flour and ... well I'm sure we've all had that moment.

As wonderful as my new scale is I really don't see anyone in the states really wanting to figure out how many grams are in a cup of flour. Believe me I've tried and even with the internet it's not fun realizing that every ingredient has a different weight and most of the conversion websites disagree. So until Betty Crocker goes metric I suspect the joys of no measuring cups will escape most of us. On second thought I don't think I would trade my picture cookbook for any newfangled one no matter what the benefit. Supplement, maybe but not trade, it's a matter of tradition :)