A friend in the U.S., L., recently sent me an American measuring cup. I’d asked for it because early in my blogging career I read on an expat blog that the British pint contains one more fluid ounce than the American pint. I tucked that information away in the back of my screaming brain to ponder at some time in the future when I suddenly become competent with numbers.
That’s another way of saying, I ignored the information. Even when I’m working with imperial measures, I don’t measure things by the pint, I measure them by the cup or the fluid ounce. But it nagged at me. What, I couldn’t help wondering at 3 a.m. when my brain was fizzing and the kitten had noticed I was awake and decided to see if he couldn’t sleep inside my nostril, if the ounce itself is different?
Nah, I told myself once morning came, my brain settled down, and the kitten had wandered off to play with the dog. They couldn’t do that to me. I’m a citizen.
I had good evidence for this. Not only a British passport, which they don’t hand out to non-citizens, but the fact that my American recipes work, even though I made every last one of them using British measuring cups.
Except cornbread. That doesn’t work. I’ve tried two or three recipes since I moved here, using cornmeal I brought from the U.S., and none of the results were worth eating. But okay, cornbread’s an American dish and doesn’t cross borders. I accepted that. Everything else was fine.
Except, irrelevantly, tomato sauce, but I don’t measure that, I just kind of combine it. Besides, it’s edible, just not the same as I made in the U.S. The canned tomatoes are British. Even the ones that claim to be Italian. That’s the only way I can account for it.
But back to ounces. I’ve been blogging since—oh, since whenever I started. A year ago? More a year ago? Have I explained that I don’t do numbers? Counting to one is beyond me. So it’s been something vaguely related to a year. Although the British year may be longer than the American one, so what does any of this mean, really, in the great scheme of things? The minute itself may be longer. I’m not about to split hairs.
However long it’s been, that’s how long it’s taken me to think, Y’know, maybe I should check on this fluid ounce thing. And so I asked if L. would send me an American measuring cup, and when she did I poured some water back and forth from hers to a British one and it didn’t come to the same marks.
I poured the water out, put both measuring cups in the drying rack, and refused to believe what, between them, they were telling me. I repeat: I’m a citizen. They can’t do this to me.
I tried again a couple of days later and got the same result, and I responded the same way, except that this time I thought, Maybe if I tried it with milk it would be different. Because milk’s white. It’s easier to read. It would give me the answer I wanted.
Finally I emailed L., explaining some of this (I hadn’t thanked her yet, so it was high time), although I made an effort to sound marginally saner than I do here, and she sent me a link. It turns out the British fluid ounce is 0.9607599ths of a U.S. fluid ounce. That just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? It’s exactly the kind of number the average home cook can work with.
This information, I decided, must explain the difference between the number of ounces in the British and U.S. pints—someone added the extra ounce so the pints come out even—and off I trotted to Google to confirm my insight.
Nope. The British pint equals 570 ml and the U.S. one equals 470.
Can you hear me screaming? One of the things I’m screaming is that you have to translate this mess into metric in order to compare it. Without the metric system, we couldn’t even discuss it, because in imperial measures it falls off the edge of the English language. We’d be reduced to pouring water on the floor and comparing the size of the spills.
So thank you for the measuring cup, L. I appreciate it and as soon as the medications and the meditation restore my equilibrium I’m going to make another batch of cornbread. My cornmeal’s only eight years old. It should be fine. And if not, what the hell, I got a blog post out of it.
And since we’re not discussing this, I should ask if you’ve noticed that expat is nothing but a fancy word for immigrant.
You’ve given me a good laugh this morning – thanks for that :-) The same problem of fluid measurements affects fuel for light aircraft – US built Pipers use US Gallons but are fuelled from pumps using British Gallons or the more universal Litres. Is it any wonder that we used to just ask for the tanks to be either filled up or filled to the tabs (6 hours or 4 hours flying in my old aircraft respectively). And then there’s Miles – US and UK are different but to confuse matters more… when driving in the uk we use Statute Miles, but aircraft/ships use Nautical Miles – they’re different too! That’s enough additional confusion for one morning – Have a Nice Day :-)
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I had no idea about any of that. Even the miles are different? I’m going back to bed and may not rejoin the world for months. (I’m glad your plane didn’t fall out of the sky due to a miscalculation. Or I assume it hasn’t.)
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I’m pleased to report that she’s still flying though I’m now retired from that hobby :-)
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A plane fell out of the sky in Canada, shortly after we switched to metric. Already confused between Imperial gallons and US gallons, a fueller now had to deal with liters, as well as pounds of fuel, and pumped in pounds instead of liters. An airliner with 300 people, flying from Toronto to Vancouver, had to set down, dead-stick, half way across the country in Manitoba. Google ‘Gimli Glider.’ :(
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Nightmare.
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Loved reading this. Very well written, well done. The solution of course is to abandon the madness of imperial measures (given the US having left the British Empire why in heaven’s name did they not switch to metric?).
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I think the metric system was linked to the French Revolution somehow. (I should look that up. Sometime.) So it wasn’t there for the U.S. to adopt initially. And–well, once a system’s in place, no matter how much of a mess it is, it’s hard to change.
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It was adopted by France as a result of the Revolution, but the ideas behind it had been around for a while. So I see no reason why they American’s couldn’t have adopted it. Here is a Wikipedia reference for you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
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I can’t say I followed the part of the Wikipedia entry about the units being natural, but I can’t argue that the U.S. shouldn’t have adopted it. (Double negative warning: I’m trying to agree there.) Once you get past the inevitable period where some fixed percentage of people are screaming and tearing their hair, it’s a lot easier to use.
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What happened to the days when, like my Grandma, you just measured by eye and threw it in a bowl. Grandma produced wonderful bakes and bread, only problem was when her 6 kids left home she couldn’t ‘downsize’ so still baked huge amounts – which I felt duty bound to help her eat!
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I don’t see quite what the problem was.
I admire the hell out of people who can bake like that, but I’d have to wreck a lot of cakes before came up with anything edible.
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Measuring by eye – the best way to cook :-) I don’t do a lot of baking but I do measure my spices for a Curry or a Mexican dish using eye and the palm of my hand – which is why my left hand is yellow from all the Turmeric ;-)
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…and your right hand untouchable from the chiles?
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Ach, just go with the flow
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…as it flows down the plughole.
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Hysterical! As one who struggles with being competent enough to boil water this would send me over the edge and around the bend.
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And when it drives you around the bend, there I’ll be, with half a dozen measuring cups, trying to figure out which one goes with which recipe.
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At least I’ll be I good company.
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As will I. In fact, I’ll look forward to it.
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That’s the answer, isn’t it! American recipes = American measuring thingies, British recipes = British measuring thingies. Unless it’s different in Ireland.
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I’m sure it is. Except that Northern Ireland’s still part of the U.K., so for all I know which set of measurements you use is a declaration of your political beliefs.
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Reblogged this on Praying for Eyebrowz and commented:
Need a good laugh this morning? You can thank me later for sharing notesfromtheuk.com.
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Thanks again, NanaN.
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Fab fun post as always! :-)
I don’t believe that British and American ounces (or miles) are different. But I do know that an American pint is 16 fluid ounces, and a British one is 20. Tested with beer, and as you do, sugar water for feeding bees. (I can make no advance on the nautical vs statute miles, and just accept that one.)
What happens with your cornbread, to make it inedible? I love a challenge, so want to try, too!
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I wish I knew how to answer the question. Some versions clearly had too much baking powder–they had that mouth-drying taste. Maybe because the British ounce is smaller–less flour and cornmeal to counterbalance the baking powder. Other versions I don’t remember what was wrong–it’s been years since I tried. All I remember for sure is that several recipes failed.
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Oh, yes that excess of baking powder feeling that the enamel is being stripped off your teeth. ugh!
My personal experience is that it isn’t worth trying to ‘translate’ recipes from US to UK or vice/versa. Something that was worked out in _volume_ (i.e. cups/fluid ounces) doesn’t translate directly to _weight_ (i.e. pounds & ounces/grams), because so few things weigh the same number of ounces as they measure. This may account for the reported difference in ounces that some have claimed.
Seriously, I’d like to know if you have better luck now that you’ve got measuring cups.
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The British translate 4 cups of flour to a pound and 2 cups of sugar ditto. With flour especially, that’s convenient since you don’t have to worry about whether it’s packed down in the cup so you don’t have to go through the whole song and dance about sifting, measuring, sifting, and praying to the great gods of flour that you got it right.
Stay tuned for a report on the cornbread. As soon as life settles down a bit (yeah, right) I’ll see what I can do about finding some cornmeal and give it a try.
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That’s funny. I guess that means that I drank more beer in England than I thought…I guess that’s OK. I can explain the cornbread. Cornmeal forgets how to combine into cornbread as you move it from the American South. It still tastes OK in the northeast and midwest, but not as good as it does in say, Georgia. It’s much worse in California and after crossing the ocean, there’s just no hope.
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Well, that explains it. Thanks. My mind is at rest.
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The British pint and the U.S. pint are precisely the same. It is just that the British don’t include the VAT. It is only before taxes that they differ. [snarf]
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Don’t do that. I scared the cat awake laughing at it.
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And people whined about the metric system in the U.S. during the Carter Administration. We still learned it in school though, and it helped me a lot.
By the way, ditch the cornmeal. There is oil in it that makes it go rancid. I know they have cornmeal over there, so bite the bullet, and buy more.
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I will ditch it. Thanks for the warning. I haven’t seen any for sale over here–the closest I’ve found in polenta, which looks like it’s ground more finely. But I’ll look online. Or live without it, since I’ve been doing that for years.
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I had been cooking with US measuring cups in the UK so I was aware of the difference in volumes – even though I didn’t know the mathematics behind it. Now my real issue is that I have to remember which recipes in my handwritten book in particular are UK and which are U.S. and then use the right set of measuring cups, spoons and jugs. I’m not a very accomplished baker anyway so it can all go horribly wrong if I muddle up my continents. I’m a good cook other than baking simply because I tend to cook by instinct rather than sticking to a recipe.
As for the definitions of “expat” and “immigrant”, based on the prejudices found in print journalism I rather think the difference between the two comes down to skin colour, mother tongue and income level.
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I suspect you’ve got the definitions of expat and immigrant nailed perfectly. As for the baking, yeah, just toss two sets of recipes into the mix. The situation wasn’t complicated enough without that.
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Next time you make your cornbread – toss out the standardized measurements. Just eyeball everything up…adjust for taste…and say a quick prayer to the Corn Woman of the Aztek.
What could possibly go wrong?
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With nine-year-old cornmeal and a recipe like that? Not a thing in the world.
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Not sure how happy you would be to know that is also how they count a billion in the UK is a million million and in the US its a thousand million.
UK= 1,000,000,000,000
US= 1,000,000,000
And the higher you go the worse it becomes
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I did actually read something about this but my mind went woozy and I forgot all about it. Which is easy to do since I seldom count to a billion. Y’know. I get to a million or so and my mind wanders. It’s a wonder anything gets done, isn’t it?
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I think I saw it on something like QI or Mock the week, because they wanted to know about the national debt and how it is calculated. I have to admit I seldom count up to 10, I have a three year old, so I count to 5 as a maximum
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I wonder if we calculate the national debt differently in the two countries.
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No, we do it the US way now, but it makes me wonder where the 1000 went when we changed
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I’m losing the will to live.
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I have chocolate biscuits if that will make you feel better
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Of course they will. And since they’re virtual, I won’t feel bad about breaking into them at 10 a.m.
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I love “pouring water on the floor and comparing the size of the spills”. Very funny! Cups and ounces are hilarious and illogical, and for the first time in a long time I’m glad I live in a metric country! thank you :)
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When they introduced the metric system to England, you’d have thought the world was ending. The more I know about the non-metric system, the better I understand why someone invented metric.
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yes, it’s so much simpler, even for maths-challenged people :)
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Even I can occasionally move a zero to the right (as in correct) side of the decimal point. Sometimes.
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that’s what I gathered :)
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Very nice, Ellen. You’re getting better and better, and drier, and sharper. I have been enjoying your writing for lo these many months. I assume you know that UK years have fourteen months, except when November and April don’t have an “r.”
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[Insert incoherent scream.]
Also, thanks, Mardi.
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Oh, now you’re just playing Fizbin from Star Trek!
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Finally, someone who understands.
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I get frustrated no end when I’m given metric units for recipes. I mean, I just about math myself into a bottle of lithium. Not one of those recipes has turned out well except jam. I reckon it’s hard to do jam wrong.
I love a good Jiffy cornbread mix for bread when I’m feelin too lazy to mix and fry. You want me to send you some Jiffy mix? You can always send me your address in my Contact Me. I don’t mind. If I lived there, I’d be dyin for the taste of home.
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Joey, that’s a really kind offer, but the postage is insane and Wild Thing, being a southerner, only really recognizes homemade cornbread as cornbread. But being the owner, now, of a certified U.S. measuring cup, I’m going to search out a source of cornmeal in this country and try again. Unless it’s something about the air here, it’s got to be possible to make the stuff.
I read your comment just after Gunta’s, which pointed out the once you realize you don’t have to convert metric recipes, they look a lot easier. As long as you have some kind of metric measuring tools. On the other hand, the phrase “metric myself into a bottle of lithium” is so good that I’d hate to convince you it’s easier than it looks.
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Not only are your posts hilarious, the comments often send me into fits of laughter. Trouble is, by the time I get here, I can’t seem to come up with anything half as brilliant. I just wish we could somehow convince us Americans that metric is soooo much easier to deal with as long as you don’t try to do any converting. Then again there’s the thing about needing two different sets of tools for the mechanics. Now that everything seems to come from China and seems to be made to metric, you’d think we at least have overcome that particular hurdle.
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The comments really are wonderful, but I may not survive anyone telling me about one more set of measures that are different in the U.S. and Britain.
I was initially paralyzed by the metric system–for no better reason than that it wasn’t what I was used to and I went into a kind of paralytic math trance. But you’re right, once you realize you don’t have to convert anything, it’s all possible. The measuring cups (and scales–yes, I finally got used to cooking with scales; it even seems normal now) are in both metric and imperial. Most of the measuring cups manage to be readable, even with two systems on one cup, although I did get one a while back (I’d broken my last one) that’s pretty close to the border of incomprehensibility. So except for scales (which the Brits used even before they introduced the metric system), I haven’t needed any new equipment.
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Back in the late 1970s the UK was (supposedly) well on the way to going metric, but the transition was a nightmare. I bought a Ford car that was built in the UK, but Ford had sourced a lot of the car’s parts from continental countries, so said “foreign” parts had metric size nuts and bolts and screws. However, the UK sourced parts still used Imperial size connectors. So to do any maintenance work on the car, you had to have a set of imperial size spanners and a set of metric ones.
Things have moved on since then, thank goodness, but we still haven’t fully metricated: petrol (gasoline) is sold in litres, but official car consumption figures are still quoted in miles per gallon; some footpath signs show the distance in metres or kilometers, but all mileages on road signs are in miles; supermarkets sell most liquid products in litres or milliliters, but pubs still sell beer in pints and half pints….
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Well, that all makes sense.
I remember when foreign cars were new to the U.S., so mechanics didn’t have metric anythings. Anyone who broke down in between major cities in a foreign car was in real trouble. On the other hand, they were at least entirely metric, not mixed. That really is one of those what-were-they-thinking? creations.
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Seems that change is always rough on some folks. Here in the US we have the same double standard with spanners and other tools. O_o
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I was paralyzed for a while by the metric system. Then you (or I, or whoever) use if a few times and it works and you don’t have to translate it and you almost forget you once had a problem with it.
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I have inadvertently purchased cookbooks with the measures all in metric standards. I stare at them and blink, loudly, trying to decide whether I am really that hungry for spatchcocked chicken.
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I’m not sure what spatchcocking involves, but I’m almost sure the answer is no. Not because of the metric system but because it doesn’t sound safe. Or even moral.
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Be assured, it has nothing to do with bestiality…at least, not usually.
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Your comment caused one of those what-were-we-talking-about moments. Oh. Right. Spatchcocking chicken. Of course.
Thanks for the reassurance. I feel so much better now. And very little the wiser, which I think I like.
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When my US daughter was visiting her husband’s family in London at Christmastime, she wanted to make some of our family cookie recipes. It was quite a challenge to convert them, especially because teaspoons aren’t the same size either. We did wind up converting a lot of the measurements to metric.
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What, even the teaspoons? Is nothing sacred??
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Up until I read this, I thought that the entire world, outside of the US, had transitioned to the metric system generations ago.
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It’s well within living memory here, and in the early days a bunch of shopkeepers who (briefly) refused to change over were calling themselves the metric martyrs.
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ha fun read and interesting! Having come from (USA) lbs and fluid oz….I am still eyeballing my measurements here in Sweden. I don’t generally like to follow a recipe in general. We joke, anything I make is never the same way twice. It is like a whole new exciting entree each time….I treat the dl measuring cup like a half of an American measuring cup…and a dash is a dash!
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And a pinch is still a pinch, which is to say never quite the same amount twice.
I can cook the way you describe, but I have to be more careful with baking or it’ll all go pear shaped, as they say here. I know I can mess around with some ingredients, but flour, baking powder, baking soda, all that sort of thing? I think of them as magic formulas and if I get one syllable wrong I’ll end up making the cat grow feathers or something.
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Reblogged this on Dream Big, Dream Often and commented:
Introducing Notes From the U.K.!!
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Many thanks. I’m seeing some new faces this morning in response.
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So, can you make me some Bubble and Squeak and send it to New Mexico? I don’t have a clue what it is, or could possibly be, but I have every confidence that you’ll overcome any numerical obstacles.
Yum, yum, I can’t wait!
P.S. Very funny post!
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For bubble and squeak, you don’t have to measure, so I can make it. It’s the sending that’s going to give us trouble. It involves leftover potatoes and leftover cabbagey things, amounts depending on what you’ve got. The day after Christmas–which by law involves brussels sprouts, producing many leftovers–the brussels sprouts end up in the bubble and squeak. If you hide them among the potatoes and toss in enough butter or fat, people will eat anything. (Actually I like brussels sprouts. I may be the only person on the planet who does.) Here’s a gourmet-ish version on the BBC’s web site. It measures, but take the amounts as a poetic way of saying “some.”
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Ah! Thus the name “Bubble and Squeak.” God bless the British for naming a dish for its gastric after-effects!
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Oh. Maybe that is why it’s called that. I’ve wondered. Because as far as I can tell it doesn’t bubble and it doesn’t squeak.
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I love brussels sprouts, too, but they can’t be the supermarket variety. I’ve been told that they have to go through a freeze in order to start producing some sugars and most supermarket bs comes from California or Mexico. No freezes there.
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The ones here are pretty well guaranteed not to come from California or Mexico, but I can’t say I’ve noticed a huge difference. Maybe I’m just not paying attention. And now I’ll have to see if the stores list where they’re from. I’ve just assumed they’re British because–well, because they do grow well here. But I never looked to see if I’m right about that.
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I’m an engineer by trade – half of my team is in the US and half in the UK. The aggravation we have over units and measurements is enough to make my head spin round.
In the meantime, an equally entertaining fight goes on in our family kitchen between me (cooking by the ‘bung it in, oh that looks about right’ method) and my adult autistic son, who needs to measure down to the nearest quarter gram. He does make some nice cakes though… :). Mir xx
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You remember what happened with–I think it was the Hubble Telescope? Somebody assumed they knew what measuring system they were working in and they were wrong, and they sent the thing up into space and it didn’t work. I have no idea how they fixed it.
Cakes are well suited to someone who measures to the quarter gram. I wish I did but I just don’t have it in me.
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I work in aerospace, so we can’t afford to have any mistakes! The Hubble error was an expensive blunder, but the mission that put it right was pretty clever – they put in an extra lens, effectively giving it a pair of glasses).
I am too clumsy / short-sighted / lazy to measure things properly ;).
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Great explanation of what they did with the Hubble. I never felt I understood it till now. But you surprise me about not measuring. I’d have assumed that the kind of mind that turned to engineering would be endlessly precise–not like my own chaotic self.
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I switch off when I get home :)
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Good to be able to do that.
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Speaking about ounces we have a coffee shop in my town where everything is measured in ounces. And it seems like customers find masochistic pleasure in calculating and converting grams into ounces to buy some tea or coffee. Maybe it’s in human nature… We find something more tasty, if we made efforts to get it.
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That fits with a theory some writers hold to: that if you ask more of the reader, they’ll be more involved and–umm, I’m not sure what follows from that. Enjoy it more? Get more out of it? Flatter the writer? Whatever it is, enjoy the coffee. And bring a calculator.
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I hear your screaming! I’m one of those guess-and-hope-for-the-best-(of British…)-type cooks. I love the irrelevant photo of Corfe Castle as well. :)
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If guess-and-hope works, I’m all for it. I can get away with that in some things, but not (for the most part) in baking. Which explains all the screaming.
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Yes baking must be precise – and that would be why my cakes are so weird! :) And I had the random thought of an “Englishman’s home being his castle” – with reference to the beautiful photo. Thank you for your lovely comment.
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There isn’t enough left of the castle to make an appealing home anymore, but it is breathtaking.
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Yep, rather like the castle of my mind right now. But Corfe Castle is breathtaking in its ruins.
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Absolutely.
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