Metric Made Easy

One of the many challenges to living in the UK was learning the metric measurements for cooking. Let me start out by saying that I do not come by cooking naturally. Cooking by itself is a new challenge for me. My culinary talent can best be described as the order out approach. Before moving to the UK, I had microwave popcorn, high speed access and on line menus for all the delivery services. The Chinese restaurant around the corner was so accustomed to stopping at my house, that the driver often showed up just expecting I had an order.

Then miraculously, I am transported to a lovely little village with no cooked delivery services, no seven-elevens, and no nearby Chinese take out. Recipes call for metric measurements. The oven has metric temperature (luckily it is not an AGA, but I will save that for another story), and strange symbols for cooking styles like baking or broiling. The markets don’t have the few ingredients that I know how to cook with, including microwave popcorn. There are interesting vegetables like swedes (I always thought it was a nationality), and lots of different words that we need to get use to like crisps and biscuits (chips and cookies).

Faced with the challenge first of cooking, and then cooking with metric, I learned to survive. After a few frustrating attempts, I found even metric measurements can be understood if you start with some wine.