All Measured Up

I remember in grade school first being introduced to the metric system. I thought to myself... why do we have to learn two different ways to measure things? So for tests and quizzes I could rattle off whatever the teacher wanted to know about liter, meter, gram, and so on and then how many milli-somethings, centi-somethings, and kilo-somethings were in each one.

... but as you very well know "use it, or loose it" applies to just about anything. (maybe except riding a bike... does anyone forget that?) So when I first moved to Germany, I had to dust off the corners of my memory where I had stored, what at the time seemed like "useless information". But even as much as I hate to admit it, the metric system really is the way to go. Everything is divisible by 10, no cheat charts needed to tell you how many cups are in a pint, how many ounces in a pound, no need to work with fractions, or rattle off silly measurements like 7/16th of an inch! (crazy as is may seem, I've even seen 32nds of an inch too!)

With all that said, that is why I love bake using German recipes... it's so easy! Zitoronkuchen (lemon cake), a recipe from my mother-in-law, has become one of my favorites... it's even become my "birthday cake"! I just have to pull out my kitchen scale and a bowl... 200 g of this, 200 g of that, 200 g of something else, mix and your done! No dry measuring cups, no wet measuring cups, no converting this or that... just the way baking should be.

But despite the fact that I have "converted" to the metric system in almost everything that I do now... I still use inches to sew! I guess some silly habits are sometimes too hard to break.