It's nice that other countries have all metric cookbooks; however, now in the
US we need an education materials and programs to help people cross the
learning barrier.
Regards, Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Vlietstra
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 4:05 AM
Subject: [USMA:38056] Re: Metric Cook Book
Try doing a search with google on "cookery book site:.za" or "cookery book
site:.au". Ausrtalia and South Africa are both fully metric
----- Original Message -----
From: STANLEY DOORE
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 6:58 AM
Subject: [USMA:38055] Metric Cook Book
To help people move from English units to metric in cooking, "Sunday Night
Suppers: Fast, Fun Surprising Meals for Family Traditions" by Barbara C Jones -
Cookbook Resources LLC, Highland Village TX was published in October 2006.
It's a paperback book of 284 pages.
The book uses conventional recipes as the base and then in a column to the
right it shows the metric equivalent. It's very readable and has explanations
of how to mix and bake/cook with each recipe.
For example under "Dad's Best Meal" for "Corned Beef Hash-N-Eggs:"
1 (15 ounce) can corned beef hash 425 g
1 (11 ounce) can mexicorn, drained 312 g
4 eggs
3/4 cup chili sauce 180 ml
The "Buttered Rolls" recipe follows:
2 cups of biscuit mix 480 ml
1 (8 ounce) carton sour cream 227 g
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted 120 ml
In other recipes it equates 0.5 kg for 1 pound of a bunch of broccoli and
ground beef.
Note the approximations used in American cooking. I guess this is close
enough. I'm not a cook to judge.
However, I understand that others use mass units for cups of flour and
sticks of butter etc. to provide more precision since it provides more
consistency. Producers of flour and other dry products use mass in packaging.
Mass is more accurate since products such as flour change volume as they settle
but they retain the same mass. Therefore, product labeling and recipe
decision-makers must decide which label to use for various types of products
which are most convenient and useable to consumers.
We see more packages on shelves which are rationalized in metric rather
than in English units. So, metric only labeling on packages shouldn't be a
problem as long as unit-pricing is used for every product.
This cookbook is another example that American enterprises are preparing
for hard conversion to International System of Units (SI), the modern metric
system. US federal and state governments need to get with it.
Regards, Stan Doore
