Rule of thumb: A pint's a pound, the world around.

The rest is just math.

Just what gardenlad said - my dad taught me that when I was a child, and I've used it ever since. Not too many people seem to know it, so it's a fun bit of knowledge.

Fruits and veggies are sold in many farm markets and farm stands by the pint, quart, peck and bushel. It's an old system based on the volume of the packing boxes, I guess. When I bring a pint or quart of strawberries to be paid for, they always weigh it anyway since they are actually sold by the pound.

Bigger volumes, like half a bushel, say of apples, are generally not weighed but sold by whatever volume is listed, though the price is still all based on pounds.

2 pints (pt) = 1 quart (qt)
8 quarts = 1 peck (pk) = 16 pints
4 pecks = 1 bushel (bu) = 32 quarts

Gosh! Pecks and bushels went out with the Ark, I thought! We never had to deal with those, thank goodness. They were referred to briefly when I was at school, but as very dated measurements we didn't have to bother our heads about.

Mind you, I still tend to think in stones instead of pounds for body weight. 14lb is one stone. I can't visualise someone of 150lb, but it's easy for me to visualise somebody of 11 stone (and in rounded figures, they're the same) or 70kg (roughly the same for visualisation purposes). It's what I should be, but am not!!

Anyway, thanks for the mnemonic.

Only thing measured in stone, in the US, is the weight a horse carries in a race.

Pecks and bushels are still quite common measurements in America.

Leagues never caught on here at all. But chains and rods are units of length commonly used by surveyors.

One source of metric confusion: "Kilimeter (sp) stuck on the Army's tongue. So, ever since the Viet Nam war, Americans who use metrics (very few) measure distance in "klicks." But in Europe, "klick" refers to a kiligram, which is roughly 2 1/2 pounds.

How things are measured can have an effect on things. In most of the English speaking world, dry measurements are assumed to be level. That is, a level tablespoon, a level cupful. In American recipes it's assumed that the measurement is rounded. That's why, as one example, an English gil is 1/5 of a cup, but an American gil is 1/4 cup.

Actually Lad, A kilo is 2.2 pounds. The math on that one is actually pretty easy to do. I think modern american recipes use level measurements. That's the way I learned. I think we've had this discussion before though.

I agree with Melly on the level measurements. Every recipe book I run across (barring community or historic ones, where recipes sometimes specify a sifter of flour, a teacup of something, or a heaping tablespoon, etc.) assumes level measurements and is quite specific about that.

For example, many baking recipes will call for "dip, level, pour" as the method of measure.

I think we can thank Fanny Farmer for standardizing American measurements.

I personally prefer weights and appreciate the fact that many cookbooks now are printed with dual measuring systems. I'm just fine with metric; it's easy to use.

Carol

Actually Lad [Sorry about the piling on. :-)], chains and rods are no longer commonly used, although surveyors are familiar with them because they sometimes need to use information from old documents. Land measurements today are made in feet, tenths of a foot and hundreths of a foot. If you have measuring tapes in both inches and tenths of a foot, you need to be very conscious about which one you are using because inches and tenths of a foot look very much alike.

In structural engineering, the common unit of measure for loads is the Kip, which is 1000 pounds and abbreviated simply as K, another example of engineers applying the decimal system to English units of measure. You might think of a Kip as a kilopound, although it's never said that way.

And then, just to add a little spice to measurement in the construction industry, we have the cubic yard (3'x 3'x 3'), which is used for concrete, sand, gravel, soil and that sort of thing.

Jim

Lad, sorry about the actually thing, it sounds worse now that I look at it again. I deal with the kilo/pounds conversion on a regular basis since I'm a pounds girl living in a kilo world. I'm still working on miles/kilometers and F/C. And then there is dollar/euro - add 25% to the euro price to get dollars. I have a few conversions that I know and I usually just interpolate a little (and guess) when I need to convert one I don't know automatically. I just can't seem to get the conversion formulas to stay in my brain.

Daisy, I first experienced the stone thing when we caught an episode of biggest loser UK on our satellite tv. We couldn't believe we watched it.

For convenience (and it works very well) it's 1kg per 2lb even. That's because 1lb is 500g, half pound is 250g, quarter pound is 125g. It's the ROUNDING of the conversions that throws Americans out, but it's a very simple system the way we do it.

All our measurements (Imperial and Metric) have always been level. There's too much room for error with rounded measurements, I reckon, although to be honest I'm of the opinion that in most cooking, close enough is near enough.

Funny, here in Queensland, people still refer to blocks of land in so many 'perches' in size. But then, Queensland is notorious for being half a century behind the rest of the country! Mind you, if you ask someone 'how big is a perch?' all you'll get for your trouble is a very blank look.

My brother is a theatre techie working on plans for a Cirque du Soleil show. He told me the other day that someone on his team, just to see if he was awake, sent him a set of specs for moving pieces in which everything was in the expected metres per second except for one, which was given in furlongs per fortnight.

When I passed on this tale to BF, who has an engineering degree, he said that a measurement system based on furlong, stone, and fortnight was sort of a running joke at engineering school (whether just his or others I don't know).

This led to some hilarity as we converted some standard canning units. I can't remember what microscopic fraction of a cubic furlong we determined were in each of my pint jars, but if they were filled with salsa, I think we figured they should be processed for about .00099 fortnights in a water-bath canner.

Z

"...sort of a running joke at engineering school (whether just his or others I don't know)."

Unlikely it was only his engineering school, unless he attended the same one I did.

Multiple choice question (Zabby's BF will have no trouble with this one):

Bushels per light year is a unit of measure for:

a. length

b. area

c. volume

d. velocity

We techies can be amused by the most ordinary things. And, as I am fond of saying, "geeks are the salt of the earth". Boston is a good place to say that because anyone within earshot will probably agree. Because they are one, or their wife is.

Jim

OK, Jim, I'm stumped.

Bushels are a measurement of volume. Light years are a measurement of distance (or, among your choices, length). I can't see any relation between them.

But, of course, I never went to engineering school.

Lad, what is volume? It's length cubed. So volume per unit length is area, similar to the cross section of a wide-mouth pint--convert one pint to cubic inches, divide by the height, and you have the area of the circle in square inches.

Cute, Jim, this reminds me of something I learned in fluids class about how to relate variables. Say you know 4 different things affect the output, then you take the units of the 4 things & the output, convert them all to only length, mass, and time (e.g. volume = length cubed, force = mass * length / time squared), and then use this formula to find out whether the 4 things are multiplied or divided, squared, etc., to get the output. Cool for when there's no equation for what you're working on. (Of course you could use the other 4 or 6 basic SI units for other subjects.)

I can't seem to remember the conversion from cubic inches to fluid ounces. I've needed it for baking or something and had to go to onlineconversion.com. Of course for cakes the surface area matters most when substituting pans, but maybe it was a pie or something. Once I get into fluid ounces I can go to bushels or wherever I need.

Below is a link to onlineconversion.com. Try to stump it with an obscure unit, I bet you can't.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: this site rules!

>So volume per unit length is area, similar to the cross section of a wide-mouth pint--convert one pint to cubic inches, divide by the height, and you have the area of the circle in square inches.Y'all notice that blank look?

Two things I don't understand. First is your explanation. And second, why would anyone _want_ to measure the area of a jar mouth?

And whatever happened to PiR2? Or is it 2PiR---I always get those two confused. But, then again, I often confuse my 7s and 9s too.

Good thing I'm a writer, cuz as a mathematician I suck.

It seems to me that engineering is 90% measurement. Melissa gave a perfect example of that. If you can get your teenage nieces and nephews to understand that, it might open up a good career for some of them.

Break it down this way Lad:

area = length x length

volume = length x length x length

OR

volume = area x length

"And whatever happened to PiR2?"

A = PiR2 is the formula for the area of the mouth of that wide-mouth jar (a circle). R (the radius) is measured in units of length and gets squared (length x length, which is area). So the result of PiR2 is a measurement in units of area.

Pi is just a number. It has no units. Why is it there? Because A = R2 would give us the correct units of measure but too small a result. Multiplying by Pi makes the result just the right size.

See what you started, daisyduckworth? Probably a lot of eyes are glazing over now. But we're still on topic. Sort of. :-)

Jim

P.S. If engineering is 90% measurement and showing up is 90% of life, what does that tell you about the life of an engineer?

Lad, I wouldn't need to find the cross-sectional area of a pint jar, and anyway it's easier to measure the radius & find it directly as you say. But say I have some stock sitting in a big measuring cup in my fridge hardening up the fat. After I scrape off the fat I have 1.5 quarts left. I want to freeze it in a big plastic tub left over from catered chicken salad, but I don't feel like washing the tub if I find out the stock doesn't all fit. Let me beg the question that I want to freeze all this stock in one piece, let's say because I have to make a vat of soup in 2 weeks to serve at an apple buttering.

Here is today's math challenge!
OK, I have 1.5 quarts of stock. Convert this to fluid ounces. Lad I doubt you need these formulas, but for others playing along, [1 quart = 4 cups], [1 cup = 8 fluid ounces].

Now, the container is 7 inches tall and has a diameter of 4 inches. Convert this to cubic inches using the formulas [diameter = 2 * radius], [area of circle = pi * radius squared], [pi = approx. 3.14], [volume of cylinder = area of circular cross section * height of cylinder].

So, does the container have enough volume to hold all the stock? Use the conversion 1 fluid ounce = 1.805 cubic inches. Winner gets a year's supply of thin-walled mayonnaise jars to use for freezing stock (see "Jars Cracked in Freezer" thread for warranty information).

Melissa

Hmmm - from glassy eyed one here - is Pi still 3.1416 or did I forget that too?

Bejay

Yes, is still is, if you round it to *only* four decimal places. :-)

Akira Haraguchi, a 60-year-old Japanese mental health counselor, set what he thinks is a math world record. Haraguchi recited pi to 100,000 decimal places, breaking his previous record of 83,341 decimal places. Pi, as you'll remember from geometry class, is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It's typically known as 3.14 but it actually can be extended into infinity.

I don't remember how long it took. It was many hours, a couple of days I think. He was allowed periodic rest breaks. I can't imagine how he remembered where he left off after a break, to say nothing of remembering the order of 100,000 digits.

Jim

> "...sort of a running joke at engineering school (whether just his or others I don't know)."

> Unlikely it was only his engineering school, unless he attended the same one I did.

Not impossible, jim, but perhaps statistically unlikely. (It was Vanderbilt, btw.)

I'm back home now and much enjoying all this.

I'm a words person by trade and general inclination, but math was one of my favourite subjects in high school --- in part because I was lucky enough to have some fine teachers, but mostly because it was *so neat* what you could do with it. I've forgotten how to do most of it now; primarily I remember only the feeling of "wow!"

but some of the most basic concepts have stuck, and I've been frequently grateful for how they help one in making decisions: determining real evidence from opinion in a debate, for example.

A little mathiness also helped my love life. I think BF first decided he was serious about me when I told him that in the seventh grade, when we learned about pi and a little "extra info" box in our text gave it to 100 digits, I memorized them. (I think I would be LESS likely to fall in love with someone who admitted to doing this, as it shows a)a tendency show off, and b) a clear lack of any concept of how to use one's time wisely. But then there are all kinds of reasons I wouldn't ever date myself. Good thing BF has different standards.)

Melissa, good luck with your apple buttering ;-) (I think some of my educational publisher clients should hire you to write examples and exercises)

>Here is today's math challenge! Sorry, Melissa. Rather than go through that falderol, I'd merely eyeball the container and the amount of stock, and know right away whether the latter would fit in the former.

To the best of my recollection, I have _never_ misjudged whether a particular amount would fit in a particular container---much to Friend Wife's bemusement, because she almost always guesses wrong. Fortunately, her guesses usually are towards too large a container; so there's no great loss.

My real question, though, is what are you going to do with that tub that remains unwashed after holding chicken salad? Hopefully by now you have either washed it or deep-sixed it.

Augh! Gross! What I meant was, the old chicken salad container starts out clean, but if I pour in half the stock and then have to switch to a bigger container, then I have to wash out the chicken salad container even though I didn't really use it. I definitely do not store old dirty containers just in case I want to wash them later & use them. :-)

In case anyone's wondering, in my example the stock just barely fits. And just to prove that this conversion is useful, I found myself using it since I posted about it. Last night I was straining applesauce into a 13x9x2 pan that fit under the Villaware, and I had to decide whether a full pan's worth would fit into a 3-quart pot (since it had to move to the smaller burner to make room for the canner). I converted from cubic inches to quarts and found that it wouldn't so I stuck with the big 6-quart. I also once used it to estimate the amount of oats that fit in the cylindrical box so I could get one box worth from the bulk bin, but I decided to use the net weight listed on the box instead. Lad, I always guess wrong in the direction of a too-small container, which is why my pretty little grain containers are always overflowing with a bag of extra sitting in the pantry exposed to the bugs that the container is supposed to keep out. At least there's one bulk bin store that lets you subtract the approximate weight of the container based on a list of choices (bag, jar, box, etc.).

Zabby, I think I am going to skip the apple buttering this year, because this particular buttering ends with open kettle canning. Plus I just never use it up so I think I have at least last year's quart if not the year before's. I prefer just salty melty butter on my toast & biscuits and I can't eat apple butter with a spoon, too sweet and too cold once it's been in the fridge.

Melissa

"But then there are all kinds of reasons I wouldn't ever date myself."

Being a straight person might be high on the list.

"I'd merely eyeball the container and the amount of stock, and know right away whether the latter would fit in the former."

Strong intuition and ability to visualize are important attributes of a cook, IMO. Accurate measurement and strict adherence to recipes don't guarantee a good result. Despite having math ability I rarely measure anything when cooking. (Baking is a different story. I don't make any claims to baking skill.)

"Fortunately, her guesses usually are towards too large a container; so there's no great loss."

Unfortunately, my wife errs in the other direction. It gets messy.

Jim

I reckon our minds just work differently, Melissa.

If visualizing is out there are other ways. F'rinstance, in your applesauce example, I would just fill the pan with water, transfer the water to the saucepan, and see what happens.

For me that would be both faster, and less error-prone, then going through a math exercize.

>Strong intuition and ability to visualize are important attributes of a cook,That's a good point, Jim. But I think there's a lot of right brain/left brain at work here. And that isn't something you can easily control.

Part of it, too, is how you learned cookery techniques. If your mother (or whoever mentored you) was a measurer, your tendency will be to measure. If she was a bit of this, dash of that type, then so, too, will you be.

Well, I like being able to figure things in my head, since I'm usually making decisions on the fly. I think the pan was partly full of applesauce before I considered that it might fit in a smaller pot for the small burner.

I like measuring and math for figuring, but I generally don't measure in cooking, except canning and baking. If I'm making a new recipe I like to use the measurements so I can accurately judge whether I like it as written. Lately I've just been slapping things together, but I've also been eating on less than $12/week for the challenge of it. I managed to work in 9 pints of applesauce on that budget. It pays to be a stockpiler...I could eat without shopping for at least a month if I had to. And to open myself to further measuring ridicule, I use Excel pivot tables to analyze my credit card balance over each month. And I graph my gas mileage and cost per mile. :-)

Melissa

What, please, is an Excel pivot table?

What do you get when you cross an elephant with a banana? I'll tell you in a minute.

Excel pivot tables rule. Say you have a table of sales. Each sale has the seller, region, date, product type, and amount. You can make a pivot table that allows you to drop the fields in as rows or columns and the sale amounts as data. Then you can drag & drop ("pivot") the fields to view the data different ways. Say you want to sort by region first, then seller, then product type. Or you can get rid of seller to view totals just by product type within each region. You can do sum or count or average as the result for each "total." Pretty neat to play with. I put in every charge on my credit card bill & classify by category & description, so I can view the total I've spent on groceries, bills, entertainment, eating out, car, etc. I have a category called "reimbursed" which is not displayed in the table, so I don't count anything that I bought for a school club since it's not coming from my bank account. I like playing around in Excel analyzing my money, grocery/menu plans, and life in general. It was a good time killer when I worked in a place with hardly anything to do, since it looks like real work, unlike this forum. :-)

You get elephant banana sine theta.
What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber?

Daisy, so sorry you're getting our nerdy engineering discussion! But I've enjoyed it. There's a cool site called Cooking for Engineers I've linked below. The forums aren't too active but the content is good. I guess it's kind of like America's Test Kitchen, but nerdier.

Nothing, you can't cross a vector with a scalar.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: cooking for engineers

Hmmmmmmm? Maybe I asked the wrong question. Based on your answer, I should have asked, what's an Excell?

>so I can view the total I've spent on groceries, bills, entertainment, eating out, car, etc.Well gee. AMEX will do that for me if I want them to. So, too, will Visa if you get a business account.

But riddle me this: What good is knowing that info after the fact? We'd druther work off a budget, and know ahead of time how much of available funds can be used for each purpose.

Excel is an electronic spreadsheet. It makes it easy to store data in rows and columns like a ledger sheet, then manipulate the data in just about any imaginable way with very little effort. You can compute, sort, chart, etc. It's incredibly handy, versatile and intuitive.

The first spreadsheet program was VisiCalc, an ingenious invention by Dan Bricklin when he was a student at Harvard. Visicalc was responsible for the boom in personal computers around 1980, in the days of 64K RAM computers. That program sold many thousands of Apple II computers, a phenomenon which caused IBM to get into the PC business. The link below leads to Dan's own fascinating web site where he tells about how he invented VisiCalc and all sorts of other stuff.

I use a spreadsheet to plan my garden. Each row in the spreadsheet represents a row in my garden. Each time I have a new thought for next year's garden, I update the spreadsheet. Any neat ideas for that application, Melissa?

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: VisiCalc

My, my, how this thread has mutated. LOL

I've just come to the realization that I seldom measure, I never level (I just scoop, even when baking), I don't sift, and I never do math if I can help it. I also refuse to even think about metrics and I don't own a scale.

I think I'll just go and have some supper with GardenLad and not think about the square footage of my tomato patch or the volume of my quart of chicken stock. (grin)

Good thing my major was English and my degree is in the field of law. I am intimately familiar with Excel spreadsheets, however.

Annie

> And to open myself to further measuring ridicule, I use Excel pivot tables to analyze my credit card balance over each month. And I graph my gas mileage and cost per mile. :-)

Ridicule? Melissa, I'm glad you live so far away, because I think my fiancwould dump me in minute if he met you.
;-)

He has a similar affinity for numbers and measurement; he left work in the tech field 7 years ago and is now a self-employed craftsperson, making wooden bowls and vases on a lathe --- sounds awfully un-technical, maybe, but his charts of time spent in the shop on various projects, precise methods for costing pieces based on time and materials, and efforts to organize his projects based on design-for-manufacture principles show that while you can take the boy out of computer science...

> But riddle me this: What good is knowing that info after the fact? We'd druther work off a budget, and know ahead of time how much of available funds can be used for each purpose.

GL, I think it can be really useful to know where your resources are going --- time, money, energy --- so you can see if alocating them this way is working well for you or not, and adjust accordingly. This is especially true when you're starting out at something or making a change in an aspect of life.

You could set up your first household declaring arbitrarily "I will spend $15 a week on food and $8 on entertainment," but if you haven't tried it at all you'll have no idea if it's a good allocation --- maybe you could be just as happy if you spent $10 less on food, and maybe with $5 more a week on heat you'd be waaaay more comfy....

Good decisions are made by COMPARING inputs and outcomes.

That said, I'm not much of one for Excel pivot tables either. We all have different personalities. But I do put great stock in the principle of looking back at how things went (with whatever degree of precision works for me) and reflecting on how it might be adjusted.

In fact, I just taught a seminar on the weekend on how to launch a freelance editing business, and told my students that remembering to take stock this way regularly --- ideally, to review every prjoect at the end and figure out what worked, what didn't, how much time it took and how much money it brought in (and how much psychic energy it drained and various other things that would make interesting Excel file headings) was THE the most useful thing I'd learned in my career --- sure, you make your plan ("budget" your time and money for the project), but you can't plan every aspect, and you are always gaining more experience, so that post-mortem to find out what worked and what didn't and think about WHY is amazingly helpful with the NEXT thing.

Zabby

>I think I'll just go and have some supper with GardenLad....Not tonight, Annie. We're having stuffed manicotti with a crayfish sauce, and I know you're not big on seafood. Didn't hardly measure anything when I put it together, neither.

But any other time, come on down. You're more than welcome.

Now last night you'd have enjoyed. Seared rosemary venison loin in a brandied brown sauce. Served that with braised fennel, and a cowpea/rice thingy I just threw together.

>You could set up your first household declaring arbitrarily "I will spend $15 a week on food and $8 on entertainment," but if you haven't tried it at all you'll have no idea if it's a good allocation --- maybe you could be just as happy if you spent $10 less on food, and maybe with $5 more a week on heat you'd be waaaay more comfy.... But all this, Zabby, becomes self-evident after just a few payment periods. Or even just one. If there wasn't enough food in the house, this week, because I spent too much on entertainment, I know not to take in that second movie next week. If it's been too cold, I know to either spend more on heat, or invest in a sweater. Self-demonstrating and self-correcting.

Do you really have to chart your household expenses to know what has to go where for best results?

Any spending plan, initially, is arbitrary. Then, as you develop a track record, you adjust accordingly. I certainly don't need a spread sheet (Lord, why does that still sound dirty?)to do that.

I am not knocking anyone who feels it necessery, or just nice, to use these tools. But we have reached a point, with computers, that too many people do things just because they can, not because it is necessary or even beneficial. A tool should make a task easier, or more efficient, or it's not a tool. It's just a toy. And I have too many real-world toys to bother with electronic ones.

If you do a function analysis of many of these things you can see my point. The function of programs like Excell is to manage information. Well, maybe you do need a fancy electronic program to do that. And maybe all you really need is a paper clip.

Thanks for the historical info Jim, I'll check that out.

GL, I need to manage my budget purchase by purchase and day by day to encourage myself to keep my spending down. I know how much of my food budget I've used and how much of my total budget I've used. I used to do the same thing by hand, but Excel does the math for me. I spent a lot of time on my personal spreadsheet when I had a job with no work, but lately I've just been spending a few minutes at night or between classes to update & take stock. I have to say, I feel great knowing that I've spent hardly any money this month, and I feel much less compulsion to grocery shop too.

I do miss having a source of venison though. :-)

Melissa

Well, little did I know what I was getting into when I asked my simple question!

So, I got my son, an engineer, to take a look at what has happened here, and he sent me this link, which is an absolute hoot for those interested in measuring things. I'm not mathematically-inclined (I think they call it 'challenged', don't they?), so precision doesn't mean much to me. I do have kitchen scales (metric, naturally) which I use for cakes etc I haven't cooked before, but mostly I'm like Annie - handful of this, splash of that.

I have asked him to measure me in Helens (for beauty), but haven't yet had a reply.

I do remember horse races were once measured in furlongs, but I've never heard of many of these measurements before.

Here is a link that might be useful: unusual measurements

GL, you're teasing me, of course. I love seafood and hope to never have to eat venison again in my life. It's the current effect of a childhood spent eating the stuff because we didn't have anything else. Melissa may have ALL of my share.

As for a budget, why I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, as long as I don't buy anything.

Annie

> But all this, Zabby, becomes self-evident after just a few payment periods. Or even just one. [...]

Not at all --- things in life change constantly, so regular revisiting of a plan makes sense --- but only if you have information on which to base your rethinking.

> Any spending plan, initially, is arbitrary. Then, as you develop a track record, you adjust accordingly.

Exactly what I was saying.

> I certainly don't need a spread sheet (Lord, why does that still sound dirty?)to do that.

Oooh, you dirty old man, to me it sounds lovely and cozy and clean and fresh, like a sheet that's been spread out on the line in the sun to dry! ;-)

Indeed you don't need one. (I don't THINK any of the measurement geeks on this thread are even trying to persuade you to use one --- just explaining how they do and why.) But many people find software to be a useful tools, and even a pleasure to use --- which doesn't make it any more a silly toy than a wooden spoon that is just the right length and shape, or my wonderful new stainless-steel pot. For folks like my BF or Melissa, they're easy and effortless to use. [Not so for me with spreadsheets, which I struggle with; though I have a comparable affinity with wordprocessing software; I don't need it to write, but it's a fabulous tool that helps me do my job better and with more ease --- whereas for some of my colleagues, it's a chore and they'd rather use longhand.]

Another really big point I stress in my seminar is that different things work well for different people --- if you find a tool/process/trick/tip that works for you, you go with it!

> I am not knocking anyone who feels it necessery, or just nice, to use these tools. But we have reached a point, with computers, that too many people do things just because they can, not because it is necessary or even beneficial.

Well, I'm in agreement on the general point, but I think we reached that point long before computers! (The history of the car comes to mind....) Or they do it just because a lot of other people do it that way and maybe they never thought about it. (Which is why I think Melissa's uniquely tailored, geeky project is particularly neat, because it's so clearly something she decided to do for her own self in her own way that worked for her --- you won't find many books or courses on home budgeting suggesting the use of a computer spreadsheet to track every $12 grocery week! At the other end of the tech scale, I similarly admire a freelancer I heard of who tracked her time spent on particular projects by burning a particular scented candle for each one. She HATES spreadsheets and even paper tracking --- but she knows one candle lasts 8 hours, so when one is used up then she adds that much to her bill for that project.... [How many scented candles in a fortnight???])

I also think that benefits that are harder to quantify shouldn't be ignored; Melissa's regular, detailed feedback helps motivate her and cheer her --- as useful a task for a tool as any, IMHO. For me, a spreadsheet wouldn't do that, because I'd find it a chore to enter the data. But then, I find cleaning bathrooms kind of soothing --- and HATE vacuuming.

You're of course free to track your expenses on a paperclip instead --- though I'm imagining you'll have a hard time finding a small enough pencil! ;-)

Zabby

I have come up with a method of tracking my expenses that may be unique, but it works for me.

I write the expenses with a grease pencil on the inside of a matchbook.

Okay back to the original content of the thread, well sort of... A co-worker of my DH has a blog and he went off on some of the measurement differences from country to country. I just ran across it again and thought of this thread. The Lewis mentioned in the blog is my DH

Here is a link that might be useful: Englsih measurements

And just to confuse things further a pint is always a pound in water only. A pint of maple syrup is heavier. A pint of berries in this country is a small square basket or cardboard container holding a pint by volume and weighing well less than a pound - a quart container of strawberries weighs a trifle over a pound. Raspberries and blueberries are sometimes sold in half=pints. Small fruit is generally sold by volume though pick-your-owns have switched to weight to prevent people from piling up the baskets. Apples and such are sold by weight in pounds except in larger sizes where one can still get them in pecks, half bushels and bushels.

Oldroser, those little basket things are called 'punnets' here in Australia. In them you get strawberries (large or small punnets), or other berries like blueberries, blackberries etc. The more expensive berries (eg raspberries) would come in amounts roughly 1-2 cups; strawberries - it's anybody's guess, but chopped there'd be about 2 cups to a standard (smaller) punnet. So, in translation terms, I guess 'a pint is a punnet'. Give or take.

Other fruit and veges here ares mostly sold by weight. Exotic fruits such as mangosteen is usually sold as 'price per fruit', and larger fruits such as rockmelon are sold according to the whim of the day - either weight, or individual fruit. Which is odd, because watermelon is always sold by weight, whether whole or in segments.

I find it annoying that the trend is to pre-package fruits and veges. It's now impossible to buy just a handful of grapes - you have to buy a kilo of them. I much prefer to buy in smaller quantities (since I'm the only person I have to feed), and to select my fruit and veges myself, thank you. Thankfully, I can still buy one or two potatoes or oranges instead of a whole bagful, but it's going a way I don't like with packaging. I like to select my mushrooms, but now, mushrooms come in packages - sliced, chopped, or whole. Is it SO very difficult to slice or chop them yourself?? Of course, the packaged ones are more expensive that the unpackaged ones. I object to paying for the packaging!

Daisy, in the US potatoes and oranges are cheaper by the bag than by the pound. Maybe $.79/lb, but $2.99 for a 5-lb bag, $1.99 on sale. Grapes are always bagged, but cherries can go either way. Obviously bulk are better than bagged for the reasons you pointed out. Mushrooms are more when pre-packaged--why would anyone want to deal with sliced mushrooms going bad so much faster than whole?

Oldroser, thanks for pointing out that "a pint is a pound the world around" only applies to water. It bugs me when Alton Brown applies that to other substances...you'd think a guy with a chemistry degree would realize that mass/weight & volume are not always the same because of different densities.

Melissa

"...a pint is always a pound in water only. A pint of maple syrup is heavier."

That's right. And a pint of oil is lighter (oil floats on water, syrup sinks).

For many foods however, a pint and a pound are *roughly* the same. That's because so many foods have a high water content, so their density is similar to that of water. Of course some foods are more tightly packed while others, such as berries or apples, have lots of spaces included, which makes them less dense. Smushed up berries or applesauce fit the rule better. For rough mental approximations, you can take all these things into account.

But, as oldroser says, the rule is exact only for water, or anything having exactly the same density as water, because a pound is defined as the weight of one pint of water.

Jim

Even when I had a family to feed, I rarely bought packaged fruits regardless of price. Potatoes and onions were an exception to my rule, though. One thing was inevitable with packaged fruits - there's always be one or two fruit 'on the way out' amongst the fresher stuff. Which of course affected all the rest. So I always regard pre-packaged fruit and veges as 'second-best' quality. No wonder they're cheaper that way!

I'm lucky to have a nearby (17 miles) market that sells most of their fruit and veggies in bulk but packages some.
Pre-bagged apples are generally smaller as well as less expensive, pre-bagged potatoes ditto. But mushrooms, greens,other veggies and most fruit all sold by the pound. Also their prices are great - zucchini on sale for 69 cents a pound this week. But celery at $1.99 a bunch was pretty expensive. I got my apples at a pick your own for 60 cents a pound - but Honeycrisp was prebagged and 80 cents a pound because that is a special gourmet variety.
Those berry containers are called punnets in England as well.