Kitchen Pet Peeves

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Wooley, canning jars around here have a price beyond rubies! Treat them with respect, store them carefully, and enjoy the home canned produce. I assume you are not only a canner, but a gardener also.
 
Before you kick his butt, why don't you suggest to him to put the empty carton, that normally holds the canning jars, on the floor/counter/chair, and place the washed jars in them (upside down, keeps them cleaner) as he goes along. Then move the filled carton to storage and bring back a new carton.
(that's what I used to do, worked for me)
Oh he already did/does that and they are all full. He has partial boxes of full jars on his shelves and doesn't want to mix product in the boxes to come up with empty boxes. Hard headed old man.
 
Wooley, canning jars around here have a price beyond rubies! Treat them with respect, store them carefully, and enjoy the home canned produce. I assume you are not only a canner, but a gardener also.
Oh I do take care of them and only one broken jar out of 700 and a ***@@@@ FedEx driver did it then tried to tell me he didn't drop them. I watched him drop a bundle of 4 cases.
On the garden, I only have room at this time for small amounts. I may do more in containers this year and may buy a tiller also. It'll take a lot of soil amendment in this clay soil. Got other financial responsibilities also. Up till last couple years I've found very good buys on produce.
 
This is only sort of a kitchen pet peeve. It's more of a recipe pet peeve. I wish recipe writers would consider the fact that recipes on the internet will be seen by people in many different countries. For example, please don't just write "a can of" beans or tuna or whatever. Tell us how big the can is. And, please, if it is US units, please tell us if those ounces are weight or volume.

One recipe I saw has buttons to convert to metric. But, they don't seem to know the difference between weight ounces (avoirdupois) and fluid ounces.

From the recipe, when showing US measures,

"4 oz neutral oil (may need an extra tbsp or so if oil overheats; good options include corn oil, canola oil, and peanut oil)"

And when I tell their recipe to show me amounts in grams and ml, it says,

"113 g neutral oil (may need an extra tbsp or so if oil overheats; good options include corn oil, canola oil, and peanut oil)"

I don't think they were telling their viewers to weigh out 4 ounces (avoirdupois) of oil. I think they were telling them to use a measuring cup to measure out 4 US fluid ounces of oil.

Oh, and another thing - is that an older Canadian or British recipe? Are those cups, quarts, pints, and ounces Imperial or US customary? They aren't the same size. A lot of people think that the US uses Imperial measure, since the units have the same name. Well, they are, sort of. They are just Imperial according to the standard defined a couple of hundred years ago, not the most recent standard used in the UK and Commonwealth.
 
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I run into can size questions in many of the old spiral bound church cookbooks that were published in the 50s and 60s.

My pet peeve this morning is knowing the actual weight of a whole chicken.

I have trouble guesstimating the actual weight of the chicken minus the cup of packing liquid, soggy chicken diaper, and bag of giblets.

There are many advantages in today’s mega markets but sometimes I miss the little IGA store with meat in the butcher case that was dry and sold by actual weight when wrapped by the butcher who was also often the owner.
 
Yes, the measurements on websites are a problem from this side of the pond too. I bought myself a set of measuring cups which mostly helped - with the exception of "a cup of butter". I don't want to wedge butter into a cup - I just want to know the weight of butter to use!
 
I agree that discrepancies in weights and measures can be confusing, I just try to remember with some of my cookbooks where they originated from. To drag out my lately overused phrase "Back in the day" people didn't move around much and the church cookbook was used by the people who all shopped in the same stores. Therefore when Gramma said to throw in a can of beans, everyone knew which kind and how big. Or "with the big can of salmon" - salmon only came in 2 sizes and they all had skin and bone. Not water packed, nor flaked, or chunk, or solid.

1 cup US measure = 1.04 cups Cdn measure - I can hardly see where it would make a difference in a recipe of butter or flour. That .04 is probably what's left on the sides of the measuring cup after you scrape it out. LOL and yes, it starts to make a difference in the higher amounts 6 cups US = 6.25 cups Cdn.
Honestly, there have been many recipes where I've skimped or added extra, to a degree.

I'm not even going to touch ounces to milliliters. - dry or wet!

Now-a-days I find newer ones usually take into account that the recipe might be used by someone other than the originator's country.
More and more are going by weight.
 
Another problem, especially with older "church lady or organization" cookbooks is they'll say a package of cake mix or a package of pudding or jello, or even a can of ?? Pie filling. That's great, but manufacturers have all decreased packaging sizes, some quite sneakily until consumers figured out what they were doing, from the times the recipes were written, or even discontinued the products in some cases.
 
and so did you correct the recipe?

Does it now read ... ".... the family's jewels worth of beef" ?
In my opinion, all recipes should use weights wherever it's practical. Things like onions, garlic cloves, shredded/grated cheeses, etc. can vary so much a recipe could be ruined.

SO used to complain her baking results were not consistent. So I showed her how much the weight of a cup of flour can vary based on how you measure it. It can vary up to 50%! Once that sunk in, she standardized her measures and is much happier (at least about her baking results).
 
Yes, the measurements on websites are a problem from this side of the pond too. I bought myself a set of measuring cups which mostly helped - with the exception of "a cup of butter". I don't want to wedge butter into a cup - I just want to know the weight of butter to use!
A cup of butter weighs very close to half a pound. We always figure that a pound of butter has two cups.

Edited to add: a "stick of butter" is one quarter of a pound, so half a cup.
 
You have to be careful with a recipe that calls for a stick of butter. I have seen packaged butter in which the sticks were ⅛ of a pound or half of what you'd expect.
 
Yes, the measurements on websites are a problem from this side of the pond too. I bought myself a set of measuring cups which mostly helped - with the exception of "a cup of butter". I don't want to wedge butter into a cup - I just want to know the weight of butter to use!
measuring cups help - I use them to measure and record how many grams to use . . .
because I cook for two and volume measurements/errors just don't work out so great when doing small batches . . .

as you likely know - there are buckets of websites with "conversion" data that is totally completely utterly foundationally inaccurate and "really bad" - - -
the usual issue is "converters" that do not recognize the differences between the "english" versions of "ounces-by-weight" and "ounces-by-volume"

in USA a "pound of butter" comes in four "sticks"
1 pound = 454 grams . . . divided by 4 sticks = 113.5 grams per stick
1 stick = (sorta'...) 8 tablespoons = 1/2 (US) cup
the 8 tablespoons per stick is a 'on the wrapper' division mark - it is not accurate to the nth degree - but in small qtys . . . accurate enough.
keeping in mind . . . . organically produced products rarely obey "density" rules - i.e. grams/liter....
 
About recipes. Someone says, "Oh, I like this, may I have the recipe?" After you write out the recipe, you get a phone call. "Can I substitute X for Y? I'd rather make it on the stove than the oven, is that okay? Why did you say to whisk the sauce, I'll just stir it with a spoon."
Drives me nuts! I have learned not to give recipes to certain persons.
 
You have to be careful with a recipe that calls for a stick of butter. I have seen packaged butter in which the sticks were ⅛ of a pound or half of what you'd expect.
But, the "standard stick of butter" weighs a quarter of a pound. If someone is using a non-standard size stick of butter in a publicly shared recipe, then I would be skeptical about the rest of the recipe.
 
taxy, so how would you know that they are using a non-standard size stick of butter?
Only by the time you find out you've already made the recipe.
 

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