Measuring Up

I am a visual learner for some things, others not so much, but when I saw this chart for the first time I knew I'd never forget it as soon as I figured out what it was:

I know, you're thinking, "Ok, that means nothing... it looks like a seating chart."

The professor who put it up on the board could see our puzzled looks and as soon as she started explaining to us that through our nutrition or catering degree program that this chart would help us through most of our classes.  We still were confused. And then she started to outline.

G for gallon. 128 fl oz :)

Q for quart, there are 4 quarts in a gallon, one quart is 32 fl oz :)

P is for pint, two pints in a quart, 16 fl oz :)

And the c's stand for cups :) 2 cups in a pint, 8 fl oz each.

For kicks and giggles I added an L because a liter is just barely bigger than a quart at 33.814 oz :) But its not an even number so I try not to add it in because it muddies the measurement system since commonly in metric measurements for recipes and nutrition calculation, liter is almost never used unless in reference to cutting out soda :)

I know its riveting stuff, and it gets waaaaay more complicated than this after you break it down into dry and wet measurements when it comes to weight and such.  And having to do a 30 question quiz on measurements in 10 minutes gets fun :)  

But after learning how to do metric measuring, it is very hard to go back to the way most cookbooks lay out recipes. Which is why I use "The Joy of Cooking" with the metric measurements for most things I bake.  When it needs to be precise :)