Why can't the Americans go metric... just like us? | Matt Mohan-Hickson

Over the past couple of years I have come to realise that cooking is one of my greatest passions in life.There is nothing better than spotting a new recipe and attempting to pull it off.
How hard should it be to follow a decent spag bol recipe? Picture by PAHow hard should it be to follow a decent spag bol recipe? Picture by PA
How hard should it be to follow a decent spag bol recipe? Picture by PA

Korean fried chicken?

Sure, why not?

Matcha doughnuts? Let’s give them a whirl.

Not only are you left with a sense of accomplishment when the cooking is done but you also get to eat some delicious food.

However outside of BBC Food, most of the recipes I end up stumbling across online come from American websites and blogs.

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Which leaves you not only having to scroll past reams and reams of text before you reach the ingredient list or the instructions, but you are also left trying to decipher the bizarre measurements our cousins across the Atlantic use.

I mean on earth is a cup? Cups come in all shapes and sizes, there isn’t a standard ‘cup’.

Should I fill up the small mug I use daily for drinking, or do they mean the giant stein in the corner of our kitchen – it could be considered a cup after all.

It feels a bit like the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, pick the wrong cup and your meal will just crumble to dust (that’s sort of a spoiler for a 30 year old movie, I guess).

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That or you can use a Google converter and end up needing 33.4 to the power of 12 grams of flour.

Are we doing alchemy or weighing out ingredients to bake a cake?

Isn’t it time that Americans stopped being so stubborn and just accepted the metric system like the rest of the world?

Surely using measurements like grams, litres and degrees Celsius just makes more sense in the 21st century?

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I know they are all hooked on that drug of American exceptionalism, but surely it leaves them just as confused when they come across recipes in the metric system.

Let alone weather forecasts using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.

It makes it feel a bit like you are trying to translate a lost spell from Arthurian Britain instead of just cooking a bolognese, it makes it very frustrating.

A year without a hair cut

For the first 26 years of my life I kept my hair pretty short on the whole.

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There were occasional flirtations with trying to grow it out, but after a month or so I would always abort the attempts.

Having watched my brother grow his hair out in our youth, I knew you had to go through the awkward phase when it transitions from short hair to long hair. But having been born with a proper mop of curls, I never had the willpower to push through.

However, much to my own surprise, this last week marked the one year anniversary of my last haircut.

Sensing the looming spectre of the pandemic, I made sure to get a trim early in March 2020 – but in the summer I was pretty jumpy about visiting anywhere that wasn’t a supermarket.

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And before I knew it, it was the second lockdown, then the third.

Now I have a true mop, one requiring proper hair washing routines and care. It is yet another unexpected turn from the last 12 months.

The satisfaction of finally finishing a book

When I was in year 7 or 8, my family went on holiday to Austria during the summer.

Before we set off, we paid a visit to the library and I left with a proper pile of books.

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I remember joking with the librarian that this should about cover me for the two-week break.

But a couple of weeks later we were in a bookstore trying to find any English books on the shelves.

However the older I have got, the slower I am when it comes to reading.

Which makes it weirdly more satisfying when I finally finish a book.

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After getting a mountain of them for Christmas, I finally managed to reach the final page of one this week. A sprawling crime tale called Journey Under the Midnight Sun, which is well worth seeking out if you are looking for something to read.

It felt like an actual achievement. Hopefully the next one won’t take me nearly three months!

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