Cute. Thank you.

LOL! I'm not so sure about that smidgen of ginger unless it's salad dressing...

Haha! So funny! Pllog, I'm with you!

Yes, the medium onion gets me too! What medium? The celery, is that an inside stalk or outside stalk? The part that is in the very middle? Thank goodness, my recipe that I use to make stuffed baked potatoes is specific. It calls for 3 one pound Idaho potatoes and makes six servings. Thank you for giving the exact weight and type of potato.

Yeah. What onion? I have all sorts of onions, small, extremely large, and not really a "medium." And technically (sorry, I just have too!) a stalk of celery is the whole thing not just a single piece (called the rib). But I just call it a stalk! Sherry, I agree. Middle stalks are much smaller so recipes should say "3 large celery stalks" or however many it calls for. But I kinda modify a lot of recipes to my liking, making most things gluten-free.

After a while, you get a feel for it. If the onion is chopped and they want a medium, I usually start with a 1/2 cup. A large, one cup of chopped. I am starting to see the European way of measuring by weight! Season, you are right it is the whole thing of celery. Gosh, can you imagine how much celery that would be.... 3 WHOLE stalks! LOL! No wonder new cooks just like to rip and heat.

Yes, 3 stalks would be SO much! The onion thing you wrote is interesting, thanks!

and then there was my friend, a brand new Home e graduate who invited people for a home made spaghetti and meatballs dinner. She was my age, 22, but I wasn't a home economist, just someone who liked to cook.
That sauce would peel paint! leave you gasping! Take the enamel off your teeth!
I finally said..."mmmm...I love garlic....how much does this recipe call for?" She said "it said 3 bulbs....took a long time to peel all that"...Bulbs, cloves, heads....whatever....but know which is which!!

Linda, You really gave me a giggle! Thanks to fawnridge for starting this thread.

Haha Linda! Funny.

ROTFL at the bulbs!! Oh, my!! I've read a lot of recipes that didn't seem to know what a clove of garlic is, so I just do the right thing and ignore what's written.

::hanging head:: I write up recipes all the time that say "one medium onion". I thought that was clear. The only time I weigh them is if the write up is for publication.

I was taught to cook Sicilian style in the 70s by a woman who measured nothing unless it was done by hand. A bit of this, more of that, a pinch of something else, and you're done. While I measure everything I bake, nothing I cook is accurately measured, it's all by taste. Of course, when I give out a recipe for anything I cook, I do give measurements with the caveat that they're not critical and the final product will depend on the cook's personal taste.

Not sure that's Sicillian style....because I learned to cook the same way....
"Some".. a "handful"....a dollop, a glug of wine....or 3 glugs...a stem or so of oregano, a few fresh basil leaves.."grate some parmesan over it"
If you don't taste and know what's good...how can you ever cook?

fawnridge, I cook that way and I bake that way too, it's how Grandma taught me. "A chunk of butter the size of an egg". Yeah, that was actually an instruction. A teacup full of sugar, or 3 handfuls of flour. Or add flour "until it looks right" or "knead in flour until it feels right".

It's still the way I cook, "until it feels right" or "until it looks right". Baking is seldom consistent for me, especially bread, it depends on the flour and the humidity and a zillion other things, 3 cups of flour today might be 2 1/2 tomorrow, but it was 3 1/4 last week. Just add until it "feels right".

Drives people crazy when they're trying to recreate a recipe I make....

Annie

I don't mind people recreating my recipes unless they say "it tasted disgusting." And blame it on me.

Love the cartoon! Today, I captured my niece, and got her protein healthy cookie recipe. She was taught to bake by look and feel, a little of this, some of that. Her DH is on the road a lot, and she didn't want him to eat just a bunch of junk food. She took a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe (still using her some of this and a little of that), and then added protein powder, dried fruit, sometimes chocolate chips, sometimes not, peanut butter. She actually tried to measure for me! I took my kitchen scale so we got a good approximate measurement. I still need to re write it. They figured it out that 3 cookies is actually a full meal!

I cook with some of this, and a bit of that, but never bake that way. This same niece is the one who finally took the frustration out of making the candy cane Christmas cookies. And all I needed to do was add one egg white! And that egg white was not in my recipe. Steph has made them for years with her grandmother, and all she had to do last year was take one look at my dough. Once we added the egg white, they rolled beautifully! Mom always hated making them because they were so crumbly and fragile. I loved the cookies, but hated making them for the same reason. I will be making some again this year, and do it with out the frustration!

To clarify...

I was taught to cook Sicilian style Italian in terms of ingredients and flavor profile. The actual technique of measuring with your hand has nothing to do with the style. It could have just as well been Polish, Jewish, or Dutch. In my case it was Sicilian.

My maternal grandmother, who was Jewish of Russian/Irish descent, taught me to cook everything else and she measured the same way. The only difference is that she didn't smack the back of my head when I questioned her accuracy.

LOL!! I got a rotary egg beater when I was in college, though it's much inferior to my mother's, because the only way I could judge the blintz batter's rightness was with a rotary egg beater and a pyrex measuring cup. :) I probably don't need do do it that way anymore--I could probably use a whisk. ;) Nothing like experience, but you can't teach that.