"Wayne Boatwright" > wrote in message
5.250...
> On Sun 12 Jul 2009 07:48:14a, graham told us...
>
>>
>> "blake murphy" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:44:56 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
>>>
>>>> "pat" > wrote in message
>>>> .
>>>> ..
>>>>> Pennyaline wrote:
>>>>>>James Silverton wrote:
>>>>>>>Well, I won't hold onto my hat since theMetric systemhas been
>>>>>>>*legal* here for about a century. I'd also forgotten what was a
>>>>>>>"Chopine" :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It may be legal, young fella, but it isn't American!
>>>>>
>>>>> There are US laws that forbid metrication. US Federal law (the FPLA,
>>>>> for example) forbids metric-only labels on most prepackaged things
>>>>> you see in the supermarket.
>>>>
>>>> Probably because too many people would not know how to easily do the
>>>> conversion or think in metric terms. Bacon has always been a pound and
>>>> thus will remain so, or something like that. 500 grams or a half kilo
>>>> would make their brain hurt.
>>>>
>>>> The two reasons I've always run into is a large percentage just don't
>>>> want to change and are afraid, another big group thinks the US system
>>>> is superior, just because it is the US system. We are in a world
>>>> economy, like it or not, and if we used metric, it would be easier for
>>>> our country to deal wit the rest of the world. The Hubble telescope
>>>> would not have been screwed up.
>>>>
>>>> I've been using metric at work for 20 years now. It is easy and
>>>> sensible, and the choice of most everyone there now that they've used
>>>> it.
>>>
>>> i'm not that old, but i think i would spend the rest of my life
>>> thinking, 'o.k., a half kilo is about a pound.'
>>>
>>
>> That only happens if both systems are used together. If the US went
>> metric overnight, i.e., with no transition period, it wouldn't be long
>> before people thought in metric.
>>
>>
>>
>
> Among other things, if you cook and use cookbooks, you'd be constantly
> converting forever...unless you threw them all out and replaced them.
> Most
> of my US cookbooks do not contain metric measurements.
>
> Having said that, I have quite a few cookbooks from the UK and Europe. I
> made a point of buying measuring equipment for that purpose, as well as a
> scale that weighs in both ounces and grams.
>

My most recent cookbook purchase was Ciril Hitz's "Baking Artisan Bread: 10
Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home" which I thoroughly
recommend. He works at the King Arthur Flour Co. in Vermont.
He gives all the recipes in grams, followed by Imperial, then cups and
finally bakers' %. He promotes the metric system as it is so easy to scale
the recipes up or down and for small batches I don't bother with the %
system.