to think there is something wrong with Americans?

[TheBloodManCometh]

In Colorado, here for 5 weeks.

Why the HELL is there a half inch gap on either side of the door in all public toilets?? You can see everything going on!!!
This has been the case everywhere I've been in America?
AIBU to be both baffled and embarrassed

lighthearted btw. I don't really think there's something wrong with the Americans

ObfusKate I suppose it depends on how big a cup is, doesn't it. 'A cup' as a measurement is rather ambiguous, in my view. It's obviously not a mug but American cups might be larger than ours, anyway. Why can't they use ounces or grams like everyone else.

Well, if they do, they'll be different from ours. Their petrol for instance, is sold in gallons but their gallon is not the same as ours .....

people in teh USA must despair of us though, with our mixture of miles and metrics when it suits us!

sorry, imperial and metric when it suits us

I suppose it depends on how big a cup is, doesn't it. 'A cup' as a measurement is rather ambiguous, in my view. It's obviously not a mug but American cups might be larger than ours
Happy A cup is an actual thing, it is a measure in itself, like a teaspoon.
I agree with Kate I have never got on with cups. Measuring flour or sugar in cups does make sense, measuring a liquid in a cup makes sense, but butter does not. And as Kate says, if a recipe calls for 430g you know that the 500g bag will be enough.

I tend to cook in pounds and ounces anyway and only use cups when I have to, even though I have a nice set of cup measures.

www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-country-measuring-cups-set-of-4/p783399

Let's see if I can be coherent here.

Basically it all makes sense because we're using US recipes with US measurements and US measuring devices.

Liquid and dry ingredients are measured differently. So 1/2 cup honey would mean 4 fluid ounces and you measure that in a liquid measuring cup. And when you buy it the honey would say 16 ounces or whatever.

So dry ingredients are more complicated but they're notbecause if you say a cup of flour in a recipe people know what it means. And overall conversions are just not as hard as this thread and my 3am math errors are making it seem.

I did once get in trouble when we went to a British theme pub here. I thought a bottle of beer, which I'm used to, was a pint, or 16 ounces here, so two pints there would be my usual two bottles I can drink without getting too tipsy. The next morning I found out I'd made a mistake, a bottle is 12ish ounces and that's why my 'two' had such an effect. And now I've learned a British pint is 20 thanks to this thread!

Which has nothing to do with baking, but does mean I had 40 ounces of beer thinking it was my usual 24 that evening.

The only reason the miles were not changed was that the government would have to pay to replace all road signage

Yes a cup is an actual measure, not just any cup!

Also I (and most people I know) keep the measuring cup (whether it's a half cup, third, or whatever) in the canister of flour or sugar, or whatever else you have to measure often. Then you don't have to wash it, you just put it back.

I use cup with breadmaker which is 8oz I think. I mainly use electric scales. I agree cups are more faffy.

I sort of like the idea of this US cup anarchy where we just use whatever we have lying around and hope the recipe comes out all right.

Honey and liquids sold in fluid ounces, dry goods in ounces/pounds.

In actual practice it's more like, "Do you want the big bag or the little bag?" "Let's buy the big bag it's on sale."

'real' honey is quite solid though. only heating and churning makes it soft. and the 'squeezy' stuff I don't class as honey

the cup thing is ok thought when you're measuring out still that pours easily like sugar or flour. but when a recipe calls for 1 cup of butter or 1 cup of mashed bananas it makes no sense. Just say 2 bananas or whatever. how are you supposed to work out a cup of butter? nonsense.

A cup of butter is two sticks of butter. They're already measured! It's all a standard.

mausmaus Oh I didn't know we meant two different things. We refer to "solid" honey as raw honey and the filtered kind as honey.

having done some quick googling it turns out that 1 cup of butter is 227 grams. how annoying that in the uk you will always be left with 23g butter

probably just enough for a piece of toast or an omelette though, so job done

"Sweaty Fucker's Buttermilk Frosting"

It's hard in the reverse too!

When I see recipes that call for grams I have to google it all into cups. :)

I love Americans.

They don't have the cynicism we do.

Happy go lucky types.

God bless America.