Measuring Techniques - Level II

Summary

Abbreviations, equivalents and measurement techniques.

Materials

Background for Teachers

Accuracy and success in food preparation is more likely if students utilize common abbreviations, equivalents and measuring techniques.

The amount and type of ingredients vary widely from recipe to recipe. Memorization of basic equivalents is helpful when increasing and decreasing a recipe.

To prepare a recipe and achieve the best results, accurate measurements are necessary. If nonstandard or improper techniques are used a recipe may fail.

A simple way to remember some of the equivalents is found in the following childhood poem. (Note the exchange of the 2 and 4.)

2 cups in a pint
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon
2 gallons in a peck
4 pecks in a bushel

Instructional Procedures

ACTIVITIES

1. To introduce this section, relate the following analogy. Imagine for a moment that you have just one puzzle piece left to glue together in a 1000 piece mountain scene puzzle. You hunt everywhere for the last piece but can't find it. It has taken you days to put together the hundreds and hundreds of small pieces. You decide to look for the piece later. While you are gone on an errand your little sister finds a much larger piece that is the same color, glues it on and hangs it on your wall.

Questions:

Describe how you would feel about the way your picture looks.

Tell what your friends would think if you left it up like what?

Food preparation techniques are like a puzzle. The food you prepare comes together perfectly when you can utilize common abbreviations, equivalents, measurement techniques, and a recipe. If there are some aspects of a recipe you don't understand, the recipe may turn out like the puzzle - it won't work quite right. It may look and taste funny.

2. The students will match measurement abbreviations with their terms on the handout UNDERSTANDING RECIPE CODE with the help of the any good foods text book and quiz each other on equivalents.
   
3. EQUIVALENTS RELAY! Students from each unit make up one team. One student from each team lines up on the starting line, about 25 feet from the chalk board. As the teacher begins to read the questions concerning abbreviations/equivalents, each student will run unobstructed to the chalk board and write the answer. A score keeper will help the teacher determine who is first (one point for the team). Each student runs to the board 4 times before another student rotates in. See the EQUIVALENTS RELAY QUESTIONS.

Chalk board divisions:

Team 1	Team 2	Team 3	Team 4	Team 5	Team 6

*If space doesn't permit, divide the class into (4) teams or however
Number accommodates the class size.

4. Have students observe a demonstration of proper measuring techniques for dry ingredients, liquids, fats/oils.

Bibliography

• "Recipe Helpers": Food for Today Teachers Resource Book by Kowtaluk & Kopan. Glenco Pub. 1990, p.169
• "Understanding Recipe Codes" modified from "Decoding Recipes", Food for Today Student Activity Guide.
• Relay game by Mary Ann Jorgensen, Emery High School, Castle Dale, Utah