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Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?
- Thread starter garirry
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I was actually thinking of one of the simplest but still quite dramatic examples.
Inflating a balloon with helium.
If you look past the fluffy little bunny part it doesn't taste that different from chicken, a bit leaner but that's it. Especially compared with home chickens which also have a bit more taste and are a bit harder than the supermarket type.
One of my grandmothers used to have rabbits and remember watching the little things and sometimes would ask were one had gone? Ran away. Ah and on a totally unrelated matter, lunch will be chicken.
Each scientific measuring device has three properties -- Accuracy, Repeatability and Precision.
Accuracy is a property of the instrument you are using to measure with, how close it gets to the real value.
Repeatability is also a property of the instrument, does it give you the same measurement each time, or does it vary each time.
Precision is simply how close the markings on the scale are to each other. Fahrenheit markings are closer together on the same thermometer than Celsius. However, Celsius better relates to the physics of heat and temperature.
As is Celcius in those calculations.
You can convert Farenheit temperatures to Rankine by adding 460(459.67) and you have a perfectly valid temperature scale to use for thermodyamic calculations. Rankine is an absolute temperature scale, just like Kelvin.
This is fundamentally no different from adding 273(or 273.15) to ºC to convert temperatures to Kelvin.
Any constant with a reference value that includes Kelvin has an equivalent value in Rankine. As an example, R, the gas constant, which is often given as .0812 atm-L/mol-K or 8.314 j/mol-K could just as easily be given as 10.73 ft^3-psi/ºR-mol or 1.986 BTU/mol-ºR.
😅 That's true about most of us, but it won't pass unnoticed by my wife. But you are correct about home-grown chicken. The same can be said for non-farmed pigs, including ones the grow in the wild. Wild pig taste delicious compared to the supermarket's. It is the same for farmed salmon compared to the wild Copper River salmon that I "net" during the summer. The flesh of coho and king salmon is of a bright crimson (bright red) color and firm, while the flesh of farmed salmon is sort of a very light pink, almost pale, and somewhat soft.
I've been eating o-sushi and sashimi for a long time.
Back in the late 1980s when it started at Japanese restaurants in the U.S.A., I would go into the restaurant, make sure that they spoke Japanese, and talk to the "chef". If he was not licensed in Japan to know what bad stuff to remove, I would leave, as it wasn't safe.
Fast forward to 2014 and California. There is a flash freeze rule to save people from themselves.
All of the fish I've tried is mushy. It tastes okay, but isn't worth the price, to me. Having had fish before the flash freeze rule, there is such a total difference that I really don't want to waste my money.
Another thing I never forgot is the distinctive smell of burned pig skin just after it being slaughtered. Nowadays I think you can't do that (slaughter your own pigs) without having a veterinary and other regulations.
Although we have a lot of sea food it is almost all literally from the sea, salmon is usually imported from Norway of the farmed variety with its pink colour as you mention.
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The Feeding of the 5,000 is also known as the "miracle of the five loaves and two fish".Answer: Because Jesus has Twelve Apostles not Ten!
A milli-loaf per person. And 400 micro-fish.
I feel the same way about salmon flash-freezing. The skin may be tough, but the flesh is quite delicate. Freezing like that turns the flesh mushy. Copper River salmon is extremely expensive, most so at the start of the fishing season. What I do with the salmon I catch, after cleaning, is to pack them with ice in large ice chests. But some other times my friends and I fillet and vacuum-pack them, then place them in the ice chests.
I don't know it this is allowed in CA anymore, but what sometimes I do with salmon fillets is to BBQ in a charcoal grill as follows: before lighting the charcoal, I soak a cedar board (sold at the supermarkets) in clean cold water for about an hour, then place the fillet skin down on the wet cedar board, and season the salmon with your favorite spices, including lemon pepper. I place the board and fillet on the grill, and BBQ until done. As it burns, the smoke from the cedar board gives the salmon a very nice flavor. The board will prevent the salmon from burning, but you may have to prevent the edges of board from catching afire.
The most delicious pig skin/meat is the one from wild or free-ranging pigs. I have read about pig farms in Italy and Spain where the pigs aren't penned, but roaming in large parcels of land. Chicharrón is one of those Spanish foods that are made of pig skin a portion of meat, and sometimes rib, attached to it. In the the Caribbean islands, Argentina, and so on it is common for people to roast an entire pig that has been seasoned with spices. The pigs are roasted for over 10-14 hours in large ovens that are made of fire-bricks and covered with a lager of clay. Charcoal is used for roasting.
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Don't know about Italy but we share the same breeds with Spain, particularly the Ibérico pig or as it's commonly called here, black pig.
They roam the southern countryside and feed themselves mostly on acorns.
The meat is considerably better than regular pigs, even those raised freely.
When raw the meat has a distinctive look somewhat similar to Kobe beef marbling.
They roam the southern countryside and feed themselves mostly on acorns.
The meat is considerably better than regular pigs, even those raised freely.
When raw the meat has a distinctive look somewhat similar to Kobe beef marbling.
There is a farm in Tennessee I think that raises free-range hogs and they feed almost exclusively on acorns.
Their bacon is sold all over the country to high end restaurants who have to have the best bacon available.
Something about acorns and pigs.....
But not a fan of Kobe or Waygu beef. It is too marbled and is almost like getting a pre-chewed steak. I'll stick to a regular filet thank you.
There is least one farmer in Sicily that grows "free-range" black pigs. I guess that the farming laws are very strict in the EU, so i have no idea how the average small farm can survive.
These farms are becoming a lot more popular in recent years, specially the ones producing organic foods of various kinds. I too don't like much marbling in steaks. In fact, I even trim most of the outer layer of fat, too
I season the steaks and grill them in an electric grill to an internal temperature of perhaps 142 degrees, and let them sit covered for about 8-10 minutes before serving.
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Kobe Beef is not just the cow's meat. They would give the cow beer and massage them to make the best beef in the world.
In 1985, my friend's father in Kobe rented his friend's French restaurant for eight of us. When they got to the meat course, they brought a huge steak, slightly cooked for each of us.
I order a steak filet while in Katmandu, Nepal (in the 1980’s) what I received was the largest steak filet I’ve ever seen. It was the size of a large porterhouse steak but it was just the filet. It filled an entire large dinner plate. It was as tender & flavorful as any filet minion I’ve ever had. Later I found out that it was a water buffalo steak not a beef steak.
Katmandu also had the best chocolate cream pie I ever had too (not at the same meal though)
There isn't a thing wrong with water buffalo, unless you're trying to plow a field and it's in the kitchen being cooked.
I was just saying as a reference that visually the marbling looks similar.
Here it's even not that expensive. It's around 20 euro/kg depending on the cut. Or according to Google 9.71 USD per pound.
Regular pork is a lot cheaper. A quarter more or less again depending on the cut.There is least one farmer in Sicily that grows "free-range" black pigs. I guess that the farming laws are very strict in the EU, so i have no idea how the average small farm can survive.
These farms are becoming a lot more popular in recent years, specially the ones producing organic foods of various kinds. I too don't like much marbling in steaks. In fact, I even trim most of the outer layer of fat, too
But it is also incomparable.
I too don't like much marbling in steaks. In fact, I even trim most of the outer layer of fat, too
Neither do we. In fact we generally buy Choice over Prime cuts for this reason.
The local Costco store has some excellent steaks. I just choose a pack of steaks that don't have lots of fat other than the edges. Otherwise I but a large piece of ribeye roast and cut it into steaks. It doesn't matter if it is expensive or not, since I don't eat beef every week, so I take my time and choose beef that isn't too fat toward the middle.
$9.71 USD is not bad at all. Sometimes I buy steaks that cost around $20.00 USD. For is cheap in the US, probably because of the big farms (?), but some local farmers sell both beef and pork that are grown with organic feed, and costs more. But again, there is not comparison between free-range pork like the Ibérico or wild pigs.
I’m a member of a Facebook group where this was posted - just yesterday February 22, 2024, it’s related to an area of southeast Michigan.
I graduated high school 1980, in the mid-1970s I saw this exact chart when they were trying to re-educate us going from the traditional system to the metric system.
That's a cool pocket calculator but it does make the metric system seem something alien that nobody would use.
It translates single digit practical to use and remember numbers into weird decimal scale odd numbers.
It would be like we buying a sugar packet (which is usually sold in 1 Kg packets) and having it translated to 2.205 pounds. Everybody would just scratch their heads.
I would guess that in the USA you have stuff sold on two pound bags. That makes sense.
It translates single digit practical to use and remember numbers into weird decimal scale odd numbers.
It would be like we buying a sugar packet (which is usually sold in 1 Kg packets) and having it translated to 2.205 pounds. Everybody would just scratch their heads.
I would guess that in the USA you have stuff sold on two pound bags. That makes sense.
Surely, if you are using US Customary, you'd actually convert into 3 lb 3 ounces 3 drams? (Or thereabouts.) Rather than decimals.
When we changed from 2 lbs to 1 kg for sugar, few of us really noticed. Doesn't feel much different in the hand, nor look much more. If pouring into a sugar bowl, or weighing out a few ounces or grams for a recipe, who cares? The only real issue for most of us was whether price went up.