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Family Life

Kitchen Conversions Using Google

My secret weapon in the kitchen is conversions. I have a little cheat sheet magnet on the side of my microwave that tells them the common conversions. But what happens when I need to slash a recipe in half or maybe double it for leftovers?

measuring cupThat’s not too bad in most cases but what happens when I only need a portion of the recipe? Usually I make the recipe and then try to work the extra into the menu but with Google, I can easily divide up a recipe into a smaller portions so I can waste less especially if it’s a new recipe that makes enough to feed our family twice.

If the recipe calls for one cup of an ingredient and makes 12 servings, I can use a half cup to make 6 servings but what if I want to make 8 servings?

Does your brain hurt yet? Didn’t realize that math truly would pop up in your daily life, now did you?

Enter this in Google and see what it tells you:

1 cup / 12 * 8 = ? cups
0.666666667 US cups – That’s 2/3 cup

What if i wanted to make 20 servings?

1 cup / 12 * 20 = ? cups
1.66666667 US cups – 1 2/3 cups

Let’s break down the Google search terms:
1 cup – the amount the original recipe needs
/ – divided by
12 – the number of servings in the original recipe
* – times (multiply)
20 – the number of servings I want to make
= – equals
? – the number I don’t know
cups – the unit of measurement I want used for the answer

So not only can I figure out how many cups I’ll need to cut or increase a recipe, if the answer got to small I could convert to a smaller unit – say tablespoons or teaspoons.

For example – What if I wanted to make just one serving of this recipe? Oh that’s simple – 1/12 of a cup. Now where did I put that 1/12 cup container? What, you don’t have a 1/12 cup container? I guess we’d better put it in something you do have.

1/12 cup = ? tsp
4 US teaspoons

That’s better.

You can convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume – just to name a few.

How many centimeters in an inch? 2.54 centimeters
How many milliliters in a cup? 236.588237 milliliters
How many cups in a gallon? 16 cups
Liters in a gallon? 3.78541178 liters
Inches in a foot? 12 inches
Centimeters in a foot? 30.48 centimeters
Grams in an ounce? 28.3495231 grams

Oh the possibilities are endless.

By Angelia Embler

Angi grew up in southern Arizona but now lives in central New Mexico with her husband, two sons and three dogs. She creates, she responds to Yoast support requests, and she loves to ramble on about anything. When not doing those, she can be found curled up with a good book or watching any one of her favorite TV shows, movies, or an American football game.

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