Units of Measure 2

Around 18 months ago, I wrote a blog post about a particularly interesting way of making granola. It wasn't the ingredients that led to a raised eyebrow; it was the manner of measuring out the ingredients. In that case, the Mild Wife had used a butter knife to scoop out peanut butter, so that became the rough guide for how much to use.

Now, the Mild Wife and I have both looked at enough recipes that we know "however much fits on a butter knife" is not a standard measurement. You will never see that in a cookbook, for example. It's just too variable from person to person, or even from time making it to time making it.

In essence, we both immediately recognized that we were playing fast and loose with the rule by describing the recipe in knife-fuls. There was quite a bit of chuckling when I pointed out this style of measuring.

It's still a valid way of cooking, though, and it still appears in the Mild Home to this day. The Mild Wife and I joke about how it is the "Asian aunty" way of cooking. We call it that because that's what we're familiar with, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had a cousin, a Nonna, or a Pop-Pop who cooks like this. Frankly, at some point, you've got enough reps under your belt where you can more or less guess how much of something to put in the food. Experience is funny like that.

I suppose that meant it was inevitable that we would run into another non-standard measurement when cooking, but when it arrived, it cracked me up. I honestly don't remember what we were making, and I honestly don't remember what the ingredient was. All I remember is the actual measurement that was used. You see, we need a bit of liquid, and the Mild Wife used about one of these:

Pretty sure you've seen one before

We call that a sanduk in the Mild Home because that's the word for a cooking spoon/ladle thing in the Mild Wife's native language (Kapampangan). The one pictured is most commonly used to serve rice out of a rice cooker of some sort. They're pretty common, but as you can tell, they're basically flat.

Interestingly, we have discovered that they are also quite handy if you're trying to knead dough. I don't remember how or when we learned that particular trick, but it's not uncommon to see one of us use the sanduk outside of pot of rice. If you've ever made bread or dough, you can probably see where this is going: we mixed the solid ingredients, and needed to mix in some form of oil or milk or something. We didn't need that much, we already had a tool in our hand, and we figured we'd just "measure" the liquid on top of the sanduk for expediency's sake. It beats having to put everything down, wash your hands, take out another implement, measure out an exact amount, mix it in, toss the measuring cup/spoon into the sink, and then get back to what you were doing.

Still, for all that I wholeheartedly agree with the expediency, that means that it is now valid in the Mild Home to say you need "a sandukful of oil." We have, effectively, become Asian aunties. I don't think you realize just how hard I laughed when I realized this. All it took was a few reps, a bit of laziness, and a bread recipe of some sort.

Who knew? I'm an Asian aunty.