Last week we learned the importance of reading the directions and touched on the difference between weight and volume. This week we’re gonna go into that more.

When measuring ingredients you can do it by one of two ways: Weight or Volume. Which you choose depends on what kind of ingredient needs to be meted out.

Weights are, obviously, done with a scale and you can pick up a decent digital scale that does both grams and ounces/pounds for not too much of an investment.

Greetings, Liquid Measures

Liquids will (almost) always be measured by volume. They have this pesky habit of not holding a shape that makes them tough to pile on a scale.

The smallest unit is an ounce (abbreviated oz.) and, yes, that’s a shot glass in the picture to the left. It makes it a cinch to measure ounces and the fractions thereof.

8 oz. (sometimes written as fluid ounces of fl. oz.)=1 cup
2 cups = 1 pint (pt)
2 pints = 1 quart (qt)
4 quarts = 1 gallon (gal)

If you need more than that, well, you’re dealing in serious quantities and why do you need this lesson?

They can also be measured by teaspoons and tablespoons (3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, 1 Tbsp = 1 ounce) but you usually get into this with extracts and specialty oils.

Oh, and the above? That’s all Imperial measures, what we use here in the US and every other place that hasn’t gone Metric. Metric uses that nice base-10 systems where everything can be broken down infinitesimally from their main unit of a Liter. Maybe we’ll do Metric another day.

Let’s march on. In an Imperial fashion.

Measures with a Dry Sense of Humor*

Dry ingredients can be measured by volume–in cups–or by weight–ounces and pounds or (Metric) grams.

So, if you can measure both liquids and dry bits in cups, why do you need two different sorts of measurers?

Simple: the flat-topped dry measures allow you to scoop the flour, sugar, etc. into the correctly-sized cup and then, with a straight implement of some sort (the back of a butter knife, your finger, whatever) scrape off the excess. This gives you an exact cup (or whatever). Liquid, on the other hand, has that tendency to spill over edges plus doesn’t tend to form a flat top. In order to accurately measure liquids you need to be able to see through the vessel (which is why so many are glass or clear plastic) at eye level to see exactly where the curve is in the center–that’s the actual measure of what’s in the glass (technically known as the meniscus).

That, and using the big liquid measures for dry invites the habit of shaking and, thereby, compressing the ingredients within. Something you generally don’t want to do.

Now, what’s the difference between fluid ounces (liquid) and weighted ounces (dry)? Isn’t a cup a cup no matter what?

Nope.

If you were to weigh the amount of flour that a single cup of the dry type contains, it’d actually be closer to 4 ounces in weight, not the 8 ounces of volume you’d expect. See the problem?

Let’s go back to our cheese example from last week: an 8 ounce (weight) block of cheddar will, when shredded, yeild 2 cups (volume) or more. And not even food related, just imagine how much more of, say, feathers you’d have to have to weigh a pound compared to, say, lead. It’s sorta like comparing a pound of pork to a pound of raw baby spinach–there’s a BIG difference.

If it’s a dry ingredient (or at least not liquid–moist, like brown sugar or shredded pork, still coints as dry) and it says ounces, weigh it.

Finally, is there any time you can substitute volume for weight one-to-one?

Yes–water and things of similar ilk fall to this little ditty:

A pint is a pound the whole world round!

A fluid pint is 2 cups, 16 ounces. A pound is 16 ounces. This is one of those times when they are, truly, equal. So on the rare chance your making something that calls for 2 pounds of water (or similar liquids–cream is heavier than water, but skim milk is pretty close to the original: thicker is denser is heavier) you know you can use 2 pints or half a gallon and you’re golden!

There’s art happening! Honest to goodness pages! See?

Intro Pages 1-3

True, I’d hoped to get more than 3 pages this week but, well, Monday night’s not exactly done, either. But I wanted to get the update out before I got distracted by panels and pages again.

Recipes to the Rescue

Something came in today’s mail that you might find interesting. Seems Better Homes & Gardens thought a comic book-ish cookbook wasn’t a bad idea around 2000 and put one together. I found my copy for under $5 on eBay but there are plenty of copies of Recipes to the Rescue: Thrilling Kitchen Adventures…Just in the Nick of Time? for similar prices via Amazon’s Marketplace.

It’s quite full of the bright colors and exaggerated drama about needing dinner or snacks in an all-fired hurry. By my count it contains 73 recipes all with short ingredient lists and quick prep times. Plenty of overly concerned faces grace the pages but there’s no pictures of the food. And I was pretty cool with the ideas they were presenting until I came across the Fish Fillet Muffuletta.

The hell?

Now, I’m all for new twists on old favorites but there are some things that, if you change their basic components, they are no longer that thing. A muffuletta is one of them.

If you’ve never had this classic New Orleans sandwich, it’s made of salami, ham, olive salad, cheese and garlic all on a round loaf of bread. Frozen fish planks, coleslaw mix and salsa–salsa?!–cannot possibly compare.

Fish-plank sandwiches might be quite tasty… I think it’s just a stretch to call it a muffuletta.

That egregious lack of judgement aside, the rest of the recipes look fairly simple and tasty, worth checking out even if just for the novelty factor.

~~~oOo~~~

Speaking of novelty factor, I finally have a new episode of my podcast ready for consumption. Travel-themed music for your listening pleasure at randomactscomics.com/radio!

Do you know how to read a recipe? Or, better yet, do you understand the recipes you read?

You might be looking at me like I’ve got a balloon whisk for a head but I do have a point, here. The more you cook, the more likely you’ll run into subtle variations in written recipes that can make a difference in the finished product.

There’s a way to read a recipe (preferably before you chop your first vegetable) that will prepare you for making a dish the right way the first time and never having to call for take out due to user error.

Once you’ve read through your recipe fully to make sure you’ve got all the ingredients and tools you need and find out if it’s going to take 2 hours in the oven or only a few minutes on the stove, look a little bit closer at your ingredients list.

There’s an order of operations that takes place with some ingredients that should be noted. For instance

1 cup flour, sifted  vs 1 cup sifted flour
1 cup cheese, shredded vs 1 cup shredded cheese

The things that happen after the comma happen after you’ve measured the ingredient in question. In the case of flour, settling occurs during packaging and shipping and sitting on your shelf. Some recipes (mostly baking, in the case of flours) are so fine-tuned that the difference in weight or volume between a cup of sifted flour versus the same cup of flour straight out of the bag can change the end results in not good ways.

The cheese is a little different but easier to see. If you buy a block of cheese to save money (you pay more for pre-shredded, after all) and remember reading somewhere that 1 cup equals 8 ounces, you might go and grate that whole 8-oz block of cheddar thinking you’re in the clear.

If the recipe called for 1 cup shredded cheese you’re going to end up with twice as much cheese as you need! Why? Magic.

No, not really–shredding cheese spreads out something that was very tightly compressed and it takes up more space.

Does food always grow when you break it down?

Nope.

Cubed bread into crumbs in an excellent example of how much certain items can compress when it’s shredded or ground. If the original state is light and fluffy or groups of them don’t fit together perfectly (nuts, I’m looking at you), breaking them down into smaller units allows them to fit together more tightly and get rid of all that trapped air.

And let’s not even start on rice. Read carefully, my friends, because 2 cups of cooked rice is very different from 2 cups rice, cooked. (We’re back to the expanding thing, again, if you weren’t sure.)

Next week we’ll talk about weights and measures and when conversions can be safely made! Until then… have you ever had a recipe mishap or seen something you just didn’t understand? All comments welcome!

Except for a few cocktail orders I haven’t been drawing much the last month and a half–I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get back into the habit of sitting at my drawing table. Hell, even just being in the Abyss (my office). I’d been working on the laptop from the comfort of the couch whenever I wasn’t drawing or editing photos. (Mostly because the television in the Abyss got zapped months ago by lightening and I like to catch up on DVR while I work on other things.)

Still, despite the schedule-shift I’ve got the first 6 pages laid out, lettered and loosely penciled. A slow start but one that will be built upon this week and continuing. For a fleeting moment I thought it would be feasible to finish the comic art in 6 weeks–sounds okay, right? Until I realized that it would mean 15 pages a week and, well, I’d have to quit my job and invest in mega wrist braces to manage that. So we’re looking at at LEAST through September before the art will be complete.

Not that I’m not going to try and speed things up! I’ve even given up sleeping in on weekends to allow more time for drawing! This may not seem like a whole lot but, well, I love my weekends when I never see the a.m. side of noon. It’s what gets me through the week! But I’m committed to this project, even if it means losing my luxury lie-ins.

Another thing we haven’t seen around here, lately, is a Food & Game Pairing. There’s a reason for this: they take time to research and prepare. I have the next one picked out but it’s probably going to wait until I’ve cleared some other things from the to-do list. In the mean time I’m going to be putting up some posts on basic recipe skills, pantry basics and must-have kitchen tools to get you ready to explore your kitchen. For instance, do you really know how to read a recipe? Know what should be weighed or measured and when conversions are equal and when they are not? Do you know what that tool does?

Stay tuned…

Oh. Yeah.

Another round of high-5s, gang: the scripts are finished!!!

The last 3 are longhand in my go-everywhere red notebook but they are finished. Come to think of it, there should have been more celebration involved when that last word was written.

Except that the work is far from over.

Sure, I’ve got scripts but now I’ve got to actually draw them. This week I’ll start laying out the first 6 pages, the prologue. Funny thing, the chapter stories are all 16 pages long. So much for my 6-12 estimate! With a 3 page epilogue that brings us up to 89 pages of comics alone! Plus title pages, techniques and all the other stuff we’re talking over 100 pages to draw.

Guess I’d better get busy!

In the interest of sharing, here’s my usual process:

1. Scripting. I used to do this with my weekly comics but it’s absolutely imperative with long-form. For instance, I didn’t determine one of the necessary kitchen features of the prologue until halfway through the prologue–major bummer if I’d had to go back and redraw pages because of that little detail.
2. Layout. Some of my scripts are very specific about how many panels per page and others are more free-flowing, writing down the beats that need to be hit and the dialog and I make the panel decisions when I actually get to the page.
3. Lettering. I hand letter. One reason is this keeps me from drawing stuff in a panel that’s just going to get covered up by words (working smarter, not harder!). The other reason is that I think hand lettering looks more organic with the page than even a font created from my handwriting would. It helps that I have good handwriting (being obsessive about my homework in high school paid off, folks!)–it’s not for everyone.
4. Pencils. I do tight pencils. That means a lot of detail. It’s what I’m most comfortable with–I’m never as happy with my inks if I leave the pencils too loose and I’ve been known to prefer my pencils to my inks.
5. Inking. This goes in two parts. Again, I start with the letters. Mostly because it requires different pressure on my hands than drawing figures. Same pen, different grip. It also goes faster. Figures are last and can take quite a while, switching to a smaller pen for the backgrounds. All told I probably draw everything 3 times. Then I spot any solid blacks there may be. I’m thinking of going to brush again for some of the lines, we’ll see when I get there.
6. Scanning. Hello, computer. Depending on the size of my originals, I might have to scan them in parts and stitch them together in…
7. Photoshop. See what I did there? I do very little work in Photoshop for my comics. Mainly I adjust the levels to drop out any pencil marks that made it through the scanning step (erasing is one of the worst jobs–if I had an intern that’s one of the things I’d make them do), adjust any glaring errors and resize it for print or web depending on the application.

When working long-form I like to work through each step through the whole work. In this case, 90 pages is a lot to do each in turn, so I’ll work through inking the lettering on each story chunk but hold off inking the figures until everything else is done so that there’s not a drastic style-difference between pages 1 and 90. Covers come last and, by then I should have my illustration list made up for the individual techniques and recipe spots.

And if you want a photo-peek of one of the techniques for the book–making gnocchi from scratch–check out the recent post over at Nibbles ‘n Bites!