All these years my little 5-cup-and-spoon measuring set serves me just fine. As a matter of fact, I still have the yellow plastic measuring set that mom bought me for my home-economic in junior high back in the 70s. I never would have thought measuring ingredients is such a complicated task until I start playing with recipes that call for metric measurement.
At first, I thought I can just use the conversion chart and save money not getting a scale, but I see things are not so easy. The US system measures volume while the metric measures weight. So, bad news: 1 cup of water does not equal to 1 cup of milk and not 1 cup of oil. Worse: 1 cup of white flour does not equal to 1 cup of wheat flour and not 1 cup of sugar. Worst yet: 1 egg is not always 1 egg. See what I mean???
OK, I know that the US is the odd ball in the world of measurement. While other countries have adopted the metric system, the US, Liberia and Burma have not (knowledge perused from Googling). Recipes and chefs say the metric measurement is more precise than the US measurements but it's working fine until I have to use metric recipes!
How I wish that there is an automatic conversion app that would just show everything in cups/ounces and table/teaspoons depending on the ingredients at a click of button. Of course life won't be so simple. Even if I convert recipes with minimal effort, I will still have to deal with measurement such as 1.27 cup or 4.5768272 tsp. Now, how the heck will I ever be able to measure that?
So I conceded. I bought a kitchen scale and will get to know my grams and milliliters (or cc). I just have to accept the fact that a 45g egg is not just any one egg. I will have to weigh it and find this precised measured out egg all in the name of metric.