I heart math

Let's just note that it's a good thing that I majored in math for undergraduate studies - otherwise these darn conversion might have killed me by now.

I've gotten pretty good at estimating the temperature outside - double the celsius, subtract out 10% of the original number, add 32. That means that 18C is really like 66ish F.

And I can approximate how long it will take us to get somewhere when the GPS gives us kilometers remaining. When the little lady in the machine says 'Continue 60 kilometers', what it really means is - multiply 60 by .62, that puts you at about 37 MILES to go, don't freak out and think that it's longer than it really is.

But start throwing reversals in there or uneven numbers and my mind goes all kattywhompus. Such as running a 9.8 pace on the treadmill. I know that a 10 showing means that it's 6.2 miles/hour, but 9.8 is just too many decimals for my mind to handle WHILE I'm also trying to run.

I also find this true when I'm trying to cook from a recipe. Which is why I find myself just winging dinners. But last night, I wanted to make some cornbread to go along with our chili (which first of all, yay to me for finally finding the kidney beans in the grocery store).

Knowing that I wouldn't be so lucky as to find a pack of our go-to Betty Crocker Cornbread Mix, I had my fingers crossed that there would be any type of corn meal. Luckily, I found some polenta and just hoped that it would be simliar enough - after all, it did say corn meal on the package and it was yellow.

Then I had to come home and actually follow the recipe so that I could hope to have something similar to cornbread come out of the oven. All of the liquids are pretty easy because I made sure to get measuring cups and teaspoons that have the American standard on them. But when the recipe calls for 1/2 stick of butter, I first have to remember how many TBSPs are in a stick (since butter here is sold in blocks, not sticks) and then convert that to grams.

I find myself back and forth from the counter to my computer googling things like '4 tablespoons is how many grams?' and ending up at websites like this. Because let me just show you what the knobs on our oven look like:

Not only do I have to worry about converting 400F to Celsius, but I also have to figure out what 'Fan Grill', 'Grill', 'Fan Forced' and 'Fan' mean (I've got 'light' covered). I've pretty much have been cooking everything on 'fan forced' since it seems to heat the most evenly and I just watch and check every 3 minutes.

The cornbread turned out pretty good. We ate the pieces around the edge because the middle was a little soggy.

The whole experience makes me wonder why on earth they brought Americans over here to build a power station. If my cornbread turned out soggy, what's going to happen on first fire?