[Plot 1 Problems]

  Temperatures are C as far as I am concerned - F means nothing to me

Pity me then as I have to occasionally Kelvin as well. Mmmmm K, F, C. Finger lickin' good. 

[mumofstig]

I bought a set of cup measures for a few quid and life became suddenly much simpler.  My scales convert from imperial to metric, which is handy as I have some old recipes I use.

Cups are a measure of volume not weight - a cup of hardpacked flour weighs more than a cup of sifted flour - so never going to make any sense to me - this made me LOL
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/equipment/dear-americans-fed-stupid-cup-measurements/

[New shoot]

Cups are a measure of volume not weight - a cup of hardpacked flour weighs more than a cup of sifted flour - so never going to make any sense to me - this made me LOL
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/equipment/dear-americans-fed-stupid-cup-measurements/

 

My extensive knowledge (gained solely by American cooking videos on YouTube so make of that what you will  ) is that you don't hard pack anything except soft brown sugar and you always level off the top of the cup.  If flour is hard packed in a bag, they always seem to run the cup measure through to loosen it before scooping.  Sifting comes afterwards, so it is a level measure of not too fluffed up flour. 

Works for the cookie and pie crust recipes I have tried, but I'm no great cake baker.  If you are baking a sensitive creature like a sponge cake, I'd stick to what you know works 

[lettice]

Totally agree with the cup measurements. Can be confusing at first.
But a few of my bread machine cookbooks and bread machine own recipe booklets have had that same table as that link above and been using that for years without fail after manually writing and amending my recipes.
I use a couple of small mugs that are exactly cup size along with the many plastic cup measures I have had with my bread machines over the years.

[al78]

Don't know why, but I still convert C to F, and have been doing so for so long that I know all the numbers commonly found in the UK off by heart.

Have to concentrate quite hard when using a metric tape measure to not get cm and mm mixed up, and do tend to use 2.5mm as an approximation for an inch (but not when accuracy matters, he added hastily!)

As for weights, I've more or less stopped converting grams to ounces every time I buy goods , and when cooking I use 30g as an approximation for an ounce (the error doesn't seem to cause problems when using small quantities.)
As for American 'cups' I agree with MoS - drives me a) nuts, b) straight to an online converter! 

Veg Plot 1B: Americans seem to use 'yard' as a term meaning 'garden', whether it's one yard, 10 yards (or even 9.144 metres!)

I do instant conversion from C to F (and back), my parents who were born just before WWII used F for temperature, my mother used ounces and pounds when cooking, and I adopted that (and still do). Weight of people I thinki of in stone, although I sometimes do a mental arithmetic conversion to kg. There is an inconsistency with measurement units used in the UK. We use litres for petrol but pints for beer. I never use recipes from the US because I don't know how to convert cups to standard units (grams or ounces).

[rowlandwells]

both the wife and me sometimes get confused when trying to work out the conversion table when I order any building materials as its all in metric I ask my builder friend to help me out I'm confused .com

and if I go anywhere to buy and its in metric I always say what's that in old money and I really get some funny looks from the assistant serving me like "fork handles no four candle's"