Kitchen Scale Pulls its Weight

Recently I was talking about cooking and dieting with one of my sisters. "It's such a pain to measure how many ounces or grams everything is," she complained. "Fortunately I've gotten better at estimating so I'm not overeating constantly."

"Do you have a digital kitchen scale?" I asked. "They make it so easy to measure everything, and they're inexpensive, too!"



She was still working with an old analog scale, so I explained what a difference it made when we bought a modern, digital scale (pictured) several years ago. The differences were like night and day. One, the nearly flat surface is easy to put both small and large things on. Two, the digital readout is accurate and so easy to read. Three, the "TARE" button makes it trivial to use a measuring cup, bowl, plastic container, etc., to hold food.



Here's an example I shared from food I was cooking that day. I was making pasta, so I placed a bowl atop the scale while the water was coming to a boil. Note the scale initially weighs the bowl.

In the old days you could adjust for the weight of the bowl either by doing mental arithmetic— something most people are weak at— or by turning a set knob somewhere around the back of the to reset the zero point with the bowl on it. The problem was, the knobs were generally finicky, and once you were done you had to set them back to zero again. Each reset required multiple adjustments of the knob to get it zeroed properly again.



With a digital scale, a simple touch of the TARE button zeroes the scale. Put your bowl or measuring cup on it, press tare, then add food.



Back in the old days, analog scales were such a pain I didn't bother to use them for pasta. I'd just estimate by eyeballing it. "Hmm that looks like about 4 oz.," and, "I'll add a bit more to be sure." Usually it was too much and I'd eat it anyway.

With accurate measurement so easy to do now I realized I don't even like 4 oz. of pasta (dry weight) for a meal. I've cut back to 3 oz., or even 2.5 oz. if I'm making a thick sauce. In the pic above I'm making 5 oz. because it's two portions— one for lunch today, one for lunch or dinner later in the week. Once the pasta's cooked I'll either eyeball it to split it in half, or pour the whole mass back into this bowl, weigh it, and part out half into a container for the fridge.

The best thing is these scales are so inexpensive. I think I paid somewhere around $20 several years ago, and it was unquestionably worth it. The same model today is on sale for under $10 at Amazon today!

"So what are you making with that scale?"

"So what are you making with that pasta?" my sister asked me after I extolled the virtue of an inexpensive digital kitchen scale in a text conversation a few days ago. It's been a while since I've blogged about cooking so I figured I'd share it here.

"Red sauce with ground lamb," I answered.

"Ooh, that sounds fancy!"



"Enh, not really," I explained with another picture. The base sauce is from a jar of Prego. While ground lamb is fancier than ground beef, it's just leftovers. I had ground lamb that I used to make burgers for dinner days earlier. I browned up the remainder of the package so it would last longer and to use in a quick lunch recipe such as this.

But wait, there's more!



I made cheesy garlic bread. Okay, now it's getting a bit fancy. But here, too, I struck a balance between really fancy and convenient. I didn't make the bread. Baking fresh bread would be fancy— and way too much work for weekday lunch! But I also didn't buy a pre-made garlic loaf from the store. I bought a half dozen fresh sandwich rolls the week earlier, froze them, and defrosted one in the microwave for this meal. I brushed it with olive oil, sprinkled it with garlic powder, and gave it a quick toast in the broiler. Then I topped it with shredded mozzarella cheese— I used pre-shredded cheese this time to save effort— sprinkled on oregano, and melted it together under the broiler for another few minutes.

As I remarked above it's been a while since I've blogged about cooking so I figured I'd share this. Why haven't I written much about cooking lately? It's because cooking has become old-hat. Earlier in the pandemic it was an old skill turned new again because suddenly I needed to exercise it a lot more. Now it's something I do often enough that it doesn't feel blogworthy. Also, I think I don't attempt as many fancier meals as I did a year ago. I figured out a bunch of meals that taste great without requiring crazy amounts of effort and I make them repeatedly. Perhaps when the weather turns cooler I'll trot back out the recipes that require running the stove for an hour.

The Sopranos - Another Manipulator - Season 2 eps. 1-3

After finishing off season 1 of The Sopranos on Sunday we dove into the first few episodes of season 2. One of the story arcs across this season, or at least the first few episodes of it, is Tony's estranged older sister, Janice, coming back to town to reconcile with their mother, Livia. Janice is a skilled manipulator. She may not be psychotic like her mother but she's effective at it. She irritates Tony, who at a gut level recognizes she's a manipulator but doesn't really know how to counteract it, and seems to completely fool Carmella.

A blow-up happens between Janice and Tony and Carmella in episode 3. ( Season 3 spoiler )

By the way, in my house? Bullshit people like this would be thrown out. Yes, even family. Hawk and I have agreed we have no patience for people who insult us or are harmful to anyone in our household.