Math for cooking, Part V

This ends my week to talk about math used in cooking. I'm sure you are tired of the rice and sweet potato recipe by now. So we'll clean up our mess before heading off for the weekend.

After some contemplation, I've come up with these math skills (taught in Excel Math curriculum) that we are likely to need while cooking:

• putting things in sequential order
• measuring liquid volume, measuring weight
• measuring temperature of an item
• standard and metric units and conversion back and forth
• conversion of units from volume to weight (1 cup flour by volume = 5 ounces by weight)
• telling time; number of minutes in an hour; adding minutes
• calculating elapsed time in minutes (across the 12) on the clock
• evaluating information to see if it is sufficient; ignoring extraneous information
• estimating; cost-per-item (unit cost)
• calculating one-half of an item; fractions

Hopefully you have picked up these skills through school or life experience, so when you go into the kitchen you feel confident in the math part of the cooking process. We'll do what we can to make sure your kids learn math, so they can participate too.

As for actually performing the skills of cooking (cutting, mixing, baking, etc.) you and the kids just need to get in there and give it a try. We don't teach cooking skills in Excel Math.

If you do know how to cook - especially from basic ingredients, please consider sharing your talents with young people. Help them develop a life-long capability that's just as important to their overall health as math.