A Cup of This - A Dash of That (1512)

I love to cook and honestly can’t remember how young I was when I first entered the kitchen. I can tell you that once my mom and grandma taught me how to bake, and I could read a recipe, that I was the official baker in our household of 6. Needless to say, I ALWAYS had to double any cookie or brownie recipe, as it did not last long with 4 kids in the house.

Looking back, perhaps this is where my love of math came into play as well. My dad was, and still is, the “geek” and numbers man that helped me throughout school. He even gave me the gentle nudge to pursue my accounting degree the first time around in college. My mom was the busy housewife trying to make ends meet and keep us all happy around the dinner table.

In my eyes, a recipe is like a puzzle that must be put together “just so” in order to come out perfectly. I have learned through trial and error that baking needs more exact measurements, while other recipes for cooking you can become a little more creative and innovative.

A recipe is compiled of different measurements that have been tested by others to create something delicious. It will usually include measurements in terms of cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. This is where the fun of fractions comes into the picture! Here is a link that gives equivalent measurements to either reduce or enlarge a recipe.

Cooking Measurement Equivalents 

I recently ran into some confusion with my 83-year-old grandma. She makes WONDERFUL molasses cookies and I wanted to bake a large batch to hand out for teacher appreciation week for my kid’s teachers and teaching assistants. She emailed me two recipes, which confused me like crazy. I was trying to take the larger one and cut it in half to get the 2^nd recipe she had given me, however nothing was lining up. She wasn’t home to answer my question, but my sister finally responded that they were actually two separate recipes that she thought were both good and wanted to give me options. Uffda! And yes, I will share those great family secrets with you all here too!

Grandma Pearl's Cookies

Grandma Pearl's Large Batch of Cookies

Abby and Grandma Pearl 2009 Christmas Baking

Laura, Cousin Evan, and Grandma Pearl 2011 Christmas Baking

Absolutely Math is Fun! (1510)

The absolute value of an integer sparked my interest while I was recently reviewing my math homework. I remembered that it was something with an “easy” answer no matter what the problem was, but I couldn’t remember the exact definition of what it meant. The absolute value of a number is the distance it is away from zero. Whether the number is -6 or 6, you are still only 6 spaces away from zero. When you input a negative or a positive number (or zero), the end result will always be positive (or zero). The notation for writing absolute value uses two bars on each side of a number, not parenthesis.


For example:
|-5| = 5 and |5| = 5

This is read “the absolute value of the opposite of 5 equals 5” and “the absolute value of 5 equals 5”.

One thing to note when dealing with the absolute value is that the “-” or normally called negative sign, should be viewed as “the opposite of sign”, not necessarily a negative sign. The reason for this approach is that you can have an equation where you might have - |-x|. From everything I’ve discussed you might say “positive x” for the answer, however you have to look closely at where the bars are placed. Anything within the bars |-x| results in a positive x, however when you add the opposite sign outside of the bars, the ultimate answer is –x.

Absolute Value Number Ball Game