Measuring in 'parts'

After my Kyphi article, I've had several comments and emails asking me about measuring by 'parts'.  I will explain.  I grew up watching my Italian grandmother make her own pasta and bread doughs, her own sauces, and even candies without ever using measuring cups.  She would use handfuls and knew precisely how much of each ingredient to add in relation to each other.  I call this intuitive cooking: using a base tested recipe based on portions and then adding a pinch of this or that to it until it's just right.  Basically, if you have one part raisins to two parts flour you pick a vessel (your hand, a bowl, a cup, any measuring item) and fill it once with raisins and then twice with flour.  This way you can adjust the size of the recipe simply by the size of the vessel.  Use a larger bowl if you want more servings of your final creation or scale it down to a small cup or your hand for smaller finished amounts.  My hand holds about 1/4 cup so I can guess on most recipes with good accuracy.

So in the Kyphi recipe if I say 1 part honey to 3 parts wine, I will pick a vessel like a coffee mug and fill it once with honey and 3 times with wine.  It's pretty simple for me but I know some people panic without the exact cup, 1/4 cup, etc.  Hope that helps!