Diary does not give you a good picture of the food.

NYCNika

For example, a diary of my lunch does not look very appetizing. Boiled potato, steamed carrot, steamed beet...

But if you look at video of the dish preparation, you get another picture.

http://talerka.tv/recept/belarus/selyadzets/
(I cut down on mayo and oil amounts a bit).

I feel that is true for many of the meals logged by ingredients.

cleotherio

I agree. I log oil or butter that I add in during prep, but I don't log spices. It probably makes a lot of stuff seem really boring.

That recipe looks interesting (in a good way)

lauren3101

I've started trying to log my spices. I was a little silly in the fact that I thought they were pretty much calorie free, but some are more than you'd think. I use quite a lot in my cooking and can easily add an extra 50 cal a portion in spices!

tartsul

i usually just create a recipe (including oil, spices, salt, etc) in my recipe tab and then just log that in my diary. you can give it a fancy name if you want to make it sound more appetizing plus, it's a lot easier to log again later if you have the same thing again.

NYCNika

I only save as "my meals", by ingredients.

If I save it as a recipe, I have trouble adjusting ingredients later.

I don't know how much avocado will be in my guacamole each time. Or how much mayo I want to add to my fish tacos (if I am running that day or not). And, for the life of me, I cannot remember how much is "1 serving" of ricotta pancakes I made a month ago. So that recipe is pretty useless now. That is why I always save as a meal, and that ends up being an ingredient list.

tehzephyrsong

oh man i LOVE seld pod shuboj, that's in my top three favorite Russian salads. Other two are Olivier salad and vinigret. Next time beets go on sale I'm making a big ol' bowl of vinigret. Maybe I'll try my hand at seld pod shuboj, who knows.

tartsul

I only save as "my meals", by ingredients.

If I save it as a recipe, I have trouble adjusting ingredients later.

I don't know how much avocado will be in my guacamole each time. Or how much mayo I want to add to my fish tacos (if I am running that day or not). And, for the life of me, I cannot remember how much is "1 serving" of ricotta pancakes I made a month ago. So that recipe is pretty useless now. That is why I always save as a meal, and that ends up being an ingredient list.

cool, sounds like you've found a system to work for you. sorry it doesn't sound pretty in your diary, but i bet it's pretty on your plate and tasty! and that's what counts!

i don't use the "my meals" as much, i just go back to my recipe tab to check things if i can't remember. or i just edit the recipe to reflect a different amount of avocado, for example. i like to make a lot of the same recipes, so i pretty much have servings and stuff memorized now for our favorite meals.