Spaghetti/meatball calorie help

melpidal

Ok so I'm making a new recipe today for spaghetti and meatballs. I have all the individual calories-calories for the meatballs and sauce. Now how do I combine it all to find out the calories for a serving size? It's for 20 meatballs-no problem because I can divide total calories to find out how much in each meatball. But I guess the real question is the sauce because it's mixed in with the meatballs? This is the type of thing I hate that takes the joy out of cooking for me.

scarletspy

What I do is add the calories for everything together and decide on number of servings based on amount of meatballs (eg for 20 meatballs I'll have 5 servings of 4). Then I scoop the meatballs out of the sauce and put on plate/ in bowl. When it's just the sauce left,
I go in with either a cup or 1/2 cup measuring cup (depending on amount of sauce) and portion out 1 cup (or 1/2 cup) per serving of meatballs. If there is sauce left I do it again until its all served. If you don't have enough sauce to have equal portions the second time around then go down a size in cup eg use 1 cup first time around then 1/4 cup second time around, etc.

Does that make sense?

maryjaquiss

Have you tried using the recipe tool? You put in all the ingredients, number of portions and it works out a serving for you.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe_parser

rdgfit

The recipe tool is very good... you can enter manually or submit a web link and it will pull the recipe and match... not perfect but very efficient.
I also use recipes/save as meal to create meals that I often eat so adding to my day is very easy. All the best!

Francl27

I'd calculate calories for each meatball using the recipe builder (I also weigh mine to make them even), then just weigh your portion of sauce as closely as possible and log that separately (use the recipe builder for that separately as well if it's not just jar sauce like lazy me uses).

rdmitch

You will just make yourself crazy. I estimate it
200 calories for 1 cup noodles, 200 for 1/2 cup sauce and 100 for an average meatball.
Betcha it's pretty close.

Luna3386

I personally weigh out the entire dish- spaghetti and calculate calories per gram. Then weigh out my serving, same for sauce, meatballs, parmesan cheese, etc.