Trying to figure out the recipe creator...

Amandachanges

So tonight I decided to stop eating pre-packaged as a means of calorie control. The kids are thrilled with the smell of Fiesta Chicken filling the house. However, I didn’t pre-weigh the raw chicken (and only used part of the package), and I have no idea how the recipe creator works! I got on it and after inputting the name of the meal it asks me how many people it serves. Heck if I know! I just throw it all in the crock pot and everyone goes to town! Generally speaking, the recipe calls for 2 lbs raw chicken breasts (trimmed), 1 can of Rotel, 1 can of sweet corn, 1 can of black beans, 1 packet of hidden valley fiesta ranch seasoning, and 1 8oz brick of cream cheese.
Can I even eat this? I forgot to weigh the chicken. How do I know if any given serving has less meat/more corn, or vice versa? How can one correctly measure their caloric intake with this method? How many “servings” are there supposed to be in this recipe? I’m lost. On a side note, if any of you have never tried this recipe...you HAVE to! Even picky kids devour it! Thanks in advance for any insight.

Duck_Puddle

First-take a deep breath of 8.

Next-the recipe builder will take the total of all the nutritonal info for all the ingredients you enter, then divide it by however many servings you say there are and voila, you have the nutritional info for a serving of your recipe.

For most stuff like what you’re describing, I will weigh the total of the finished product, and enter that as the number of servings. So your whole recipe weighs 2500g, you say that recipe makes 2500 servings. Then log your in your diary 450 servings (or however many grams you actually ate).

As for mixed items not being completely homogeneous and one ladleful may have a slightly different composition than another-it’s all plenty close enough. Nothing in this process is 100% exact so we just do the best we can to be as accurate as we can within the realm of normal human existence.

Lastly-if you have the remainder of the package of chicken and can subtract to determine how much you used-do that. If not, use a good faith estimate and it’ll be close enough for this round. The good news is that the next time you make the recipe, you can just tweak it for the specific amounts (of chicken, weight at tha end) and you’re good to go.

And yes-if you like it and it tastes good and it’s not poisonous, you can Eat it. Just eat an amount of it that fits into your calorie goals and you’re all set.

Enjoy!