Dinner question

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summpear
summpear Posts: 77 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey, for experienced loggers (and home cooks) - I'm struggling with logging my dinners.

I cook for a family of 7. We do a lot of soup or casserole style dishes (where everything is blended as opposed to 1 piece of chicken, 1 serving of rice, 1 serving of veggies).

Because I cook for such a large amount, I cook to have leftovers, not simply 7 servings every meal.

I'm getting stuck logging because when I enter a recipe into my recipes, I have to decide how many servings it is.. and honestly, short of measuring every single serving for every recipe, I'm not sure how to do this. Is there a trick to streamlining this process? A way to do ingredient ratios and log my weight my total?

I lost 35lbs with eyeballing it and I'm down to the last 5 and thoroughly plateaud/ in maintenance these last 3 months and I'm sure it's because my dinner calories aren't very accurate. I'd like to "finish it out" but not drive myself and my family insane on the process ;)

Replies

  • concordancia
    concordancia Posts: 5,320 Member
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    I divide my recipe servings according to protein. For example, a pound of protein equals 4 servings, so the total veg and fat and whatever gets divided by 4.

    If you want to be as accurate as possible outside a lab, you could then weigh the final product to determine how much weight a serving is. I just visually divide it up, easier with flatter casserole dishes, but if you know the size of your dish, you may be able to determine the number of cups.
  • Maxxitt
    Maxxitt Posts: 1,281 Member
    edited January 2019
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    Another way to go in your circumstance would be to take the values you have used in the past for your casserole meals and add 25%.

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    With stuff like that, I always just estimated it as good as I could. When I made a stew or casserole or lasagna or something I knew roughly how many total servings for us that it would ultimately make and would just log that. You can't let perfect be the enemy of good. None of this is an exact science...it's a lot of estimation.

    I don't log anymore and haven't in years...I'm needing to shed my winter and holiday weight which is about 10 Lbs...I know that I just need to reduce the size of some of my meals and servings and cut back on a couple snacks to get there. The last bit of weight can be difficult too because you don't have the fat stores you had before. At 190 right now I have plenty of fat to drop back down to 180...I'm ultimately going to shoot for 175, but I know from experience that at that point it's pretty hard because I'm reasonably lean at 180 and trying to get vanity leaner.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
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    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    With stuff like that, I always just estimated it as good as I could. When I made a stew or casserole or lasagna or something I knew roughly how many total servings for us that it would ultimately make and would just log that. You can't let perfect be the enemy of good. None of this is an exact science...it's a lot of estimation.

    I don't log anymore and haven't in years...I'm needing to shed my winter and holiday weight which is about 10 Lbs...I know that I just need to reduce the size of some of my meals and servings and cut back on a couple snacks to get there. The last bit of weight can be difficult too because you don't have the fat stores you had before. At 190 right now I have plenty of fat to drop back down to 180...I'm ultimately going to shoot for 175, but I know from experience that at that point it's pretty hard because I'm reasonably lean at 180 and trying to get vanity leaner.

    That's a good line!
  • summpear
    summpear Posts: 77 Member
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    Re: weighing original product - this has crossed my mind, but my current scales only go to 4lb6oz - some of my stone dishes weigh 2+ pounds alone! Do you have a reccomendation for a scale that goes higher? I haven't shopped at all.

    I mean, I guess I could bring my bathroom scale down to use ;);)
  • collectingblues
    collectingblues Posts: 2,541 Member
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    summpear wrote: »
    Re: weighing original product - this has crossed my mind, but my current scales only go to 4lb6oz - some of my stone dishes weigh 2+ pounds alone! Do you have a reccomendation for a scale that goes higher? I haven't shopped at all.

    I mean, I guess I could bring my bathroom scale down to use ;);)

    I use this one: https://www.amazon.com/Salter-Aquatronic-Glass-Electronic-Kitchen/dp/B000698A66/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1546974864&sr=8-16&keywords=taylor+kitchen+glass+scale

    It won't help for the big stone dishes (admittedly, I can't even picture lifting a pot that heavy!), but as long as you don't use those for *everything*, would get you most of the way. It holds 11 pounds.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    use the recipe builder. calculate the calories for the entire dish. figure out calories per gram. there you go.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    Use the recipe builder and add all the ingredients, weight finished casserole in grams subtracting weight of actual dish, then enter that weight as the number of servings in the recipe. Then when you dish out 225 grams for yourself, you can log 225 servings.
  • summpear
    summpear Posts: 77 Member
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    My big stone casserole dish weighs 6.8lbs, and I probably use it once it twice a week. My crock pot liner is over 5lbs too. Maybe my bathroom scale is the winner here after all ;)
  • concordancia
    concordancia Posts: 5,320 Member
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    summpear wrote: »
    My big stone casserole dish weighs 6.8lbs, and I probably use it once it twice a week. My crock pot liner is over 5lbs too. Maybe my bathroom scale is the winner here after all ;)

    Your bathroom scale is not sensitive enough. You could put it into a lighter dish. After all, this is only something you need to do once to get an idea of how many servings are in a dish, not every time you prepare the same casserole.
  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,224 Member
    edited January 2019
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    If it’s super important, Williams Sonoma sells a food scale that goes up to 30 pounds.

    Another option is to weigh all the portions as you’re serving them then add those to as the total. A regular food scale should handle a plate/bowl with food on it (unless you’ve got crazy heavy plates).

    That’s a lot of work to do that 7 times and add it up, but It’ll get the total weight of the end product of the recipe to use as the number of servings the recipe makes (then log your portion as the actual weight it is).

    I typically bulk cook. I make my foods and then as I put things in Rubbermaid or whatever, I will weigh it then. That might be more work if you then have to re-serve 7 portions out of those. But it does give me the total recipe weight.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
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    I use the kitchen scale to weigh the entire dish when it's done. However many oz or grams it weighs is what i put for the # of servings. The only problem I run into is remembering to weigh the stupid pot or whatever before I start cooking
  • suziecue25
    suziecue25 Posts: 289 Member
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    callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »
    use the recipe builder. calculate the calories for the entire dish. figure out calories per gram. there you go.

    ^ This - simples!
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »
    use the recipe builder. calculate the calories for the entire dish. figure out calories per gram. there you go.

    Exactly what I was going to suggest.

    When it comes to big batch stuff like that as long as you're reasonable consistent with the preparation it's going to be accurate enough. If the preparation varies for some reason just make adjustments in the recipe and the 1g per serve numbers will adjust accordingly.
  • namelesshere
    namelesshere Posts: 334 Member
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    Most recipes have a suggested serving size in the caloric count. I went through all of my cookbooks and got rid of the ones that had no nutrition info. The old family favorites that didn't have that info, I rarely make but did keep them around just limit my intake. (Usually I will make it and take to a potluck so it is out of the house). There are websites and computer programs that will calculate nutrition and serving size info for you. It really is not difficult. If you calculate it once write it down so you know for next time.

  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
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    concordancia wrote: »
    summpear wrote: »
    My big stone casserole dish weighs 6.8lbs, and I probably use it once it twice a week. My crock pot liner is over 5lbs too. Maybe my bathroom scale is the winner here after all ;)

    Your bathroom scale is not sensitive enough. You could put it into a lighter dish. After all, this is only something you need to do once to get an idea of how many servings are in a dish, not every time you prepare the same casserole.

    my bathroom scale gives me weight in pounds in the tenth place (so 10.1-10.9) - that gets me pretty close to accurate for large servings in my crockpot if needed

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