Tips on tracking homemade meals?

LynneM1980

Hi folks I was wondering if anyone had tips on tracking homemade foods that mix ingredients? For example, tonight I made goulash for everyone and I just tracked the meat, potatoes, carrots etc separately , but I had to kind of guess because it is all cooked together so I wasn't sure what to do for a single serving. Its so much easier just to do like a pork chop and veggie LOL. Thanks in advance!

lynn_glenmont

MFP has a recipe builder. You could use that.

LynneM1980

Thanks Lynn, I didn't see that. Still figuring out the site

lynn_glenmont

LynneM1980 wrote: »

Thanks Lynn, I didn't see that. Still figuring out the site

Best of luck, Lynne. I think you'll find plenty of people willing to answer questions about using the site -- it's mostly a pretty friendly and helpful bunch on the forums.

springlering62

Also look at the “meal” function, which is right there next to “recipes”. They both do the same thing but meal is more flexible, and you can copy it and edit it easier.

If you enter the ingredients for a meal, save it. Then go out of it, reopen it, and edit the portion size to add to your diary. For example the sogagettinsauce I made from scratch a couple of days ago made 11 servings. So I go into my food diary, select meal, choose spaghetti sauce, and then change the serving size to .09, and save to my diary.

Also can do it in reverse. If you’ve logged all the ingredients for something to you food diary, you can select “save as meal” to save it permanently.

Meals also have a copy function. So if I tinker with the basic recipe, I can save it and add in any additional or changes in ingredient amounts.

You can even save cooking instructions or notes to meals.

Since someone here introduced me to it four or five months ago, I’ve stopped using the recipes function completely.

kshama2001

LynneM1980 wrote: »

Thanks Lynn, I didn't see that. Still figuring out the site

A note on the Import Recipe feature - I use this because I like the link to the recipe and the thumbnail. However, the Match Ingredients "feature" is incredibly, painfully, ridiculously inaccurate.

I usually have to replace 100% of the ingredients, even if I already put in a good entry before I ask it to match it. I will have a food from the USDA database, Match Ingredients will give me something laughable, but when I use Replace, it will find that food.

Below are my standard tips for finding accurate entries in MFP. However, the green check marks are for the food diary - the Old Recipe Calculator still uses asterisks for user-entered entries and no asterisk for an admin-entered entry and you have to wing it for the recipe importer, but once you are familiar with what an admin-entered entry looks like it becomes easier.

****************

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

abarocio

The way you are doing it can underestimate your calories but gives you a ball park figure and get most of the macros accounted for except maybe for fat. I use the recipe function for those homemade foods and it's very helpful.

penguinmama87

I use the recipe builder a lot. I name things by category to make them easier to find because once you have many of them they can be annoying to search. So, for example, my regular breakfast is called "Breakfast: Baked Oatmeal 1g." I use 1g to remind me that each serving of the recipe is 1g (most of the recipes I make have hundreds if not thousands of servings.) Like @kshama2001 I do usually have to replace several ingredients when I initially create the recipe, but after that it's very easy to edit it.

I like meals for things like salads or sandwiches, where I'm making a single item but the amounts might vary, so I can just add them all at once to my diary. I also use the copy meal feature quite frequently (under "quick tools," so I can quickly do things like add today's dinner leftovers as my planned lunch for tomorrow.)

ehju0901

springlering62 wrote: »

Also look at the “meal” function, which is right there next to “recipes”. They both do the same thing but meal is more flexible, and you can copy it and edit it easier.

If you enter the ingredients for a meal, save it. Then go out of it, reopen it, and edit the portion size to add to your diary. For example the sogagettinsauce I made from scratch a couple of days ago made 11 servings. So I go into my food diary, select meal, choose spaghetti sauce, and then change the serving size to .09, and save to my diary.

Also can do it in reverse. If you’ve logged all the ingredients for something to you food diary, you can select “save as meal” to save it permanently.

Meals also have a copy function. So if I tinker with the basic recipe, I can save it and add in any additional or changes in ingredient amounts.

You can even save cooking instructions or notes to meals.

Since someone here introduced me to it four or five months ago, I’ve stopped using the recipes function completely.

Thanks for this. I just looked at the Meals feature and I'm liking it way more than the Recipes feature. Will definitely use this in the future.

LynneM1980

Thank you everyone!! I'm going to try both features out and see which works best

lynn_glenmont

kshama2001 wrote: »

LynneM1980 wrote: »

Thanks Lynn, I didn't see that. Still figuring out the site

A note on the Import Recipe feature - I use this because I like the link to the recipe and the thumbnail. However, the Match Ingredients "feature" is incredibly, painfully, ridiculously inaccurate.

I usually have to replace 100% of the ingredients, even if I already put in a good entry before I ask it to match it. I will have a food from the USDA database, Match Ingredients will give me something laughable, but when I use Replace, it will find that food.

Below are my standard tips for finding accurate entries in MFP. However, the green check marks are for the food diary - the Old Recipe Calculator still uses asterisks for user-entered entries and no asterisk for an admin-entered entry and you have to wing it for the recipe importer, but once you are familiar with what an admin-entered entry looks like it becomes easier.

****************

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

I generally use the "old" recipe builder on the website, or the app recipe builder (I've never noticed the import feature on the app, but I may be unobservant) because of the absurd "matches" when importing. (Well, also because I tend to use recipes as a starting point or inspiration and will often do a lot of substituting anyway.)