When my mom makes dinner...

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Asug8237
Asug8237 Posts: 7
in Food and Nutrition
My mom makes dinner a few nights a week. The other days I can make my own and track my calories, but when she makes it I have no clue how many calories are in it. Some you can eyeball like chicken and corn, or you can look it up (spaghetti), but when she makes a huge stir fry or some personal recipe I can't even begin to guess. So, I can't track those calories very well.

Help? Ideas?

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  • kennie2
    kennie2 Posts: 1,171 Member
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    Ask her?
  • RebelliousRibbons
    RebelliousRibbons Posts: 391 Member
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    I usually try to log the amounts of the individual bits, then figure out the sauce/ gravy from there. It seems to be working pretty well so far.

    Remember, it's generally better to over estimate than under.
  • SixCatFaerie
    SixCatFaerie Posts: 690 Member
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    Either ask her or watch/help her make it and take note of what she puts in it & how much. Then, depending on how many people it is feeding, make it into a recipe here on MFP & it will tell you portion sizes & all the nutritional info. Good luck! :-D

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  • abalicious
    abalicious Posts: 361 Member
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    Maybe you should only eat the stuff that you know the calories of?
  • Asug8237
    Asug8237 Posts: 7
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    My mom doesn't track all the calories in a meal, she says it's to much work for her. Although it's a good idea to watch her make it
  • mike_littlerock
    mike_littlerock Posts: 296 Member
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    what about offering to help?
    We purchased a nutrition scale from Target. it weighs in grams or ounces, and comes with a book of codes for various foods. you input the code while weighing and it gives you the nutritional breakdown. I am the cook in the house, and my wife and I are both using MFP to track our eating habits. I cook almost 100% from recipes that are only in my head, or that I create based on available ingredients. it really does not add any time to the cooking process to have my wife help me cook, and weigh the ingredients as I am adding them. some dishes are amazingly easy to count the calories, such as scallops and Belgian endive as we know the weight/quantity of ingredients and the number of portions. When I make soups, gumbo or a bisque, its a little harder to determine the number of servings. if its a big pot, I have a ladle of a known size and determine that 1 or 2 ladles is a serving, then I measure the depth of the pot, and since I know the width of the pot, I can do the calculations to determine the volume in ounces (and therefore the number of servings).

    I am sure your mom would like the help, and you might get to learn some family recipes at the same time. I learned so much from cooking with my grandmother as a child.
  • joejccva71
    joejccva71 Posts: 2,985 Member
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    Track the amount of ounces of meat she put in the stir-fry, and track the sauce if you can. The vegetables you are going to have to eyeball. Alot of veggies doesn't have a great deal of calories anyway so you can usually say 150-200 calories for a good size portion of veggies.

    Try to find out what sauce she is using and what she makes it with.

    The rest is history.

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