calculating home-cooked meals

loreeb18

My husband and I are trying to cook food at home more instead of eating out so much. Today I made a 30 minute meal beef stroganoff recipe.

My question is do I enter everything I put in the meal? I went through the recipe and added everything - the butter and olive oil I cooked with and the flour to make the sauce thick. Is that right? Because the meal (a normal amount, not a heaping portion) ended up being 900 calories that way.

loreeb18

My husband and I are trying to cook food at home more instead of eating out so much. Today I made a 30 minute meal beef stroganoff recipe.

My question is do I enter everything I put in the meal? I went through the recipe and added everything - the butter and olive oil I cooked with and the flour to make the sauce thick. Is that right? Because the meal (a normal amount, not a heaping portion) ended up being 900 calories that way.

Hannah_Banana

Thats what I do... but darn, that is a lot of calories. Cooking with butter/oil will do it though. I've stopped using either unless absolutely necessary. I'm not sure what you're recipe calls for but whipped butter or lite may cost you less. Sorry I feel like I wasn't really that helpful. :laugh:

:flowerforyou:

gnicolecan

Yep, sorry but probaby so. Just the name: beef stroganoff, sounds calorie and fat laden to me.
We only go out for dinner 2x per week:once is mexican, and once is Subway. So the rest of the time I try to work within what my hubby & two kids will eat, what will get on the table fast, and still try to make it for a reasonable amount of calories.
Usually I do a protien, and then have very low calorie, low carb sides at dinner. So the main calories are coming from the meat.
Example:
Bubba burgers - 375 ish calories (I love the jalepeno) with veggies on the side, I skip the bun
Grilled chicken breasts (120 ish) with veggies or pasta sauce, I skip the noodles or have 1/2c wheat
Breakfast for dinner- we have this 1x every 2 weeks. Eggs are cheap and my kids love eggos!
Chili- can be highish in calories, use good lean beef, drain rinse, add beans and lots of tomatoes
Sandwiches- I keep deli meat on hand and go with the 50 cals per slice double fiber wheat bread

I buy 10 at a time or so of the frozen steamfresh veggies. 5 mins in the micro, few cals and you're ready. Plus no worry about spoilage.

One carb/starch that we do eat is Alexia brand frozen potatos and sweet poato fries. Good quality, oven baked roasted potatoes. You can also find these the the frozen section.

Finally, I always buy a veggie tray for like $8, and when we have sandwiches and or burgers, we eat from that. It will seriously last 10 days.

Good luck! I hope this helps

loreeb18

It's pasta. Then meat and onions cooked in extra virgin olive oil and butter. Then the sauce on top is olive oil and butter melted, flour to thicken it, beef stock, sour cream, mustard (which I'll leave out next time - I didn't like the taste of that), and some salt and pepper.

Amylynn

What's killing your meal is the milk, sour cream, butter, and olive oil. First of all, use skim milk or 1% milk instead of 2% or whole milk cuz it will save a ton of cals. Then, use lowfat or fat-free sour cream. Instead of butter, try a vegetable spread like Blue Bonnet or Country Crock. Always use wheat noodles instead of regular if you can, or get the yolk-less egg noodles. And finally, omit the olive oil all together. If you can't, cut down the amount you use by at least half. I bet if you made all of those adjustments your calories would have only been like 450 cals.

pettmybunny

Try this site... You just type in all the ingredients and the amounts, the number of servings, and... Like magic, they tell you what the nutritional value is per serving. It's wonderful!

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

loreeb18

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll try those substitutions. Thanks for the website too. We're trying to cook at home a lot more and that'll really help figure out all the meals.