No idea how to calculate calories?

I used to struggle with this and I admit it makes meal prep more time consuming but it is worth it You need to measure your ingredients as you add them to your recipe then log them using the recipe feature of mfp. You can decide how many servings your dish will make then measure yourself one serving when it is done. For accuracy, you can weigh your entire dish then divide the weight by the amount of servings so you know what a servings weighs. You can also eyeball it. I find it easiest to have a slip of paper in the kitchen to write my amounts down then I log them while the food is cooking and I have a bit of down time. I hope that helps.

I make a lot of homecooked meals and I tend to either add up all the ingredients together and then create a recipe or just mark each ingredient individually on my Foods list. I've been with another site for the past two years and have just recently moved to MFP, so it'll be slow going for me to start adding my recipes again!

And definitely get the scale. I have two: one in the kitchen and one in the Rec Room where the peanuts and snacks are!

Just because something isn't pre-packaged doesn't mean you can't calculate the calories for it. If you are using fresh meat or vegetables, they are in the MFP food database. If you are using anything else from a can, bottle, jar, packet, etc, the nutrition information would be on the label, or again, in the database. There is also a recipe builder on here, so you just put in all of your ingredients and servings number, and it will tell you how many calories are in 1 serving.