cooking/measuring question

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artelyn
artelyn Posts: 175 Member
in Recipes
When making a recipe that doesn't give a serving size... how do you decide how many servings and how big they are? For example. I am making a pasta salad with lots of veggies in it. Do I just go by the serving size of the pasta even though it won't be all pasta it will be veggies too? Am I making this more difficult than it needs to be? I'm perplexed...which is pretty easy to do! Thanks for any help/suggestions.

Replies

  • fleetzz
    fleetzz Posts: 962 Member
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    Measure everything, calculate grams of fat/protein/fiber/carbs. Make the serving size whatever you want.
  • musicboxes
    musicboxes Posts: 133 Member
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    I sometimes create my own recipe on MFP by adding all the ingredients separately, which will include servings and nutrition based on the brands I use. I then decide what serving size I want & measure it out, this will then determine how many servings in the recipe, then I save the servings in the recipe.

    My husband & I are always trying new recipes & we like to adjust a recipe to include the things we like. This works great when you make the same recipes & there are always easy to find in your MFP recipes. I like this approach and use it often so that I can know exactly what I am eating. I find when I search recipes on MFP, you are not really sure of all the ingredients.

    So try this..it works for me.
  • artelyn
    artelyn Posts: 175 Member
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    Thank you! I measured out everything and decided that a cup was a good serving size. However, I still didn't feel comfortable trying to guess how many 1 cup servings there were to input this on recipes and get my numbers. So. I measured out cup size servings and counted!! By the way...there were 12! thanks for the input! :flowerforyou:
  • MFPRat
    MFPRat Posts: 201 Member
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    I sometimes create my own recipe on MFP by adding all the ingredients separately, which will include servings and nutrition based on the brands I use. I then decide what serving size I want & measure it out, this will then determine how many servings in the recipe, then I save the servings in the recipe.

    My husband & I are always trying new recipes & we like to adjust a recipe to include the things we like. This works great when you make the same recipes & there are always easy to find in your MFP recipes. I like this approach and use it often so that I can know exactly what I am eating. I find when I search recipes on MFP, you are not really sure of all the ingredients.

    So try this..it works for me.

    This is what I do too.
  • musicboxes
    musicboxes Posts: 133 Member
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    I also add food separately for lunch or dinner on MFP. ( i.e. I love my own spin on spinach salad for lunch, so I measure and add separately... baby spinach; strawberries; reduced feta cheese; sunflower seeds & raspberry dressing). I also scan the labels with is great! Then I use the lunch tool to add as a meal and whala I have my meal saved. Then I can add my meal the next time I have it for lunch, changing any ingredients I change for that day.
  • melaniecheeks
    melaniecheeks Posts: 6,349 Member
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    Use the recipe builder on here, especially if it's somehting you cook and eat often.
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
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    I usually do one of two things.

    Break it down in to cups (standard US measuring cup) and use 1 serving = 1 cup.
    Or
    If I know there is just enough for me and my husband's dinner and a little leftover for tomorrow's lunch, I use 4 servings total (1.5 servings each for dinner, 1 serving for lunch).
  • harr3mi
    harr3mi Posts: 87 Member
    Options
    I sometimes create my own recipe on MFP by adding all the ingredients separately, which will include servings and nutrition based on the brands I use. I then decide what serving size I want & measure it out, this will then determine how many servings in the recipe, then I save the servings in the recipe.

    My husband & I are always trying new recipes & we like to adjust a recipe to include the things we like. This works great when you make the same recipes & there are always easy to find in your MFP recipes. I like this approach and use it often so that I can know exactly what I am eating. I find when I search recipes on MFP, you are not really sure of all the ingredients.

    So try this..it works for me.

    Probably better to do this in "My Meals" that way you can edit the ingredients should you switch things up.

    This is what I do too.
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
    Options
    I sometimes create my own recipe on MFP by adding all the ingredients separately, which will include servings and nutrition based on the brands I use. I then decide what serving size I want & measure it out, this will then determine how many servings in the recipe, then I save the servings in the recipe.

    My husband & I are always trying new recipes & we like to adjust a recipe to include the things we like. This works great when you make the same recipes & there are always easy to find in your MFP recipes. I like this approach and use it often so that I can know exactly what I am eating. I find when I search recipes on MFP, you are not really sure of all the ingredients.

    So try this..it works for me.

    Probably better to do this in "My Meals" that way you can edit the ingredients should you switch things up.

    This is what I do too.

    Hmm, I've never used the My Meals section, but I edit ingredients in the recipes section often. Same concept I suppose.
  • artelyn
    artelyn Posts: 175 Member
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    Thanks all! But maybe I didn't state my question the right way. I was trying to figure out how many servings were in a recipe that I was creating.(I use recipes on MFP allll the time but usually with a known serving size and how many servings in one dish) I measured out my pasta (a whole box), cukes, peppers, cheese, turkey pepperoni, etc. But the box of pasta says 8 1/2C dry servings. And I know that when I add in the other things I will now have more than 8 one cup servings. And that was what I was trying to figure out. How many servings were the cukes, peppers, etc going to add.
    In the end I just measured out the finished product into a different bowl to count the servings.

    Thanks!!

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