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Erin29ga
Erin29ga Posts: 22 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I want to make chicken salad that will last for a few days...maybe to make a sandwich with..or to put on crackers...how in the world do you count the calories in something that is made in bulk and with several different ingredients?

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  • AmyRhubarb
    AmyRhubarb Posts: 6,890 Member
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    Put all the ingredients into the Recipe Calculator, put in the number of servings, and it splits it all for you. It saves it in your Recipes so it's easy to log in the future as well. If you change any ingredients or quantities the next time you make it, you can edit the recipe.
  • Whyareyoumad
    Whyareyoumad Posts: 268 Member
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    Amy hit it, I have to do this for many things I fix at home, tuna salad, and I also make chicken salad, buffalo chicken wraps, etc.
  • MelisaBegins
    MelisaBegins Posts: 161 Member
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    Totally agree with Amy and James - I use this tool all the time and it's so helpful! One thing I've found is that sometimes it's hard to know when you're preparing it how much it will make for each day. Here's a common example for me: I make a lean ground turkey chili, and I know that I'm going to have 1 cup as my serving. But how many cups does the recipe REALLY make? What I do is guesstimate the # of cups when I'm building the recipe (let's say, 10 cups) and then, after I cook the chili, I measure the entire batch based on 1 cup servings (yes, I literally scoop the chili into another bowl, one cup at a time :) so that I can get a more accurate read on how many calories/protein/etc. is in the dish. It sounds tedious, but my Type-A personality loves this stuff, and then I feel more confident building the rest of my day around fairly accurate information. Good luck!
  • aqualeo1
    aqualeo1 Posts: 331 Member
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    Yup! I used to do the above. Now I find it's easier if I guesstimate how many servings it will be when I enter it then I put the whole finished batch on a food scale to get a total weight. Then I divide it by how many servings I put down that it was going to be so I get an exact weight of each serving. Whatever works :)
  • Erin29ga
    Erin29ga Posts: 22 Member
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    Thanks so much!! I'm such a noob, I had no clue there was even a recipe calculator..but i found it! Thank ya Thank ya!
  • MelisaBegins
    MelisaBegins Posts: 161 Member
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    Hey, we are all learning as we go! I still have no idea what the "Meals" thing is for or how to use it...
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,020 Member
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    Hey, we are all learning as we go! I still have no idea what the "Meals" thing is for or how to use it...

    If you have a meal with multiple ingredients that you know you'll probably repeat in the future, you can save the meal, and then just log it next time by clicking on that meal. For example, there are a couple of place near my office that I eat at regularly, and each has a couple of dishes that are among my favorites (e.g., a black bean and rice burrito, a tofu and veggie stir fry over brown rice) that I entered based on the individual ingredients and eyeballing the amounts, and saved as meals. When you log them again, they show up in your diary as all of the individual ingredients, so if you substituted something, or you think they gave you an extra large helping of rice one day, you could edit that without having to look up and enter all the other ingredients separately. If you eat meals at home that are repetitions of each other, you could use it for that, too.

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