How many calories in home made dishes?

FrenchMeat
FrenchMeat Posts: 2
edited November 8 in Getting Started
Hello there!
This is my second time trying this app. Last time, I've had a real hard time figuring how many calories there were in my home made food (especially recipes that are my own experiments...)
How do people figure it out?

Replies

  • bloodlett
    bloodlett Posts: 33 Member
    depends on what type of homemade food your talking about when i search for foods i type homemade first i made chicken and kale soup and searched and got a return for it i have found there is a lot of returns on homemade in the search box but the numbers are generic but it is easier then logging every item
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Use the recipe builder...
  • itsbasschick
    itsbasschick Posts: 1,584 Member
    i just enter in all the ingredients in the amounts i use, add them all up and use all the numbers - fats, calories, carbs, etc - to create a food in my foods.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    I either use the recipe builder and then log the recipe ..or I log all the ingredients separately into my diary ...
  • SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage
    SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage Posts: 2,668 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    I either use the recipe builder and then log the recipe ..or I log all the ingredients separately into my diary ...
    This.
    If it's something I prepare often, I opt for the recipe builder. If not, I enter each ingredient individually.

  • ViolaLeeBlueberry
    ViolaLeeBlueberry Posts: 182 Member
    edited November 2014
    I seldom follow recipes and always cook from scratch, so I just log all the items individually. I think it's more accurate anyway. If you use the recipe builder, then the next time you might do it a little differently (or at least I would), and also it's a BIG pain IMO to get it to actually record what you want. It constantly suggests irrelevant things (like brands I don't use), and I guess I'm a bit persnickety, but I'm sorry, if I didn't use MegaBrand Chicken or whatever, why would I want to record it that way? So I'd have to "edit" it, blah blah .... and then figure out portions ... sheesh.

    I like the idea of a recipe builder (and have a few things stuck in there to theoretically use later). But IMO it's easier to just put in what I really did. I guess you could then use the Quick Tools to copy the meal for another day, and delete or change quantities, though I haven't done that yet.

    The only thing is that my diary probably looks a bit wacky, as if I live on a long string of raw broccoli, mushrooms and a mess o' spices, LOL. (Yeah, I enter spices a lot of the time. It's not so much about the calories, though the calories aren't zero. I'm just curious to see what else they contain. If I'm lazy, I made an entry called "my random spices," with only a calorie estimate, and just click on that.) I do sort of wish there was a place to put what the dinner actually was ... just because it would be more satisfying :smile:

    But it's not really hard. Just takes a few minutes.
  • generallyme2
    generallyme2 Posts: 403 Member
    I almost always cook from scratch and use the recipe builder. Make sure you double check the cals MPF says though- sometimes it lists the ingredient or the amount wrong (one time it had me putting in half a cup of salt in a muffin recipe!)

    The only thing I don't like about the recipe builder is that you have to put in how many servings a recipe is rather than an amount (for example, a soup might be listed as 14 servings with the cal count instead of how many calories per cup). I don't always know how much 1/14th of my pot of soup is lol
  • ViolaLeeBlueberry
    ViolaLeeBlueberry Posts: 182 Member
    BTW just found out you can save a better description of a meal in the Notes section of the diary-- like what the meal REALLY was (other than just a list of ingredients.) Yeah, OK, so I can be slow on the uptake LOL.

    GenerallyMe, the recipe builder kept insisting for a while that any amount of garlic I wanted to add was a cup. Even though I'm not in that much danger from vampires.
  • zcb94
    zcb94 Posts: 3,678 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Use the recipe builder...

  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,097 Member
    If it's something that makes multiple servings (soup, stews, curries, baked goods), I use the recipe builder (the old one, which allows you to select the entries for ingredients from the database, not the new one that suggests laughably wrong "matches," if it even works at all, which a lot of the time it doesn't, at least for me).

    If it's something that I'm eating all in one meal (stir-fry salad, pasta with veggies, protein & sauce, etc.), I just log the individual ingredients directly.
  • husseycd
    husseycd Posts: 814 Member
    For one pot type recipes, I build my recipe and list it as one serving. Then weigh the final product and log a percentage of the total pot. I did this with a chili last night. The final product came out to 36.6 ounces. I measured out 12.2 ounces, so 1/3 of the recipe. I used to try and do it per ounce based on starting weights, but that doesn't take into account liquid lost during cooking. So I just weigh it after now.
  • CarrieCans
    CarrieCans Posts: 381 Member
    I quickly got into the habit of using the recipe feature. Each time i make something i end up with a little more or less so i check that i used the same amount of ingredients in the recipe or adjust the recipe for that day. Then when it's time to eat, i divide out the pot into equal amounts in containers. Then the next time i want to eat that item i just have to grab it out of the fridge and reheat. All of the work is done at one time.

    This worked out great for my homemade chili which i ate over the course of a week. The next time i make it i will just have to adjust the saved recipe for any changes and repeat what i did before.
  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
    I use the recipe builder. With the bar code scanner, it only takes a few seconds to input ingredients as I measure them out for my recipe.
  • MysteriousMerlin
    MysteriousMerlin Posts: 2,270 Member
    recipe builder, or enter each ingredient as you're using it. If it's not listed, you can also enter it yourself.
  • ThePhoenixIsRising
    ThePhoenixIsRising Posts: 781 Member
    generallyme2 wrote: »
    I almost always cook from scratch and use the recipe builder. Make sure you double check the cals MPF says though- sometimes it lists the ingredient or the amount wrong (one time it had me putting in half a cup of salt in a muffin recipe!)

    The only thing I don't like about the recipe builder is that you have to put in how many servings a recipe is rather than an amount (for example, a soup might be listed as 14 servings with the cal count instead of how many calories per cup). I don't always know how much 1/14th of my pot of soup is lol

    I put in the title 1oz per serving, build the recipe as 1serving. Weigh it after I'm done and edit servings to reflect how many oz's the entire batch is. So now I can weigh my serving and get an accurate cal no matter how much I dish out.
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