Need advice on cooking for a family of five using the calorie tracker

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cecileph
cecileph Posts: 1 Member
in Getting Started
Good afternoon

I am on day 3 of this personal challenge and oh Boy what a challenge it is. I would be ok if I was living along, but I have a family of 5. I cook dinner every evening, and I am finding difficult to calculate my calories, when make a recipe. Yesterday for example I made a soup with several ingredients, entered each calorie count for each ingredients as I was making the dish, but I am not looking forward to spending 20 mn every evening doing so. Plus once the dish is ready, how do I know what size my serving should be. It is in a big pot. Any suggestions?

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  • allaboutthecake
    allaboutthecake Posts: 1,533 Member
    edited April 2015
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    I do my own cooking & cal count, too. I found it easier to type out the ingredients & measurements in Word or email draft, then cut/paste into the calorie counter. Weigh the whole batch after its cooked in either grams or ounces. Then when you serve yourself, weigh it. Be sure to zero out the scale first, and digital is preferable plus easier.
    Once you've started zeroing/weighing it all, it becomes 2nd nature.
    Oh, and for hot dishes, just use a light-weight dish to put the hot food into to weigh the whole lot.
    I bet too you'll find that you cook similar foods all the time (like meatloaf), that you can tweak your own recipe that is already in your own database. (I know I do.)

    oh, & 1 other thing....I've weighed my regular pans/dishes & mark it w/a black sharpie on the bottom. That way, I don't have to remove anything (like meatloaf) to get the whole-batch weight.

    HTH. :)
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited April 2015
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    There is a recipe builder to use. Go to Food / Recipes and enter in your recipe manually.

    Edited to add: the recipe builder only calculates the number of servings. So for this you need to have a recipe that says for example 6 each 1 cup servings or you will need add up the liquids then solid separately. Add them together and you can guestimate 1 cups or 3/4 cups servings. I have created over 50 recipes doing this and works pretty well.
  • CockneyLady2014
    CockneyLady2014 Posts: 199 Member
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    Gia thank you for your advice. I make a lot of soup and usually calculate as a whole and then divide by the amount of portions it makes.
  • Lindy901
    Lindy901 Posts: 71 Member
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    A lot of times you can find what you need on there. Such as if I made corn chowder there are some in there and I might look through them and use what seems right. Sometimes not accurate but YOLO (as my kids say). I try not to go too crazy looking for stuff. I have on the other hand used the recipe builder and it can be time consuming but once you add in your generally used recipes it'll always be there.
  • RenaTX
    RenaTX Posts: 345 Member
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    That's a challenge for me as well and I only have my husband and I.

    I basically enter all the ingredients in the recipe part and then guess the number of servings. I may end up adjusting the recipes or the portion based on what happens.

    For example say I make lasagna. I enter the entire recipe into the recipe calculator and if it's a 9x11 pan I guess that there maybe 10 servings. I then portion it out to 10 pieces. If I eat more than 2 pieces I enter my meal as 2 servings. If I can't get 10 servings but instead I manage to get 8 then I go back and adjust the recipe.

    Something like your soup I would portion out before serving it. I know it's a pain to do but that's what I would do and have done. I would just scoop out 1 cup at a time into a bowl and do that for the entire pot.

    Save the recipe for future reference and then next time you only need to measure and weigh out the ingredients next time based on the recipe.
  • angela233Z
    angela233Z Posts: 312 Member
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    it is a pain at first, but it gets easier ( assuming you eat the same things often)
    i found it a big help, in that i can adjust my recipes and find out what works and doesnt
    i found one of my soups is only 31 calories a cup!! so now i know to make that more often and not so much the creamy soups

    good luck

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