Homemade

Do you have a food scale? If you have a container of an ingredient, weigh it before you use it and when you are done so that you can subtract and get exactly how many grams you used of that ingredient.

If you like changing around the amounts of ingredients, you may want to save it as a meal rather than a recipe so that you can easily adjust the amounts each time.

erinmccormick00 wrote: »

I make a lot of my food from scratch . I find it very difficult to put in the ingredients amounts and serving sizes...because sometimes I don't know them. Seems a hassle but, I want to track my food better. Any suggestions ?

I think I understand. I cook from scratch and don't really follow recipes and if I wasn't logging food there would be no reason to measure or weigh anything. But I am logging so that's how I have to do it. If you don't already have one, definitely invest in a scale, then weigh or measure depending on which makes the most sense under the circumstances but, it's usually most accurate and easiest to weigh. It is kind of a hassle but the more you do it, the easier it gets and the quicker you become.

As for serving size. In the MFP recipe builder, it isn't like in a regular recipe where you are communicating information to other people. You're assigning a number to make it easier and more accurate for you to get your daily calory and nutrient total. Also, you can change the serving # later so maybe it's easier to originally set servings to 1. Then after you've made all the meatballs and found out you ended up with 32 of them, which you deliberately tried to keep the same size, you can go back to the recipe and change the servings to 32. The exact size of the meatballs doesn't matter because you weighed all the ingredients separately before you started. So your serving is going to end up being 1/32 of the total without you having to actually divide it out.

Also, if you're like me, the unit of measure of the serving will vary depending on what is easiest for that item. So in order to keep track it's a good idea to include the unit in the recipe name, like "Meatballs, per 1.2 oz meatball." "Rice per 1/2 cup, cooked," or "Vinaigrette per 100 grams." Not that you're ever going to put 100 grams of dressing on a salad, but you can put your salad on the scale, zero it out, then drizzle the amount you want. When you're done and the scale reads 18 grams, the serving you enter into the food diary is .18 serving.

Well, I hope this makes a little sense but, I don't know how clear I was so, if it doesn't help just let it roll off your back like water off a duck.