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Cooking for family

Tobysgirl212
Tobysgirl212 Posts: 27 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
For those of you who cook for a family, how do you handle making your own food? Typically when I cook I follow a recipe only loosely and customize it to my taste. Now that I'm trying to track calories, it takes a lot of extra time to cook dinner. I weigh out my ingredients, cook my meal, then have to cook the rest for the entire family. If I end up wanting to eat more than I've portioned out for myself, I can't because I don't know the calorie per weight of the rest of the recipe, and I make it heavier on the fats to fill everyone up. My food is very light, and the kids need healthy fats to grow. I'm thinking it might be easier to just prepare a frozen meal for myself so there's one less thing to do, but my own cooking is so much more appealing. What are your helpful suggestions? Also, the leftovers totally tempt me and I find myself wanting to nibble and taste, probably because they are sautéed nicely with avocado oil! I get out of my habit of weigh, then eat and just pick, pick, pick. Haha.

Replies

  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    We all eat the same meal, just different quantities of each dish. I tend to eat more of the meat and veggies. Husband eats meat and more mashed potatoes/rice. Daughter eats veggies and pixie dust, or whatever it is that keeps 8 year olds going.
  • Tobysgirl212
    Tobysgirl212 Posts: 27 Member
    jemhh wrote: »
    We all eat the same meal, just different quantities of each dish. I tend to eat more of the meat and veggies. Husband eats meat and more mashed potatoes/rice. Daughter eats veggies and pixie dust, or whatever it is that keeps 8 year olds going.

    How are you calculating the calories in each dish? Maybe I should ask what kind of dishes you're making. Something like sautéed vegetables you would have to weigh the oil, weigh the total weight of the dish, and then do some math I guess. Or do you serve the veggies with sauce on side? Simply prepared meats would be easiest, so I can see keeping these separate.
  • Pawsforme
    Pawsforme Posts: 645 Member
    edited January 2016
    Ditto @jemhh -- Same meal, each person eats whatever quantity they need. I have a 20 yo (when he's home from college, like now) and a 17 yo. Both boys. The term "leftovers" doesn't compute. ;) So I can't be of any help with that.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    Tobysgirl212 wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    We all eat the same meal, just different quantities of each dish. I tend to eat more of the meat and veggies. Husband eats meat and more mashed potatoes/rice. Daughter eats veggies and pixie dust, or whatever it is that keeps 8 year olds going.

    How are you calculating the calories in each dish? Maybe I should ask what kind of dishes you're making. Something like sautéed vegetables you would have to weigh the oil, weigh the total weight of the dish, and then do some math I guess. Or do you serve the veggies with sauce on side? Simply prepared meats would be easiest, so I can see keeping these separate.

    We mostly eat raw and/or non-sauced/non-buttered fruits/veggies. I make roasted brussels sprouts with coconut oil or mushroom & onions with butter but I'm the only one who eats them and I only make 1-2 servings so it's easy to count. Most of the time, though, our veggies are raw. Same goes for fruit.

    Mashed potatoes, I built the recipe using the recipe builder and update the ingredient quantities and adjust the # of servings to match the overall cooked weight in grams each time we make them.

    Meat, we eat pretty plain. Mostly grilled/roasted with no sauce. Meatballs and meatloaf I do the same as with mashed potatoes. Same for chili.

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