Calculating Calories for ad-hoc recipes. How do you do it?

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chrismellor01
chrismellor01 Posts: 77 Member
in Food and Nutrition
You know how it is, you get to kitchen cupboard, you find you have an onion, a carrot, tin of tomatoes and whatever else there may be. You know you can make up a stew or flan or whatever...

But - what calories are in there?

Sure, you can add up all the pieces and divide by number of servings and quick add the cals, but it would be great to have a better picture...

Maybe you can create a recipe for the creation - but - if like me, you are a little creative in the kitchen then you always have to make new recipes (painful).

What about picking from your favourites some base components? Seams to work but does cooking alter the make up of your food? Does cooking that really nice low carb tomato release a lot of sugar?

Any thoughts and ideas on this? Experiences? Advice?...

Please fill in below:)

Replies

  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
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    Use MFP's recipe builder - I know what you mean though if you vary the recipe .... what I find is most of my dinners are between 500 and 650 cals, so in my case if I was in doubt I would log 650 cals. Could you do something similar?
    If you have a recipe already entered which is similar, go by that?
  • chrismellor01
    chrismellor01 Posts: 77 Member
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    I sort of currently use the avg for say a "large onion" and components etc and add them up as a number. This gets quick added. I'm not that obsessive that I count to the n'th degree:)

    Main thing for me is that I have an idea of what is going in. Really it's about monitoring it all I think.
  • chrismellor01
    chrismellor01 Posts: 77 Member
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    RunRutheeRun wrote: »
    Use MFP's recipe builder - I know what you mean though if you vary the recipe .... what I find is most of my dinners are between 500 and 650 cals, so in my case if I was in doubt I would log 650 cals. Could you do something similar?
    If you have a recipe already entered which is similar, go by that?

    Yup - I find it's around 600 so I guess thats the way. Just would like a breakdown of nutrients but of course - that is going to take the extra work to put it all in.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
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    I know it doesn't help for your nutrient breakdown but it still gives you a rough idea. Otherwise, yes you are going to have to put the work in :/
  • chrismellor01
    chrismellor01 Posts: 77 Member
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    Maybe I just put the work in. I mean - typing burns cals doesn't it?
  • HelensBeads
    HelensBeads Posts: 79 Member
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    Use the recipe builder, each and every time. Edit and rename old recipes, so this week's quiche will be edited to remove the ham and yoghurt and replace with cream cheese and brocolli, the rest of the recipe will stay the same, the recipe will be renamed 'quiche 17 jan' from 'quiche 05 jan'.
    But I bulk cook and freeze, in pots, labelled with the recipe name so I have home cooked ready meals that I can just remove from the freezer and are already in MFP.
    The only problem I have is that if I enter a recipe on the computer I can't edit it from the ipad.
    And I'd like to be able to add a portion of a recipe to a new recipe i.e. I have a recipe for 'pastry' but log it seperately to the quiche as I can just add the amount I used rather than work out and change the quantities for flour and fat (coz it will vary as to how thin I roll the pastry and how big a quiche I make, I made a whole batch and froze it in 100g lumps so I can defrost it and not have to make more each time I use it).
  • SymbolismNZ
    SymbolismNZ Posts: 190 Member
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    Baking/Salad/Stirfry: Bowl on Scale, add ingredients one at a time and take note of how many grams per ingredients.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    I just create the new recipes. I use the shopping list notepad and just jot down amounts as I am cooking, then I divide it roughly into "cup" servings when done if it's a pot meal (yay for pots with markings on the inside) or however much I ate of what's made. There's not really many ways around it. I just called it the date and what it is like 1/12 beef stew or whatever. Doesn't take long to input on the phone app, the website is kind of a drag for it.
  • chrismellor01
    chrismellor01 Posts: 77 Member
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    Thank you all for your input. :)

    I will use a mix of all these. Over time I'm sure it will become a lot more apparent to me which is best for a given situation:)

    One thing I did find is that MFP does allow you to inport recipes from online sources including Dutch language sites. I needed to edit them a little bit but in the whole it worked really well.
  • amandaann2017
    amandaann2017 Posts: 14 Member
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    Thank you for asking that question, I have similar issues!.. Like yesterday I cooked a big batch of rice, I made a pot of braised cabbages and I made a black bean & root veg chili ... all that involved a lot of note taking as I just make it all up on the spot!.. each and every herb/spice/vegetable etc and the quantities.. and I know that I am unlikely to make it exactly the same way ever again. (except the rice of course!) .. I do do my best to add every single component but it is time consuming. .. and then there is the ultimate calculation - it's not just for me, from the food cooked, I serve 5 people, 3 of whom are teenage boys and the amounts each of them want varies so, dividing any given amount of communal food into regular "portion" sizes is inconsistent and random and that makes calculation for something like a soup or last nights meal for example, very difficult indeed. So, I empathize completely @chrismellor01 - overall I agree with you last post, the method used to record the meal will need to be flexible and "close enough" to retain any sort of sanity with the exercise :smiley:
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    @aaexanimo the way you calculate portions when it's varied is by weighing the final cooked product and subtracting the weight of the pot. Then you can set the servings as 1g or 100g. When you scoop out your portion, you can log that number of grams as your meal.

    So, my soup weighs 2000g. I can either set it as 2000 (1g) portions or 20 (100g) portions.
    If I dish up 250g on my plate, I can log it as 250 (1g) servings or 2.5 (100g) servings depending on which way I set it.
  • amandaann2017
    amandaann2017 Posts: 14 Member
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    Thank you very much Queenmunchy, that was very nicely explained x

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