From scratch cook frustrated by database

Entering recipes can be frustrating. But honestly, on spices like cloves and cinnamon bark, I just leave them out. I don't think they add any appreciable calories to the dish.

Do you have the app on your phone? It's a little less friendly... but you could barcode scan the packs of everything and they at least would be in 'my foods' next time you went to use them...

Hi fellow Indian food lover! I also cook Madhur Jaffrey recipes frequently. what is your favorite? her recipes are the closest I can come to real Indian food, the kind I remember from my year living there.

We cook - a lot. And yes, I do find the database frustrating sometimes but this has helped me:

Change the search option from "name" to "relevance" and see if you prefer that. It helps me find FLOUR instead of flour tortilla, or cinnamon bark instead of cinnamon-sugar covered donuts.

Add "raw" to your search string when looking for fresh vegetables - so, search "red onion raw".

Yes, you need to enter 16 tsp of parsley to equal a cup. that's the best I can do on that.

You're right that whole cloves are tricky! I prefer to find ingredients listed by weight. Many fresh ingredients have multiple listings and some list information by grams (not cloves, unfortunately). Then you can weigh the ingredients going into your recipe and get a much more accurate picture.

I do find the recipe tool a little tricky but we're making it work and having a lot of success with it. I'm glad to find a tool where we can find almost any brand of ingredients, enter our own, and use it create recipes

NOW I want Indian food this week! Maybe Goan black-eyed pea curry, though not one of Jaffrey's recipes - it's good

I was having a similar problem - and discovered that, after you choose "add ingredient", when the search interface pops up, choose the option for "name" rather than "relevance." I find that it is much easier to then scan the list for either my particular brand name, or often better yet, the NON-ASTERISK'd option. That's the one that the database came with, so to speak, and wasn't entered by a user. I've found those entries not only to be more accurate, but to have many more options for serving size...thus more helpful for entering recipes (i.e. cup instead of tbsp, etc.)

I hope that helps you as it has helped me Good luck!!

I don't add spices to my diary either because they aren't really adding any significant calories or nutrients.

I used to think this until I made a Hungarian goulash that has 1/2 cup of paprika in it.

Did you know that a mere 4 tablespoons of hot paprika has 80 calories, 15 carbs, 10 grams of fiber, and 4 grams of protein? I didn't believe it myself until I googled and googled and confirmed that yes, paprika in larger amounts DOES contribute nutritionally to a dish.

I still don't bother with a tablespoon of cumin or a teaspoon of tumeric, but paprika - WTF??

shangsm, good to see another Madhur Jaffrey fan. Tonigh we made Kheema, and the total dish came to 3500 calories, without many of the spices. But a chunk of fresh ginger root came to 80 calories! I then entered her Carrots and Peas with ginger and Chinese parsley, with more of the spices, and that came to 781 calories. Five grams of cumin/1 tsp comes to 22 calories, and give the variety of spices in each dish, they add up.

Oh those both sound so wonderful! I haven't had kheema in awhile.

I'm with you - I do like to add spices, especially to Indian food when you're adding teaspoons of 7-8 of them.

You haven't figured out her samosa recipe on here, have you? I haven't fried a food at home since starting on MFP. I think it would be tricky to determine oil absorption.