Help with Calorie Goal please

Okay, but are you weighing your food?

There exists a recipe builder. That's one option to use. You can set a portion to be 1 or 10 or 100g

You can also save a "meal" and then serve yourself a fraction of it.

If the only person eating something over, say, a couple of days, you can even (horror of horrors for my suggestion) put it all in one day and log your two days as a unit (I sometimes use the entry "left overs, remains of previous meal") however this may be more suitable once you've ironed out your logging

Tablespoons of calorically dense stuff is an issue. You're better off weighing it.

I use Pam/similar spray when I cook quite often. It is not zero calories in the quantity used in cooking but it still distributes a smaller quantity of oil better than any other method I've found.

Weigh the bottle before and after use. Pretty much 90%+ of that is the weight of the oil you used--the propellant is a lot by volume but not by weight.

Paneer, gee, cream, oil and nuts are all calorically dense. Dal or cauliflower without any of that.... not as much! roti, rice, naan also add up... a lot!

@AnnPT77 ... I know you have a "stupid scale tricks" super post somewhere in your pocket...

kirandeepm wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

There exists a recipe builder. That's one option to use. You can set a portion to be 1 or 10 or 100g

You can also save a "meal" and then serve yourself a fraction of it.

If the only person eating something over, say, a couple of days, you can even (horror of horrors for my suggestion) put it all in one day and log your two days as a unit (I sometimes use the entry "left overs, remains of previous meal") however this may be more suitable once you've ironed out your logging

Tablespoons of calorically dense stuff is an issue. You're better off weighing it.

I use Pam/similar spray when I cook quite often. It is not zero calories in the quantity used in cooking but it still distributes a smaller quantity of oil better than any other method I've found.

Weigh the bottle before and after use. Pretty much 90%+ of that is the weight of the oil you used--the propellant is a lot by volume but not by weight.

Paneer, gee, cream, oil and nuts are all calorically dense. Dal or cauliflower without any of that.... not as much! roti, rice, naan also add up... a lot!

Yeah, that's where I finding this tricky. Cook for the whole family so it's difficult to measure out portions for my self.

I don't consume any ghee, refined oil or cream or naans. Roti (homemade) counts are max 2 a day. Looks like separate controlled and easy cooking is the only option.

Will report back soon on how I am going. Thank you so much for your suggestions.

If you don't mind, can I add you as friend? Will share the Diary as well.

I'm Irish. I lived on an ashram in upstate New York for two years. We loved it when guest cooks came in for special holidays and made roti

I had home-made naan with dinner tonight. My recipe made 4 pieces which were 362 calories each, and I just have a half a piece as a serving (181 cal), but could probably drop that to a 1/4 piece (90.5 cal).

I haven't found any chicken tandoori recipes that use the same spices as Indian restaurants or my coworker's wife (who couldn't share her recipe) so I gave up and use Thai red curry paste with the yogurt. I call this Thai Tandoori Chicken.

We had this, rice (75 g cooked, about 1/2 C), naan, and broccoli for dinner tonight. Oh, and chai tea. Yum! With butter, it was 576 calories. If I wanted it to be less I would indeed have dropped the naan. But I could afford it today because I did 90 minutes of yard work earlier.

(Edited to fix calories.)

I like weighing my food and being accurate because... well because then I can maximize how much I eat while meeting my goals!!!!

However, all one really needs to do is adjust how many calories they consume in relation to how many calories they spend in response to how their weight level changes over time

And the best way to measure one's weight level, that I've discovered, is by using a weight trend application or web site. Happy Scale for iPhone, Libra for Android, I personally use trendweight.com with a freely available without a device fitbit.com account to perform the daily weigh in data entry

As long as you successfully keeping your weight trend generally pointing in the right direction... you're winning!

<Of course logging accurately and making better choices based on what you've logged is the best way to win, in my books at least!>

TBH, when it comes to Indian cooking, I lose when the Paneer comes out... and more importantly when the orange pretzels (jalebies) and gulab jamun's come out... at that point I might as well sign up for an extra week of deficit eating while thanking my lucky stars that the Ashoka pav bhahi (without the pav) is only 240 Cal and only a couple of $'s at Walmart -- plus I feel compelled to support anything with pav in its name!

PAV8888 wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

I had home-made naan with dinner tonight. My recipe made 8 pieces which were 180 calories each, and I just have a half a piece as a serving.

OK: kale... let's have that naan recipe--- oops I see you're a cat now @kshama2001 !!!!

<tried, and failed miserably to make some roti... made "something" using chick pea flour. It wasn't bad actually. Should make it again!>

Yes, I'm a cat now

It's from the Joy of Cooking but the following is from https://cookeatshare.com/recipes/naan-from-joy-of-cooking-360745

Glad you asked because I've realized that when I put 8 servings in the recipe builder, that was a half a naan already, so I need to double my calorie count above and fix my diary!

Naan

Number of servings: 4 oval breads

Ingredients

2 C / 11 oz bread flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/8 tsp yeast, baker's
2 Tbsp. oil or melted butter
3/4 C yogurt (if Greek yogurt use half that amount and add water to make 3/4 C)
1 Tbsp. water, as needed

Directions

Combine bread flour, salt and yeast in a mixing bowl. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Mix by hand or possibly on low speed till a soft ball of dough is formed. Knead for about 10 min by hand till the dough is smooth and elastic. (I kneaded it in my food processor for a few minutes.)

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and turn it over to coat.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hrs. Punch the dough down and divide equally into 4 pcs. Roll into balls, cover, and let rest for 10 min.

Place baking stone or possibly inverted baking sheet into oven and preheat to 475 degrees for 45 minutes. Roll out each ball of dough into an oval 8 to 10 inches long and 1/4 inch thick. Place the dough directly onto the baking stone or possibly sheet and bake till each oval gets puffy and just begins to turn golden brown, about 6 to 7 min. Remove from the oven and bake the remaining dough.

I cooked three in the oven and one on the stovetop, and prefer how the ones in the oven came out. However, I did not like the step of preheating the baking stone (in my case a 14" cast iron pizza pan) to 475 degrees for 45 minutes so am going to try to reduce the preheating time considerably next time.

kshama2001 wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

I had home-made naan with dinner tonight. My recipe made 8 pieces which were 180 calories each, and I just have a half a piece as a serving.

OK: kale... let's have that naan recipe--- oops I see you're a cat now @kshama2001 !!!!

<tried, and failed miserably to make some roti... made "something" using chick pea flour. It wasn't bad actually. Should make it again!>

Yes, I'm a cat now

It's from the Joy of Cooking but the following is from https://cookeatshare.com/recipes/naan-from-joy-of-cooking-360745

Glad you asked because I've realized that when I put 8 servings in the recipe builder, that was a half a naan already, so I need to double my calorie count above and fix my diary!

Naan

Number of servings: 4 oval breads

Ingredients

2 C / 11 oz bread flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/8 tsp yeast, baker's
2 Tbsp. oil or melted butter
3/4 C yogurt (if Greek yogurt use half that amount and add water to make 3/4 C)
1 Tbsp. water, as needed

Directions

Combine bread flour, salt and yeast in a mixing bowl. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Mix by hand or possibly on low speed till a soft ball of dough is formed. Knead for about 10 min by hand till the dough is smooth and elastic. (I kneaded it in my food processor for a few minutes.)

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and turn it over to coat.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hrs. Punch the dough down and divide equally into 4 pcs. Roll into balls, cover, and let rest for 10 min.

Place baking stone or possibly inverted baking sheet into oven and preheat to 475 degrees for 45 minutes. Roll out each ball of dough into an oval 8 to 10 inches long and 1/4 inch thick. Place the dough directly onto the baking stone or possibly sheet and bake till each oval gets puffy and just begins to turn golden brown, about 6 to 7 min. Remove from the oven and bake the remaining dough.

I cooked three in the oven and one on the stovetop, and prefer how the ones in the oven came out. However, I did not like the step of preheating the baking stone (in my case a 14" cast iron pizza pan) to 475 degrees for 45 minutes so am going to try to reduce the preheating time considerably next time.

Unless you're literally using a stone (and even then) I don't see how you would need to pre-heat a metal pan for 45 minutes to get it to reach ambient temperature. Pre-heat the oven? Sure. Pre-heat the pan? Sure... but I would think a few minutes after the oven has reached temperature so has a metal pan, no?

Thank you for the recipe, BTW. Will see about trying something along those lines!

Might pass your roti recipes to my downstairs neighbour who likes both coconut and baking!!!

hmm I wonder how that second roti would change by using some coconut flour and more water instead of the shredded coconut... hmmm....