Any 'from scratch' cookers out there?

ReaT
ReaT Posts: 9
edited September 19 in Food and Nutrition
The biggest problem I have with tracking my calories is that most of what I eat is totally from scratch. I know that there are health benefits to that alone, by avoiding a lot of the food additives and junk, but it makes it hard to know how many calories I'm taking in.

For example, snack today was 3 squares of homemade graham crackers. Supper was creamed chicken on biscuits, biscuits from scratch, cr of chicken soup from scratch. I have no clue how to figure out where I'm at. How do you do it?

Replies

  • iRun4wine
    iRun4wine Posts: 5,126
    I can't help you, but I'm very interested to know how you make homemade graham crackers- Graham crackers are my FAVORITE snack :love:
  • CandaceW
    CandaceW Posts: 73
    I do this very often...the only way I have found to figure calories on it is to add up all ingredients then divide by serving size and add it to my meals. It is time consuming, but worth it for the quality food. Hope this helps :happy:
  • maureenadavid
    maureenadavid Posts: 1
    I try to get as close as I can with the foods listed. Kudos to you for making everything from scratch, so much healthier!!! :smile:
  • lyla29
    lyla29 Posts: 3,549 Member
    There is a site that you can put all of your ingredients in and it will calculate the calories per serving, but I don't know the name of it. Hopefully someone will respond who knows the site.:smile:
    I guess I wasn't much help:ohwell:
  • keiko
    keiko Posts: 2,919 Member
    I use this to find out calories in foods from scratch.

    http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

    Sometimes you have to play with it to get it to recognize each food. But it's the best one I've found so far.

    After you do it you can add it to the data base on MFP, saving it so you can use it again.
  • tig3rang3l
    tig3rang3l Posts: 270 Member
    I do this very often...the only way I have found to figure calories on it is to add up all ingredients then divide by serving size and add it to my meals. It is time consuming, but worth it for the quality food. Hope this helps :happy:

    This is what I do... When I bake bread, I enter in everything that I put into it and then save it as a meal. Then I divide. Unfortunately, a lot is guesstimating... but I doubt 100 calories from one day to the next will make a huge difference.
  • PedalHound
    PedalHound Posts: 1,625 Member
    Just one more dedicated scratch cook chiming in but I do the same as many here. Sometimes I use the calorie count recipe analyzer and sometimes I just enter it all here. It's worth it (though I'd have a breakdown if my account lost its data!!!) and cudos for the home cooking. SO important :smile:
  • tennetubbie
    tennetubbie Posts: 312 Member
    sparkrecipes has a calcuator that I use for all my scratch stuff--although making my won Grham crackers will never happen!!!::laugh:
  • nawinkler
    nawinkler Posts: 5
    I asked a similar question in the 'feedback' section today (how to enter a recipe to get the nutritional value) and there was a response this evening to "Google nutrition value of a recipe. It will give you a site where you put ingedients in and it calculates for you. I think it's recipe czar?, also nutritiondata.com." I haven't tried it yet but am passing it along. I didn't note the name of the person responding but you can see it in the ''give us feedback' string as a reply to my post.
  • Girlmom282109
    Girlmom282109 Posts: 2,643 Member
    http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp

    This is what I use.
  • Georg
    Georg Posts: 1,728 Member
    I use this:
    http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php?process=resubmit&count=11#
    It works for me. Then I save it in my foods.
    Good luck!
    :flowerforyou:
  • Amy_B
    Amy_B Posts: 2,317 Member
    http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp

    This is what I use.
    This is the best one I've found. I personally hate Calorie Count's one.
  • ReaT
    ReaT Posts: 9
    Thanks for all the responses! I'll check out some of the different sites and see which is easiest to use.

    (Kelyn - the recipe I use is this one: http://everydayfoodstorage.net/2009/04/29/graham-crackers-whole-wheat-food-storage-recipes/food-storage-recipes )
  • bitty_401
    bitty_401 Posts: 75
    you could go to sparkpeople.com and use their recipe calculator and then log it in MFP.That's what I do.Good luck.
  • girltrumpeter85
    girltrumpeter85 Posts: 28
    I'm also a 'from scratch' cooker - I've found that I log in my recipes under 'save this meal', and then I just pick out from my 'meals' the recipe I used and ate!
  • knottylibrarian
    knottylibrarian Posts: 69
    I think that may involve some time and a calculator. If you have a recipe, you would probably want to figure out the nutrition info for each (like how many calories and carbs are in a cup of flour, a stick of butter...etc) then you would have the total nutrition info for the entire recipes--then divide that by servings.

    Does that make sense?
  • knottylibrarian
    knottylibrarian Posts: 69
    I think that may involve some time and a calculator. If you have a recipe, you would probably want to figure out the nutrition info for each (like how many calories and carbs are in a cup of flour, a stick of butter...etc) then you would have the total nutrition info for the entire recipes--then divide that by servings.

    Does that make sense?
  • ReaT
    ReaT Posts: 9
    I think that may involve some time and a calculator. If you have a recipe, you would probably want to figure out the nutrition info for each (like how many calories and carbs are in a cup of flour, a stick of butter...etc) then you would have the total nutrition info for the entire recipes--then divide that by servings.

    Does that make sense?

    It makes sense, but for an accountant I am remarkably math averse! :wink: I just got done trying the sparkrecipies to enter my lunch and it worked great. I just need to make sure I'm measuring realistic servings and being consistent in the sizes I make things. And actually measuring when I make something instead of thinking 'hmm, I'll just toss some cheese in there'.
  • Marla64
    Marla64 Posts: 23,120 Member
    yes, I scratch-- :wink:
This discussion has been closed.

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