Going from "improvisational cook" to "calorie counting."
December 9, 2015 5:14 PM Subscribe
I do all of the cooking in our house. Most of the time I'm just throwing meals together with what's on sale or in the fridge rather than following A Recipe, and I'd like to keep working that way if possible. My partner wants to start counting calories, and I want to start providing her with useful data. I think I get the basic idea of how to make this work (weigh stuff before you put it in the pot, write down amounts, do math) but I'd love any specific tips or tricks from people who have made this transition themselves.
A food scale will help, yes! I have also found this recipe analyzer helpful.
posted by listen, lady at 5:26 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by listen, lady at 5:26 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
It sounds like you have a scale already, so that's good start for keeping tract of ingredient amounts and portion size. One of the best sites to use for calculating calories and nutrient information is nutrition data. There is actually an area of the website that allows you to enter your own recipes which is super helpful if you have some recipes that you use often, or even to give you an idea of what a basic breakdown of protein/fat/etc. looks like. There are also a ton of recipe books out there that also have basic nutrition break downs. The key there is to find a recipe along the line of what you already like to prepare and pay attention to the stated portion size. It is easy to serve yourself much more than the stated portion size. I actually started when I was pregnant and got fairly good at eyeballing portion size, there is a learning curve, but after a while it can become second nature.
posted by dawg-proud at 5:28 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by dawg-proud at 5:28 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster:
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:33 PM on December 9, 2015
Use MyFitnessPal. You enter the recipe...I'm specifically looking for a way to do this that will work when I am not cooking from a recipe.
...I have also found this recipe analyzer helpful...
...super helpful if you have some recipes that you use often...
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:33 PM on December 9, 2015
Get a scale and a bunch of index cards. Remember that your calories won't come from spices - focus on butter/cream, meats, and carbs. You can also use "one tomato" kinds of estimates for fruits and vegetables; some databases have entries that are based on average sizes and the per-gram amounts they give you are derived from that.
Oh, and record everything in grams. Cups and teaspoons are fine for volume, but the weight stuff is always in grams.
posted by SMPA at 5:39 PM on December 9, 2015
Oh, and record everything in grams. Cups and teaspoons are fine for volume, but the weight stuff is always in grams.
posted by SMPA at 5:39 PM on December 9, 2015
You don't have to be working 'from a recipe' to use a recipe analyzer--just keep track of what you added, use recipe analyzer to eliminate the math step.
If you tend to cook the similar thrown together meals (like a curry with whatever veggies are in the fridge + a can of coconut milk + 2 tablespoons of oil) on a regular basis, you can create a 'meal' on my fitness pal, which is basically a group of ingredients. From there, you can make edits to that base and get calorie counts for a single portion.
posted by geegollygosh at 5:40 PM on December 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
If you tend to cook the similar thrown together meals (like a curry with whatever veggies are in the fridge + a can of coconut milk + 2 tablespoons of oil) on a regular basis, you can create a 'meal' on my fitness pal, which is basically a group of ingredients. From there, you can make edits to that base and get calorie counts for a single portion.
posted by geegollygosh at 5:40 PM on December 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
One thing that's helpful when you're eyeballing some amount is to weigh the container you're taking it from, rather than the one you're putting it into. If you're throwing flour into a sauce, and you don't know quite how much you want to put in there, you can plunk the flour cannister down on the scale, tare it and then start taking spoonfuls out. When you're done, the new weight will be negative however much you used.
Another useful practice is to think in advance about what you will and won't measure. Like, there's no point in measuring green vegetables, because they have so few calories per volume. Just put them in, guesstimate an amount and move on. And there's no point in measuring salt, spices, garlic, etc, because you use so little of them. Measure the fats, proteins, starches, don't worry about the rest too much.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:43 PM on December 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
Another useful practice is to think in advance about what you will and won't measure. Like, there's no point in measuring green vegetables, because they have so few calories per volume. Just put them in, guesstimate an amount and move on. And there's no point in measuring salt, spices, garlic, etc, because you use so little of them. Measure the fats, proteins, starches, don't worry about the rest too much.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:43 PM on December 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
I'm specifically looking for a way to do this that will work when I am not cooking from a recipe.
Okay, well, I would still recommend getting starting with a website like nutrition data. Review a few basics - if you use a lot of chicken or beef in your recipes on the fly, you need to know that there is about 70 calories in meat only (no skin) roasted chicken, and then weigh your portions. And then for rice, etc. The basics like this, and then be very clear on how much fat you add - very simple to calculate, tends to be about a 100 calories per tablespoon, but double check me on that! Like I said before, there is a learning curve, but once you get a handle (or as I see on preview, create some index cards) of your basic food items you will have a good idea of the basic nutrition break down of your creations.
posted by dawg-proud at 5:46 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Okay, well, I would still recommend getting starting with a website like nutrition data. Review a few basics - if you use a lot of chicken or beef in your recipes on the fly, you need to know that there is about 70 calories in meat only (no skin) roasted chicken, and then weigh your portions. And then for rice, etc. The basics like this, and then be very clear on how much fat you add - very simple to calculate, tends to be about a 100 calories per tablespoon, but double check me on that! Like I said before, there is a learning curve, but once you get a handle (or as I see on preview, create some index cards) of your basic food items you will have a good idea of the basic nutrition break down of your creations.
posted by dawg-proud at 5:46 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Husband and I have been calorie counting for several months and never cook from recipes. Scale, measuring cups/spoons and a notepad. If your partner uses something like MFP or LoseIt, she'll just need to put in the ingredients and amounts and it'll calculate. Let the apps do the math heavy lifting. They'll also store frequently-used ingredients.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:49 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:49 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm specifically looking for a way to do this that will work when I am not cooking from a recipe.
Just to be clear, this works assuming you can just write down what is in a meal and divide it by the number of servings it has. And the website does the math, you basically don't have to. If it were me I think I'd do it this way.
- make food and write down ingredients for the most part (especially the calorie heavy parts as SMPA suggests
- give list to partner. You cook meal while partner inputs ingredients into the recipe tracker on My Fitness Pal
- approximate servings per meal (so you make stew, eyeball it into "eight servngs" or so or just say that it's one serving and estimate the fractional part of it you eat each time
- go to My Fitness Pal and partner can then say "I ate one serving (or 1/8th of whole) stew" and MFP will input the calories and the general nutrition info for you. Every time you make/eat this meal it's now already registered with the app.
So not trying to be like "Do this even though you said you don't want to" but trying to make sure you know what the thing actually does
posted by jessamyn at 5:58 PM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Just to be clear, this works assuming you can just write down what is in a meal and divide it by the number of servings it has. And the website does the math, you basically don't have to. If it were me I think I'd do it this way.
- make food and write down ingredients for the most part (especially the calorie heavy parts as SMPA suggests
- give list to partner. You cook meal while partner inputs ingredients into the recipe tracker on My Fitness Pal
- approximate servings per meal (so you make stew, eyeball it into "eight servngs" or so or just say that it's one serving and estimate the fractional part of it you eat each time
- go to My Fitness Pal and partner can then say "I ate one serving (or 1/8th of whole) stew" and MFP will input the calories and the general nutrition info for you. Every time you make/eat this meal it's now already registered with the app.
So not trying to be like "Do this even though you said you don't want to" but trying to make sure you know what the thing actually does
posted by jessamyn at 5:58 PM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Oh, hey, if you fry stuff you should weigh before and also after - the difference is the number of grams of oil (or other fats) that you're consuming. There's some water loss but not that much; I just put the result straight in because... well, it seemed kind of insane to worry about it.
This will probably make you stop wanting to fry things.
posted by SMPA at 6:23 PM on December 9, 2015
This will probably make you stop wanting to fry things.
posted by SMPA at 6:23 PM on December 9, 2015
When I was doing this, I always just eyeballed how much pasta, oil, chicken, whatever was in the serving I put on my plate, and entered that into my calorie tracker or whatever. So a serving of spaghetti sitting on my plate might be, oh, one and a half cups of pasta, a quarter cup of ground turkey, half a cup of jarred tomato sauce, maybe a quarter cup of onion, plus half a tablespoon of olive oil. And yes, I lost weight like that. Most ad-hoc recipes will be translatable into servings of protein + vegetables + starch + sauces like this.
You don't need to be 100% scientifically precise, and in fact you're fooling yourself if you think you ever know for sure how many calories are in anything. An apple is not an apple is not an apple. Not even gram for gram, depending on variety, season, growth conditions, etc. Close enough is close enough! Just be sure not to woefully underestimate -- make sure to know what two cups of pasta on a plate looks like, and err on the side of overestimating rather than underestimating to offset the natural human tendency to think it's less than it really is.
This is also how I estimated restaurant foods in the days before everywhere had calorie counts on the menu. Best-guess based on volume and description. It worked well enough!
posted by Andrhia at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
You don't need to be 100% scientifically precise, and in fact you're fooling yourself if you think you ever know for sure how many calories are in anything. An apple is not an apple is not an apple. Not even gram for gram, depending on variety, season, growth conditions, etc. Close enough is close enough! Just be sure not to woefully underestimate -- make sure to know what two cups of pasta on a plate looks like, and err on the side of overestimating rather than underestimating to offset the natural human tendency to think it's less than it really is.
This is also how I estimated restaurant foods in the days before everywhere had calorie counts on the menu. Best-guess based on volume and description. It worked well enough!
posted by Andrhia at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I use MFP, and i rarely cook from recipes. I would recommend using the feature that allows you to create your own recipes/meals. Then you enter the ingredients once when you're cooking and the next time you have a portion of that thing it's already in there.
One thing: When i first started doing this I found it to be a tremendous hassle, but after a couple weeks that feeling passed. I now find it takes me 2 minutes or less to do this per meal, even when not cooking from a recipe. If I'm cooking something really complicated I'll jot down amounts as I go, but for the most part I just throw ingredients on the scale before I prep them and then tally it all up when it's in the oven or the pan.
Like everyone said, feel free to eyeball the veggies a bit --- if you're chopping up one bell pepper for a stew that's going to make 8 servings, being off by 100 grams isn't going to matter much. Stuff like olive oil, I keep a small bottle on the counter with a pour spout for ease. Throw the bottle it on the scale, put a dash of oil in the pan, throw it on the scale again. Ditto any liquid or sticky ingredient. Easy peasy.
Even if you don't cook to a recipe, I find it can be handy to save a few meals in there if you have something you generally like a certain way --- with MFP you can add the meal as a whole with one tap and still adjust the amount of a particular component. I often have greek yogurt with frozen berries and almonds for breakfast, for example. If one day I add extra yogurt or eat a banana instead of the berries it's easy to swap.
Also, the thing with MFP is that anyone can enter a recipe/calorie count for something and post it to the public database, so there can a bunch of useless stuff popping up if you just look for an ingredient in a general way, like say "chicken breast" or "onions". Adding the word "raw" usually helps turn up something more accurate, and I find I've drifted into using metric for the most part, because there will generally be a verified listing on there for 100 grams of whatever vegetable you like.
Oh, also even when you're improv cooking, the bar-scan feature's pretty useful as well --- say you're making a pasta, you can open up a custom recipe and then scan in the crushed tomatoes or any other jarred or canned ingredient you may be using.
posted by Diablevert at 7:15 PM on December 9, 2015
One thing: When i first started doing this I found it to be a tremendous hassle, but after a couple weeks that feeling passed. I now find it takes me 2 minutes or less to do this per meal, even when not cooking from a recipe. If I'm cooking something really complicated I'll jot down amounts as I go, but for the most part I just throw ingredients on the scale before I prep them and then tally it all up when it's in the oven or the pan.
Like everyone said, feel free to eyeball the veggies a bit --- if you're chopping up one bell pepper for a stew that's going to make 8 servings, being off by 100 grams isn't going to matter much. Stuff like olive oil, I keep a small bottle on the counter with a pour spout for ease. Throw the bottle it on the scale, put a dash of oil in the pan, throw it on the scale again. Ditto any liquid or sticky ingredient. Easy peasy.
Even if you don't cook to a recipe, I find it can be handy to save a few meals in there if you have something you generally like a certain way --- with MFP you can add the meal as a whole with one tap and still adjust the amount of a particular component. I often have greek yogurt with frozen berries and almonds for breakfast, for example. If one day I add extra yogurt or eat a banana instead of the berries it's easy to swap.
Also, the thing with MFP is that anyone can enter a recipe/calorie count for something and post it to the public database, so there can a bunch of useless stuff popping up if you just look for an ingredient in a general way, like say "chicken breast" or "onions". Adding the word "raw" usually helps turn up something more accurate, and I find I've drifted into using metric for the most part, because there will generally be a verified listing on there for 100 grams of whatever vegetable you like.
Oh, also even when you're improv cooking, the bar-scan feature's pretty useful as well --- say you're making a pasta, you can open up a custom recipe and then scan in the crushed tomatoes or any other jarred or canned ingredient you may be using.
posted by Diablevert at 7:15 PM on December 9, 2015
Forgot one thing --- the MFP feature that really speeds things up is the fact that when you enter in one ingredient it pops up a list of your frequently paired foods underneath. So if I tell it I had maple syrup for breakfast it'll ask if I want to add, say, oatmeal or pancakes or bacon as well. This helps simplify matters a great deal --- even if you don't plan out your meals in advance, you're probably going to be having ketchup with your french fries or jam on your toast the vast majority of the time, so after a while you can often just enter the main or most unusual ingredient in a meal and tick off all the accompaniments automatically.
posted by Diablevert at 7:27 PM on December 9, 2015
posted by Diablevert at 7:27 PM on December 9, 2015
I like MFP too for its food db and interface. I also thought this video was an interesting case for using a kitchen scale even over measuring cups/spoons: https://youtu.be/JVjWPclrWVY
Good luck!
posted by phreckles at 9:03 PM on December 9, 2015
Good luck!
posted by phreckles at 9:03 PM on December 9, 2015
My approach was to continue to improvise, but to measure too. For example, I would tip in as much olive oil into a pan as I thought good, but by the tablespoon, instead of directly from the bottle. Or I would pour out the rest of the bag of dried pasta, but on to the scale first. Then it was easy to log as I went. No real change to cooking approach, just one extra step for each ingredient as it went in.
I think if you go to the trouble of logging what goes in by weight or volume, then it's reasonable to expect your partner to do the conversion to calories from there.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:23 PM on December 9, 2015
I think if you go to the trouble of logging what goes in by weight or volume, then it's reasonable to expect your partner to do the conversion to calories from there.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:23 PM on December 9, 2015
I have basically a super power where I can fairly accurately estimate the calories in any given dish just by looking at it. Basically I learned how many calories are in a gram of fat, carb, and protein.... Then learned what x grams of fat looked like... If you memorize things like a quarter cup of oil has x calories, a cup of flour has x, or whatever your repeat ingredients are then you can get a really good idea. Also once you calculate for recipes you get so good at it that you can mentally add this stuff up quite fast.
posted by flink at 4:40 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by flink at 4:40 AM on December 10, 2015
Sometimes, I count calories and fat content, and while I have tried several sites/communities that have calculators, I find it easier to use a combination of tables with nutritional data and the information on packages. I jot down the data on a notepad, one for each day, and that's that.
After a while, one acquires the super-power flink describes, and then it becomes easy to put together a meal on principle rather than calculation.
The basics are: you can eat almost all the vegs you would ever want, even avocado. Limit your intake of fat (doh), meat and processed food severely. Eat everything else with moderation (dairy, fish, foul, carbs).
posted by mumimor at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2015
After a while, one acquires the super-power flink describes, and then it becomes easy to put together a meal on principle rather than calculation.
The basics are: you can eat almost all the vegs you would ever want, even avocado. Limit your intake of fat (doh), meat and processed food severely. Eat everything else with moderation (dairy, fish, foul, carbs).
posted by mumimor at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2015
I skip counting lots of vegetables entirely. I make exceptions for things that are exceptionally fatty or carby (by vegetable standards), like avocado, olives, carrots, squash, corn, things like that. I also try to overestimate things like olive oil etc.
posted by mchorn at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by mchorn at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2015
Thanks for asking this question - this is the biggest reason that I don't use the calculators, too. I love the tip about measuring before you add the ingredients so you can tell afterward how much you used - I'm going to start using that.
Here's my tip: I usually make big pots of food to last all week, so even if I know how much went into the whole pot, I have trouble every day figuring out what percentage of that whole pot I ate today. I don't use the "eyeball it to 8 servings" method, because I can see quite clearly that the amount on my plate is nowhere near the amount on my spouse's plate so the serving sizes don't work out for me.
What I do is this: Add up all the ingredients for the entire pan of food and call it 1 serving (it's huge). Then...
for things that I make in a rectangular pan, I use the square inches. 13x9 = 117 sq inches. My serving measures 2.5x2 so that is 5 sq inches, therefore my serving will be in proportion to the whole like 5/117 = .042 x the whole pan
For things that I make in a big pot on the stove, I weigh the pot before and after cooking, or I dump the finished contents of the pot into something I can measure so that I know how much the entire meal is, then I weigh or measure my individual serving each time I eat some and use the same proportion math to say what size of a serving I really ate compared to the weight/measure of the whole pot of food.
And I don't worry too much if it's off by a bit - this is just a way to get sort of close to the truth.
posted by CathyG at 10:14 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Here's my tip: I usually make big pots of food to last all week, so even if I know how much went into the whole pot, I have trouble every day figuring out what percentage of that whole pot I ate today. I don't use the "eyeball it to 8 servings" method, because I can see quite clearly that the amount on my plate is nowhere near the amount on my spouse's plate so the serving sizes don't work out for me.
What I do is this: Add up all the ingredients for the entire pan of food and call it 1 serving (it's huge). Then...
for things that I make in a rectangular pan, I use the square inches. 13x9 = 117 sq inches. My serving measures 2.5x2 so that is 5 sq inches, therefore my serving will be in proportion to the whole like 5/117 = .042 x the whole pan
For things that I make in a big pot on the stove, I weigh the pot before and after cooking, or I dump the finished contents of the pot into something I can measure so that I know how much the entire meal is, then I weigh or measure my individual serving each time I eat some and use the same proportion math to say what size of a serving I really ate compared to the weight/measure of the whole pot of food.
And I don't worry too much if it's off by a bit - this is just a way to get sort of close to the truth.
posted by CathyG at 10:14 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is cheating somewhat, but I find you can get close enough for government work by looking up a prepared meal entry in MyFitnessPal that is similar to what you've cooked and guestimate the serving sizes. No, it's not exact, and if you're trying to track things other than calories, I wouldn't recommend it, but it seems to work well enough for me to continue to consistently lose weight when I'm calorie counting.
That said, I'd go through the exercise of being more meticulous when starting out, as I've found that the training for what calories "look like" is a very valuable exercise. This is mostly a useful shortcut after you've gotten that under your belt.
posted by Aleyn at 5:02 PM on December 10, 2015
That said, I'd go through the exercise of being more meticulous when starting out, as I've found that the training for what calories "look like" is a very valuable exercise. This is mostly a useful shortcut after you've gotten that under your belt.
posted by Aleyn at 5:02 PM on December 10, 2015
"I can see quite clearly that the amount on my plate is nowhere near the amount on my spouse's plate so the serving sizes don't work out for me"
If you know what went into the whole dish, and its cooked weight, you can weigh what goes on to your plate when you get your portion. You have a one off exercise weighing your pots/casseroles/whatever, and then it's simple arithmetic.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:33 PM on December 10, 2015
If you know what went into the whole dish, and its cooked weight, you can weigh what goes on to your plate when you get your portion. You have a one off exercise weighing your pots/casseroles/whatever, and then it's simple arithmetic.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:33 PM on December 10, 2015
For things that I make in a big pot on the stove, I weigh the pot before and after cooking, or I dump the finished contents of the pot into something I can measure so that I know how much the entire meal is, then I weigh or measure my individual serving each time I eat some and use the same proportion math to say what size of a serving I really ate compared to the weight/measure of the whole...
If you cross the skills of calorie counters with the skills of meal preppers, you can take this one step further. When you've finished making your big pot of whatever, you portion it out into baggies or plastic/glass containers, using a ladle or a measuring cup (it doesn't matter what you use), and now you know how many servings you have. You know the total ingredients (calories, nutritional data), divide that by your # of servings, and whether you grab one or two for lunch, you can figure your calories per serving.
posted by vitabellosi at 10:41 AM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
If you cross the skills of calorie counters with the skills of meal preppers, you can take this one step further. When you've finished making your big pot of whatever, you portion it out into baggies or plastic/glass containers, using a ladle or a measuring cup (it doesn't matter what you use), and now you know how many servings you have. You know the total ingredients (calories, nutritional data), divide that by your # of servings, and whether you grab one or two for lunch, you can figure your calories per serving.
posted by vitabellosi at 10:41 AM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't know why the basic rules aren't more well known but:
* any dry ingredient (beans, pasta, quinoa, rice, flour, sugar) has 4 calories per gram (or 1800 in a pound), just weigh it all together and add up
* any pure fat ingredient (oil, butter, shortening, chicken fat) has 9 calories per gram (or very roughly 150 in a tablespoon, although that's a volume measurement)
* almost nothing has MORE than 9 calories per gram, so you can use that as an upper bound
* things like cheese and cream typically have around 3-4 calories per gram (they have a lot of fat, but also a lot of water)
* almost all vegetables have a trivial number of calories, they're not worth counting. Potatoes and squash have around 1 calorie per gram, which only really matters if you're making something potato/squash based.
* eggs have 80 calories
Meat and weird things like avocados are the only things you really should have to look up.
Given that info, you should be able to pretty accurately guesstimate the calories in anything.
Make chili by frying an onion in 2 tbsp of oil, adding 2 lbs of dried beans and TVP, a big can of tomatoes, and serve with corn bread made from an 8 oz mix package with 4 tbsp of butter and an egg? Right away you should know that it's 300 + 3600 + 0 + 900 + 600 + 80 = 5480 calories. Add 1/4 lb (100 grams) of cheese? Probably about 400 calories.
Make 1 lb of pasta with a tomato sauce that has 4 tablespoons of oil? Again, right away you should know it has 1800 + 600 = 2400 calories.
Make 2 lbs (900g) of mashed potatoes with 1 cup of cream (225g) and 4 tbsp of butter? Again, right away, it's 900 + 900 + 600 = 2400 calories.
If you're already weighing stuff in grams, it's not hard to do this math at all.
posted by miyabo at 9:47 AM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
* any dry ingredient (beans, pasta, quinoa, rice, flour, sugar) has 4 calories per gram (or 1800 in a pound), just weigh it all together and add up
* any pure fat ingredient (oil, butter, shortening, chicken fat) has 9 calories per gram (or very roughly 150 in a tablespoon, although that's a volume measurement)
* almost nothing has MORE than 9 calories per gram, so you can use that as an upper bound
* things like cheese and cream typically have around 3-4 calories per gram (they have a lot of fat, but also a lot of water)
* almost all vegetables have a trivial number of calories, they're not worth counting. Potatoes and squash have around 1 calorie per gram, which only really matters if you're making something potato/squash based.
* eggs have 80 calories
Meat and weird things like avocados are the only things you really should have to look up.
Given that info, you should be able to pretty accurately guesstimate the calories in anything.
Make chili by frying an onion in 2 tbsp of oil, adding 2 lbs of dried beans and TVP, a big can of tomatoes, and serve with corn bread made from an 8 oz mix package with 4 tbsp of butter and an egg? Right away you should know that it's 300 + 3600 + 0 + 900 + 600 + 80 = 5480 calories. Add 1/4 lb (100 grams) of cheese? Probably about 400 calories.
Make 1 lb of pasta with a tomato sauce that has 4 tablespoons of oil? Again, right away you should know it has 1800 + 600 = 2400 calories.
Make 2 lbs (900g) of mashed potatoes with 1 cup of cream (225g) and 4 tbsp of butter? Again, right away, it's 900 + 900 + 600 = 2400 calories.
If you're already weighing stuff in grams, it's not hard to do this math at all.
posted by miyabo at 9:47 AM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by vitabellosi at 5:25 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]