Becky's Kitchen Creations: How I Figure Out the Calories Etc.

NorPro measuring cups and spoons

How do I come up with my calories and nutrient info? First off, I use a site called www.myfooddiary.com for all my weight-loss calorie-counting and food journaling.

I hate Livestrong's The Daily Plate. I'm sure there are people who love it because it's free, to each their own. But My Food Diary is so much more straightforward and easy to use. Anyway, I can input ingredients into the Recipe Builder, and tell it how many servings there are per recipe, and then it gives me the calories and nutrient info. So awesome! It's totally worth the $9/month price tag. So, that's what I use to get all the hard data.

Now, how do I measure food to input it into the Recipe Builder? Well, the obvious is to use a variety of measuring cups to measure volume. But to really get specific, I use digital scales. Yep, my digital scales are kind of crusty and beat-up. But that tells you how much they get used! At least half-a-dozen times a day, and often much more:

It's great to measure portions of pre-packaged food, not just raw ingredients.

I measure my food almost always by weight. That way, when I want to eat just a smidgen of a naughty treat, I know how many calories I got for my 1oz. portion, not just the full recommended portion-size. It's very handy when "dieting" or watching calories and portion sizes.

Here's my procedure for tabulating calories:
1. Weigh or measure all the ingredients, sometimes both, to calculate portion sizes and number of servings.
2. Add up all the calories for each amount of ingredient.
3. Divide the total calories by the amount of servings, sized either by volume or by weight. Wah-lah! Yes, I was good at math in school, not Einstein or anything, but I got A's. I'm just lucky that my brain is wired for it.

Today's cute kitchen gadgets -
Really cute measuring cups featured at www.thekitchn.com: