Home-cooking difficult to post

Much of what I have been posting is actually home-cooking or has less calories than what is in the program. For example, when I make beef vegetable soup a put more meat than the canned version and go very low sodium and add fresh okra besides all of the other veggies, which are well balanced. How do we do this?

Use the cook book here at FS. It will give you a more accurate account of calories in your dish as they have the best data base. If you use any canned products make sure to use their nutritional information instead of guessing.

There's a bit of up-front effort needed to get the site simple to use thereafter--or there was for me. I've used both the cookbook (my chicken-veg soup is there) and the "meals" section. You can "add a meal" from any day you've recorded so far--glance to the right of today's food diary, about halfway down for that link. You then say whether it's a typical breakfast, lunch, or dinner, name it, and then on any day in the future, you'll be able to add that same meal with a single click. Since most of us eat the same things over and over (I do!), that's a simple way to save time here. If you often eat a dinner like chicken, a baked potato with fat-free sour cream, and whatever veg is on sale that week, you can make just the three recurring ingredients the meal, and add it, then only add on the veg you have any one time.

Once you get it set up, it takes very little time to add recurring complicated recipes and meals. Luck to you!

I use the cook book for home cooked meals like beef stew or minestrone. Then when I eat it I just add it to my meals for the day. If you keep the recipe private, then you can go in and tweak it any time you like.