Foods not in database

Hey all. Any tips on how to record foods not found in database? IE made from scratch, bought at a locally owned restaurant, etc. I'm finding it difficult sometimes to find something close and match it up, or to make a guess.

After trying many different ways to do it, I found that the easiest way, is to find similar dish on FS, eyeball the quantity (weight it if you can, or measure) and log it. It is better to guesstimate, than stop logging at all. If you have time and cook from scratch, you can weight the ingredients, calculate the calorie value of the whole dish, and then enter the portion you ate. I use nutritiondata.com to enter and save my recipes. Any way there is no foolproof way to log in food you had in a restaurant. Some of the chain restaurants have their menus published with calories in every dish, but I do not eat in chain restaurants. You were also interested in entering food from local restaurants, so that is not an option.

If I'm cooking from scratch I put my recipe in my FS cookbook. If you make it private (no sharing) you can always go back in and edit it. If you share you can't. When you want to add it to your food journal just go to the recipe and select "add to diet calendar".

I find it very difficult to accurately enter and gauge my calories too. My husband cooks almost everything from scratch. I do the highest calories for the most similar food I feel my biggest challenge is the portion size. My next step is to get a scale and measure my food for more accuracy.

I use the recipe calculator as I love to cook at home. You plug in your ingredients and how many servings it makes (you'll know if you've made it a few times ... my general rule of thumb for soups or pasta dishes is a Cup is a serving) and it'll give you how many calories are in a serving of whatever you're making. I love it for homemade pizza and things of that sort. Way fewer calories than eating out ... and less expensive!

Here's the link:
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp