GLAMMER's Journal, 01 August 2015

Fellow SitS challenger, here -- hope your weekend gets better!! No suggestions on 'shortcuts' for the recipes (although sometimes I either just estimate an individual amount for each ingredient based on my serving size or use a similar restaurant dish as a substitute). I don't cook that much, and when I do, it's usually with 5 ingredients or less. 

Adding everything ingredient by ingredient can be a pain for sure. If it's something you make frequently creating a recipe or food item would be the way to go, I've done that for some things. However it's so important to my success to record everything, to me it's worth the time and effort. Hope you get a good night's sleep and tomorrow is a cooler day! 

I sometimes estimate by using a similar dish already on the site, other times I use the recipe analyzer on a site called caloriecount.com. They let you put in just the list of ingredients in your recipe and it will analyze it for calories, carbs, protein, sodium, etc. They even grade the recipe and tell what is good or bad about it. With two windows open on my laptop it is fairly easy to input the info onto the fatsecret site (still more of a pain than finding it right there all done for you!) I belong to a members-only recipe blog called Dashing Dish which is all about clean eating. The woman who writes it also has a cookbook out (bought mine at Sam's Club). Almost every recipe of hers I've tried has been awesome. She just posted that all of her recipes are listed on myfitnesspal's food log...I LOVE fatsecret's buddy support, but I sure wish we had some of the other site's perks!  

At least once a recipe is in the cookbook it's east to add to your diary in the future. For me since you can do servings it's simpler for me to spend a bit of time entering the recipe in the cookbook than it is to add each item to a daily food log.  

Some great suggestions were already given. I don't have much to add. I do like taking the time to list the ingredients, adding to my recipe page, and then going back to edit any changes. Then I will break it down to serving size and add that to the recipe page. Quicker to just click on it in the future and make changes then. As long as you don't share it, you can edit the ingredients. I do understand you not wanting to go through all that trouble for a one shot deal. As mentioned, I go for a comparable food FS does list by the main ingredient. 

I have put in the time to enter quite a few of the recipes I make regularly--tedious, no doubt! I am sorry to say I don't have a great solution to get around that. If you do have a meal that you entered into your food log that will be repeated, you can save a meal to your favorites. FS will copy everything you entered for that meal and you can name it and, when you have that again, add everything at once. I sometimes need to go back and adjust the amounts a bit, but that is a time saver. Good luck. 

Losinit ~ Thanks for the idea of using a similar recipe. I'll try that next time. Jim ~ You're right about it being worth the time. Guess I'm just lazy, LOL! HipaaGranny ~ I use the caloriecount.com too, & there's also one at http://www.myfitnesspal.com. But the darn things are so picky about how you state the names of the ingredients & the amounts, it's a bit frustrating & daunting to me. Thanks for the tip, I'll look for Dashing Dish on My Fitness Pal. Can't have too many good clean recipes! I totally agree with you about loving MFS's Buddies but envy other sites' perks! WholeFoodNut, Kattay & IzzyPup ~ Thank you both, & you're right on all counts. Again, I guess I'm just lazy. The problem in this particular instance was that it wasn't one that I would make frequently or add to my cookbook, since Crab Risotto was actually too many carbs & calories for a healthy diet food. Had I realized this sooner I would have switched to a healthier recipe. But I had already planned it & gathered most of the ingredients before I checked. Note to self: check cals & carbs from now on, BEFORE starting to make the recipe! I had never made a risotto before, & it was delicious. I may search for a healthier risotto recipe to use in future. Thank you everyone for your input & suggestions. Now I can see that if you input your favorite recipes you won't have to re-enter them every time you use them, & that does make it worthwhile. Happy, Healthy Eating Everyone, & Have a FANTABULOUS Week! ;o) GLAMMER