So what do you do if you want to eat a foreign dish but haven't the slightest idea how many calories are in it? My husband brought home Arab pies stuffed with meat and something else for breakfast. It smelled good but seriously, I have no idea how many calories are in them. Plus, sites that have calories totals don't usually have a lot of non-American dishes listed.

You guess based on the ingredients. I eat ethiopian food ocassionally and I found calories for injera (which is the bread) but couldn't find calories for the other stuff. But I knew it was lentils, greens, potatoes, carrots, etc and also some oil so I estimated as best I could. I did search a bit online though for ethiopian food and calories as well.

Here are some sites that I found in searching for meat pie/sfiha/safiha
http://www.recipezaar.com/Sfiha-Lebanese-Pie-263613 (recipe has some calories listed)
http://members.fortunecity.com/nbassaf/calories.html (lebanese food calories)

Oh and as always, recipes can vary so it is just an estimate but it may be a decent starting point if nothing else.

Thanks! I wasn't quite sure what the ingredients were. For one, it just looked like bread and melted cheese and crumbed meat? I wasn't sure about the pie but hubby said that it was meat inside.

I don't eat anything if I don't know what's in it.

I eat a lot of ethnic food and usually I ask whoever cooked it what's in it and they can tell me. I have had trouble a few times with the language barrier so then I just guess and I try to be a little over my estimate to be safe.

There are a lot of things you can do, to get a good calorie estimate and you can start by weighing the item. Worst case scenario, it's pretty much impossible for anything to have more than about 240 calories per ounce (and only if it's pure fat). You can guestimate fat content fairly well, just by the feel on your lips or your fingertips.

Breads and meats (unless they're unusually fatty) usually have no more than about 100 to 150 calories per ounce.

With the internet, you can get good calorie estimates if you know the name of the dish. If not, you can get a decent idea by comparing it to the closest equivalent you can think of. For example the food you described sounds a lot like a pasty. You could look up the calorie count for pasties or pot pies or empanadas, whichever it appears most similar to (for example if it's mostly meat and appears to be deep fried, check out the empanada calories online - if. If there's a lot of veggies and it appears baked you could look at pot pie calories).

If you're eating out, it's not so easy to estimate, but for carry out, I usually weigh it - given the description I would calculate it at about 150 calories an ounce (unless it felt greasy, then I'd guestimate higher).