guestimating calories for today's lunch
 

Over the weekend I made an eggplant lasagna. But when I cook, I don't measure. I go by look/taste. (trying to change that now that I'm going to calorie count).

So, here is what I did and I need to figure out the approx calories as I brought it as lunch today.

1 eggplant sliced, drizzled in evoo, light salt/pepper and sprinkled fresh asiago cheese on top and roasted.

approx 1 cup spinach, cooked and drained

Sauce:
1lb lean ground beef, browned then whiped excess oil from pan
1 medium onion diced
2 gloves garlic
5 or 6 mini red,yellow,orange peppers
2 small cans of low sodium tomatoe sauce (those little 1/2 can sizes).
1 regular can of low sodium diced tomatoes
Simmered above and added in seasonings like oregano, basil, thyme, red pepper and some Mrs Dash tomato seasonings. Added about a tbsp sugar, maybe more.

Cheese mix: Mixed lowfat cottage cheese (approx 2 cups, but not measured) with parsley and some asiago and parmasean cheese).

Layers:
Layered the eggplant, sauce, spinach, cheese mix and added some shredded chedder/jack on top. (again, not measured, but enough to cover the 9x13 pan)

This has served us 8 servings out of that pan.

Not measuring the cheese was my downfall, as now I'm just guestimating what I had. Everything else if fairly cut/dry, but the cheese is probably the biggest calorie hog in the recipe. Because I was trying to go light, I did regulate the cheese and did not go overboard.

Looking at recipes on allrecipes.com for vegetarian lasagna they generally come in around 400 cals. But I also had the ground beef in there.

well, I'll be the first to reply to my own post, as I'm more confused now.

I went to all recipes and looked at several eggplant lasagna recipes and the average calorie count was about 400 cals per serving. I also created a livestrong account and selected a eggplant veggie lasagna without noodles and it was about 400 cals.

So then I entered in all the items from my recipe into livestrong and created a recipe. It came out to 284.

I think I'll have to err on the side of caution and say this was 400.

I put everything into a recipe and got 325-350. All depends on the type and amount of cheese, plus the type of ground beef.

I would probably stick to the 400, to account for the cheese on top, too.

Spark Recipes. Input each of the ingredients and then determine how many servings were in the whole dish. You will then get the nutrition info for one serving.