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.