I make almost all of my food avoiding products as much as possible unless it's a main ingredient (i.e., veggie burger). I total up all the ingredients added to the recipe, then divide by the number of servings I'm going to use. So, my lunch today had a whole can of beans (330 cals), two sweet potatoes (300), a bunch of chard (80), a whole onion (50), some spices (30), and a TBSP of oil (120). I'm dividing in to three servings so it's 910 divided by 3 which is 303 calories per servings.
I really try to keep the number of ingredients down and when I'm really counting calories for weight loss, I avoid creating complicated food that is impossible to figure out. Usually, my meal is simple such as a mic'ed potatoe, steamed broccoli, and low-fat cheese.
When I have mango salsa, baked tortilla chips, and low fat cheese, the salsa container has something like 36 Tbsp servings. I usually have 3 servings of the entire container (total all up and divid by 3).
I was doing that too, keeping things simple and (trying) to figure out the calories in my head. Just wanted to make sure I was doing it right!
Thanks so much for the help!!!!!
Simple, total the entire dish and divide by the number of servings, If this is a dish you plan to make more than once write down the numbers and you wll only have to do it once.