Figuring Casseroles

I need advice, guidence on how to figure a casserole with regard to calories.  Last night I had stroganuff for dinner.  This recipe calls for a bag of egg noodles, a big container of sour cream, two small steaks (not sure what kind), and a big can of cream of mushroom soup.  I could probably calculate the item as a whole for the most part but how does that figure for portions?  This is the one item that frustrates me the most with counting calories.  Or even when you go to a pot luck and have a little of everything, I have no idea what's in the item.

Thanks for the help/advice.

Use the recipe analyzer - if you know how much went into the casserole, and about how many portions there were, you can estimate the calorie count (under Foods, New Recipe).

Thanks, that was a ton of help!! :)

I make casseroles, stir-fries, and "mixed-up" food almost exclusively.  I have come to this strategy:

• Weigh or measure everything that goes in.
• Weigh what you serve yourself.
• Enter the whole thing into the recipe analyser.  Check under "view" to make sure it found what you really used (the most annoying part is trying to find the raw meat).  I usually start at 4 servings (since I usually make about 4 servings -- one for me, 2 for my husband, and 1 for a lunch later).
• Look at the grams that yields per serving.  Look at what you ate.  If they are vastly different, go back and change the number of servings to approximate what you ate.
• Since it is a hassle to enter the recipe, and I make different things all the time, I usually add one serving to my food log.  You can adjust the grams serving size at that point if you want to be completely accurate.
• If I plan on eating the leftovers, or I always make something the same way, I tag the serving so that I can add it when I eat the leftovers.

I know that looks complicated, but I have really gotten good at it, and it means that I can eat the way I like without wondering how to log things.

Potlucks are really hard, I usually just make them maintenance days and do the best I can from the food database to get close to what I actually ate.  I figure the odd day out won't really matter in the long haul.

I LOVE the recipe analyzer! Once i figured out how to use it that is! haah I make a lot of Body for Life reciepes and diff casseroles.....but I used to always have problems with it not finding what I was trying to enter...so sometimes you just have to change the wording of the food and hit 'analyze' again if it doesn't register! haha

i like to tag them, too, so they are easy to find and I can enter a serving easily! You can also do that w ANY meal....like if you eat a certain type of omelete or make a lunch that's the same a lot. Makes life EASY haha.

If you add a serving of a saved recipe to your food log, but try to change the grams, it will not work. It will still add the "serving size" number of calories. Unfortunately you have to recalculate the calories yourself if you want to change the serving amount. Of course all the other nutrition information will be wrong too.

So, it is just easier to stick with the serving size. I wish they would fix this problem!

Also I don't go by the gram per serving the analyzer gives me. I use the analyzer to get the total calories of my ingredients but weigh the meal after cooking to get the grams. Then I figure calories per gram. The reason for this is I don't trust the weights the analyzer gives, since many things change weight unpredictably when cooked.

When you add a serving of a recipe you have entered, if you click on the radio button to change it to "Values for 100 g" it will recalculate all the nutritional analysis.  Then, you can go into serving and put in how many grams you actually ate, and it will automatically give you the analysis for that new serving.  This feature saved my sanity!

thanks so much dkenworthy, I feel myself getting saner already!