I have been using caloriecount.com for the longest time when I enter recipes to get the necessary nutritional count per serving. When I entered my lentil and chickpea stew, I thought 77 grams of carbs and 22 grams of fiber per serving was off, but I looked back and I entered everything right.
My sister used nutritiondata.com to enter the recipe and my numbers were WAY off – like 100 calories too high, 40 grams of carbs too high and 15 grams of fiber too high! I need to sign up for nutritiondata and start using that to figure out my calories and do a side by side comparison.
Do you use online software to track your calories? Do you think its accurate?
Okay, I have been using wordpress.com for over two years. The other night I was trying to figure out how to do something and found a wordpress article – I was shocked to find out that I have a second row to my tool bar! I had no idea. I can change the color of my font! I was so tickled when I found that out 😀
So my breakfast was the other half of my leftover stuffed pepper from dinner, except I plopped an egg on top and had 1/2 of an apple. The apple was so good! It was the first piece of fruit I’ve had in over 2 weeks!
I’ve been taping Rachael Ray’s 5 meals in a day. Not sure I am a big fan of the show. I mean anyone can make 5 meals in one day – I just thought that they would be tied more together – like having a roast chicken one night, using the leftover meat to make chicken enchiladas, and then using the carcass to make chicken noodle soup. Not 5 distinctly separate meals.
Anyway, I decided to make her cauliflower mac n cheese – I love her secret ingredient to the sauce – dijon mustard! Now as much as Tony doesn’t believe me, we can have good carbs – I used these noodles:
Another ingredient she uses which I love is sage:
Cauliflower Macaroni and Cheese (printer friendly version here)
Adapted from Rachael Ray – I left out the onions 😀
Makes 8 servings (1.5 cups) (338 calories, 9.2 fat, 47 carbs, 2.7 fiber and 19 protein)
Ingredients
| 1 | head cauliflower |
| 3 | tablespoons butter |
| 3 | tablespoons flour |
| 1 | tablespoon garlic, minced |
| 2 1/2 | cups skim milk |
| 2 | tablespoons dijon mustard |
| 3 | sage leaves, chopped |
| 1/2 | teaspoon salt |
| 1/2 | teaspoon pepper, freshly cracked |
| 2 | cups reduced fat cheddar |
| 1/2 | cup Parmesan cheese |
| 14 1/2 | ounce dry whole wheat elbow macaroni |
Directions
- Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil. Add pinch of salt to water, and add pasta and cook according to package directions. Drain, but save boiling water.
- Add chopped cauliflower to pot and cook until tender – about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour and garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Slowly add the milk and whisk constantly until sauce thickens and you’ve added all the milk.
- Remove from heat. Add dijon mustard, sage leaves, salt, pepper, cheddar cheese and Parmesan cheese and mix well.
- Add in cooked noodles and cauliflower and mix well. At this point, it can be kept in the refrigerator for up to three days.
- Bake at 350 for 15 – 20 minutes. You may want to finish off under the broiler so the top cheese is nice and bubbly.
With a baby cucumber with 1 tablespoon light balsamic on the side.
It’s funny, but while I was doing the no/super low carbs I didn’t have low blood sugar once. Yesterday I was low three times. Before my walk at lunch I was 99, which is perfect, but not high enough for our 50 minute power walk. I drank a 10 ounce apple juice that has 36 grams of carbs (and sugar!) and when I got back, my blood sugar was 61! Later in the afternoon it was 57, so I had a snack: 1 string cheese, the other half of my apple and a teaspoon of no sugar added peanut butter.
Yesterday morning before work I dry rubbed a pork loin and had Tony pop it in the oven before I got home. I made a spicy sauce on mine: 1 teaspoon dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon chili paste and 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar – delicious!
The meat was perfectly cooked – thanks Tony! 😀
Stats for Wednesday:
- no clue on calories! I will enter in nutrition data tonight
- 50 minute walk with 4 pound hand weights
Okay, I have exactly 20 minutes to get dressed, put my breakfast and lunch together and get out the door – thank goodness I am low maintenance! 😀
Make it a great day!
I’ve found that Sparkpeople has been the best for entering recipes, but for tracking I like NutritionData. I like how it saves items you use a lot, and you can choose different units to enter in (like cups vs. tbsp vs. broccoli stalks, etc). caloriecount just didn’t cut it for me, either!!
And man! those peppers look AMAZINGGGG!!!
Mmm mac and cheese! Yum-o (in my very best Rachael Ray voice of course!) That’s a total bummer about the calorie tracker. I don’t track calories so I’m no help. Hopefully you get it all figured out soon!
I use sparkpeople too. The only thing I don’t like is that it doesn’t connect the fitness with the calories counter. I used loseit.com before, but the database is minimal and it doesn’t track nutrients like Spark People does.
Great photos!
I’ve always used sparkpeople to enter nutritional data. It’s really helpful. I also double check labels and input the data myself because I find it to be off a lot!
bummer about the calories being off. i wonder the same thing when it comes to the calorie counter on the machines at the gym. the mac and cheese looks awesome!!
Great looking food as usual! The macaroni and cheese looks very appealing.
I use to have Mastercook software on my lap top but when I had to have some work done on the lap top I lost Mastercook and I wasn’t that thrilled with it so I didn’t bother to install it again. I have tried a couple of the free on line sights but it seems to take forever to find the right ingredients to plug in for each recipe. Or maybe I’m not very patient.
That cauliflower mac and cheese looks so good, I haven’t stopped eating all day and I’m stuffed but would eat some if it was around and not nailed down 🙂
Will have to try that when I get home from vaca 🙂
I don’t use a calorie counter software, but I’ve always been intrigued by it. I at one point used an app on my phone but not sure how accurate that was either.
Love the “font color” sentence. It’s the little things in life that keep us going! lol
And, wow that mac & cheese cauliflower thing looked so good!
i use livestrong and they have an iphone app for that too!
Scary – and sad! How annoying and frustrating for you! I use Spark People and put in my own ingredients then add to the recipe (create it myself)… then weigh ingredients when I cook. I feel pretty confident it’s right… but you never know I guess – eek!
I have to admit I’ve never counted calories before, sorry I can’t be of help there. The cauliflower mac and cheese looks amazing and also intriguing. If you didn’t know it had cauliflower in it, would you be able to taste it (I love cauliflower, don’t get me wrong, I’m just wondering if the flavor masquerades itself).
BTW, I love tossing eggs on top of things. Just last night I fried up an egg to have with my leftovers (garlic soup and couscous) and it was delicious.
Well, I don’t think cauliflower has much of a taste, I just like the added texture to the mac n cheese 😀
If you love cauliflower, you’ll love this!
I use spark people/spark recipes. I’m quite happy with it, though there are a few items in the database that are way off (like it says 50 calories for 1 chocolate chip cookie – but if you enter things by weight instead, it all works out pretty correctly). I’ve found it to be easy to use, and you can enter in your exercise to get an idea of your average calorie deficit each week. I’ve found it to be accurate enough – as in, when it tells me I’m in calorie deficit, I will lose weight.
I have used the living cookbook online before for recipe analysis (it has a free trial…I keep it running on my computer for almost a whole semester without ever closing the screen). I also use professional diet analysis software that I have from both textbooks, and from use at a hospital for patient analysis. I wonder about some of the programs out there, so you just need to find something that gives what you would expect. To figure out what I would expect, I think about what I anticipate the portion to be using the exchange lists and guestimate cals that way.
I’m glad I don’t have to worry about carb ratios because all of that math hurts my little brain. But I do wonder if your not-so-stellar weight loss has been because your numbers have been sneakily higher than you realized? That would be a total bummer, but would explain a lot.
P.S. I love your colorful font sentence. It’s the little thing, right?!? 🙂
Oh my goodness there IS a second toolbar! Squee! So much fun!
(I feel really silly I never noticed it before…)
As for computer software, I expect most of them are off by a little bit.
I like http://www.nutritiondata.com because it’s way more detailed about what you should be eating/nutritional breakdown info/and it’s really easy to use. I think you should try it for a week and see what kind of weight loss you have.
Sparkpeople for sure!
Sage is one of my favorite herbs!
Have a great day! 🙂
I use the Daily Plate from Livestrong. It seems to be pretty accurate?
That cauliflower mac-n-cheese looks right up my alley – awesome!
I’ll just put in another vote for Sparkpeople. Besides, I like how everything can be customized to the exact brands I use. Yes, it has taken me a couple years to input so much data but now that I have, food calculations and receipe calculations are a snap. The only thing I ever wonder about is fat grams. Because if you marinate something with a bit of fat, all of that fat is not absorbed. But if you put that fat in the recipe calculator it seems like it uses all the fat. But I don’t worry about that so much overall.
We also like Ronzoni Smart Taste pasta at our house. (In a purple box.) I swear, you can’t even tell the difference between it and the white stuff.
I use Sparkpeople’s recipe calculator and I know it’s correct b/c I can check the calories of each item I enter (I don’t always) and make sure it coincides with what’s on the label or what I know. That cauliflower mac n cheese looks so incredible, I think I need to make it! BTW, I think if you weighed that pb in grams, you’d find that it would be more like a tablespoon of peanut butter…at least according to the nutrition label which says a tablespoon is only 16 grams. Yes, I’m guilty! I weigh my food in grams! So anal, I know, but you’d be surprised how many more calories you can eat when you’re eyeballing measurements.
http://www.fitday.com
http://www.sparkpeople.com
and I think the USDA has a great database too.
When counting calories and used Sparkpeople. There is a sparkpeople recipes site where you can enter recipes to get the nutrition.
Yum to the mac n cheese! Have you tried Dreamfields Pasta? Supposed to have 5 net carbs.
I haven’t found that pasta yet, but then I haven’t looked to hard for it either – thanks for the reminder, I’ll look harder the next time I am at the store. 😀
I like using Livestrong, but when I want to enter my own recipe I used sparkrecipes.com and use their recipe calculator.
And yummy, I have a slight obsession with any kind of mac & cheese!