How to calculate carbs-- when using recipes?

[lovetheduns]

So maybe I am not all that bright.

But today, I made a chicken salad. I had cooked a whole bird (in butter with some thyme), then today cut it up and made chicken salad. Here is what I used.

3 cups of chicken
1/4 cup + 4 tbsp of heavy cream
1/2 cup of mayonaise
1/2 cup of diced yellow onion
1 cup of diced celery
1 tsp curry powder
Pepper and salt to season

Per the recipe (I added the yellow onion and deleted grapes, almonds) this would make 12 servings.

I used a kitchen eating tablespoon and gave myself 2 scoops on a a few leaves of fresh raw spinach (about a 1/2 cup but who exactly does one measure leaves?).

So---- my question is how exactly do I calculate what this all is per serving? I imagine it is just going to be an approximate since the contents of each serving no matter how well it is mixed may be different.

Any ideas? I feel like an idiot for not knowing how this should be handled. So I just said to myself-- well I will count it as 8 carbs.

[Elizellen]

Re: How to calculate carbs-- when using recipes?

Do you use fitday.com or one of the similar websites around to log your foods? If so here is what I used to do when I used the online version to track my carb intakes

1. Go to a new day's food log and add all the ingredients in your recipe as if it was one giant meal.

2. Make a note of all the numbers given (I also looked at the vitamins/minerals in it and noted them down).

3. Then using a calculator divide all the numbers by 12 and note those down.

4. Then click on 'Create a custom food' and give it a name like 'My Chicken Salad : 1 serving = 2 tablespoon scoops' and enter all the nutrition numbers you calculated in step 3.

5. Save it.

Then each time you eat it you can just select 'My Chicken Salad' from your custom foods and select 1 serving if you had 2 scoops, or 0.5 servings if you only had one scoop etc. As long as you use the same spoon for your scoops as you did the first time you should be fairly accurate.

I use the offline version and in that you can add a whole recipe by dragging the ingredients into an ingredients box which is much quicker, but for years I did it the way I have outlined.