this is a very good point... lets say you have a menu for a party... you
don't want to make a nine hundred calorie meal followed by a seven hundred
calorie dessert... if you know the "serving calories" of a portion of a dish
you are considering you can put the meal together, see what it totals to and
perhaps go from a broccoli cheese soup to a vegetable soup cutting a couple
hundred calories, or in the dessert department, you might switch the peach
pie to peach sorbet and considerabley reduce as well.

along with not wasting food, it shows respect for the people you are feeding
by not overstuffing them.

Lee
"Steve Pope" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> Julie Bove > wrote:
>>
>>"Steve Pope" > wrote in message
...
>>> sf > wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Tue, 3 May 2011 21:58:24 -0700, "Julie Bove"
> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So what's the
>>>>> trick for doing that if you are cooking for just two or three people?
>>>>
>>>>For your pasta salad? It sounds like you need practice with
>>>>eyeballing volume and then you need to learn to limit it. Estimate
>>>>how much food (in volume) that you and your DD eat in one meal and try
>>>>to duplicate that when you make your pasta salad. It's not brain
>>>>surgery.
>>>
>>> I use the exact opposite approach -- weigh everything, calculate
>>> the amount of calories and match that up against the number of calories
>>> I expect people to consume.
>>>
>>> This is when cooking for my household, when cooking for guests I will
>>> high-side it.
>>
>>I don't count calories per se. But... My diet is pretty much the same
>>calorie-wise. Mostly take in 1,000 per day. Sometimes as high as 1,200
>>when I eat out. Sometimes less.
>
> Understand. But knowing how many calories are in the batch of food one
> is preparing, for home economic purposes, is different than "counting
> calories" for dieting purposes.
>
> Perhaps it's a subtle difference, but the idea is that one doesn't
> need to be "on a diet" for calorie (or macronutrient, or micronutrient)
> information to be useful. The more information, the better the
> decision-making.
>
> Unfortunately the simple objective act of weighing food to calculate
> portions has acquired negative baggage for some individuals and
> situations,
> and I personally believe this can lead to wasting food which is not good
> for the planet. My goal is to un-stigmatize the measuring of calories
> and nutrients.
>
>
> S.