Some of you may already do this but, for those of
you who don't, I wanted to share my baker's secret. I love to bake
and, while I usually give most of my treats away as gifts, I do like to
indulge in my creations.
The Calorie King book (
http://www.calorieking.com/ ) is my stand-by companion as it contains
carb information on almost everything - including raw baking
ingredients like sugars and flours. Whenever I make a new recipe, I
grab Calorie King off the shelf and do some math to figure out the
exact carb value of the batter I'm making. If it's muffins or cookies,
I'll simply divide this total CHO value by the number of muffins or
cookies I made. For breads, divide by the number of (equally sized)
slices. I find this method works wonderfully because recipes often
don't yield the same amount each time (I especially find this
true with cookies!).
For all my favourite recipes, after doing
the math I simply write the CHO value of the entire batter next to the
recipe and get ready to divide. The margins of my cook books are filled with self-calculated CHO values.
I do exactly the same thing, with the Calorie King book! My only problem is that I find the writing very small in the book, so I often use a magnifying glass.
I often cut out recipes from the newspaper or magazines and I calculate the CHO values right away so that I don't have to do it when I eventually make the recipe!
Thanks for the suggestions. I really need to learn how to cook. We eat out all the time because it is so much easier for me. You would think a 41 year old wife and mother could make at least one decent meal for her family but I am so terrible in the kitchen and obviously lazy too.
A simple solution: get yourself a slow-cooker! There are so many simple recipes out there (tons of inexpensive recipe books). It generally takes less than ten minutes to throw everything in, then a few hours later, you have a great meal ready! A slow-cooker also gives you the flexibility of buying cheaper cuts of meat because they get more tender as they are cooked over a long period of time. Therefore, you'll also be amazed at the cash you'll save instead of eating out all the time!
One of the dieticians that we see for our daughter's diabetes told us about the Dietician of Canada website. (Go to "www.dietitians.ca" then click on "Eat Well, Live Well" and then click on "Recipe Analyzer"). It's really easy, you just enter in all your ingredients and then after it gives you a breakdown of all the nutritional information. My mother-in-law uses it for all the cookies she bakes for the kids!