For the record, I am not a nutritionist or dietician. Nor do I consider myself highly qualified to give anyone advice on what or how much to eat. I only know what works for Tom and me. I’m happy to share, but don’t take everything I say as gospel. If you have health concerns or are seriously following a diet, check with a doctor or professional before following my advice.
Our recipes come from a variety of sources. Many are recipes we collected through the years that were either passed down from relatives and friends, clipped from magazines, or found on bookmarked pages in old, well-worn cookbooks. Some are recent dishes found online that work for the two of us. Still others are from third-party sites that fit the bill for a particular holiday or season.
If you want to re-scale, be my guest. Every recipe at Our Empty Nest allows you to change the servings which, in turn, changes the amount of ingredients you will need. There is also a handy tool you can use at My Kitchen Calculator. You’re welcome to try it. Keep in mind that scaling up or down doesn’t only mean changing the ingredients. You also need to change the size of pots and pans and rethink cooking times. Rule of thumb is to try to keep the thickness of the food as close to that of the original recipe as possible. For instance, if a casserole is normally 2-inches thick, be sure you use a pan that produces a smaller or larger casserole that is also around two inches thick. This way, cooking times and temperatures won’t be affected much, if at all. If the casserole will be thicker, reduce the temperature a little and let it cook a bit longer. When re-scaling, you might need to experiment once or twice for a dish to turn out as good as the original. Be sure to take notes so you know what you did.
Yields, serving sizes, and times are all approximate. I don’t know how it is for anyone else, but if I ask family members “How much?” or “How long?” I always get a generic, “It will make a big pot” or “It takes about an hour.” I leave it at that. I’m not inclined to interrogate. As far as prep/cook times go, I don’t necessarily pay attention to how long it takes to prep ingredients and then cook them. I’m more concerned with the total time you actually need and should allow for, from start to finish, to get a meal on the table. If I make a dish and do try logging the time myself, I invariably get a phone call or there’s some other distraction that throws my whole concentration off. Also, having me measure out cupfuls in an attempt to determine the true yield and/or serving size for a recipe is not going to happen. Bottom line—this is not a cooking website. I am not Julia Child or Martha Stewart. I am just an empty nester sharing recipes for meals we enjoy.
I include the nutritional facts with our recipes and have tried to be super accurate. The tool I use is at VeryWell Fit—you enter the number of servings and ingredients for any recipe and analyze the recipe for its nutritional value. Fabulous, helpful tool for those of us who want to eat healthier. I can’t guarantee that the calories or other nutritional facts are accurate, but I believe them to be close. They could, however, be off by 1 or 100 calories. I don’t check or double check for accuracy. Again, just because you can type in information and get nutritional facts, it doesn’t mean you should necessarily trust those facts to lose weight or use them if you are on a restrictive diet for health reasons. Check with your doctor. I can’t stress this enough.♥
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