KONIALIAN'S KITCHEN: SUSTAINABLE MEALS FOR YOUR WALLET AND THE PLANET
SERVINGS
It’s no surprise that most people don’t eat what the USDA defines as a serving size, I for one certainly do not. Recognizing this, I wanted to find my own way to define a serving that was more realistic in everyday life. I could do this since my servings did not take into account nutritional information like a traditional serving does.
Servings for each recipe were calculated based on how much of the food I typically eat in one helping. For instance, I will have one bowl of soup for lunch and that is my serving. If the entire batch of soup fills my bowl seven times, then the recipe produces seven servings. When counting the number of servings, I ensured to use the same type of bowl so that there was consistency in size. This method worked well for both soups, Yogurt Barley and Lemon-Egg, but servings for my other dishes could not be counted as easily or precisely. I would calculate the size of a serving retrospectively. After serving the meal and placing the amount of food I would typically eat on my plate, then I would measure how much the serving was. For fasolia, bulgur pilaf, and Mujararah, I plated the food and then used a measuring cup to estimate how much I was eating. For each one of these dishes, a serving ended up being roughly half a cup. Servings for vosp ov kufte could not be calculated in this same manner. The recipe produced 15 kuftes, but that does not mean it made 15 servings. After my family ate the dish for dinner, we realized that a typical serving was 2-3 kuftes. Based on this observation, I was able to discern that the recipe produced roughly 5-6 servings.
Disclaimer
Please note that the number of servings each recipe produces will not be exactly the same for everyone. These calculations were based solely off of how much food my family members eat in a typical helping, so you should view the number of servings listed under each recipe as a ballpark estimate. Everyone requires a different amount of food to feel content and full. For you it could be more or less than what I need. While the serving number may differ, the total quantity of food that a recipe produces should not vary significantly.