Hi everyone.    I have found this awsome website that helps you find out what the nutritional values of any recipe that you make.  You have to just follow the instructions and add the ingredients and it will tell you how many calories and fat grams per serving.  So if you are like me and make alot of soups all you have to do is use this tool and it is easy to keep track instead of just guessing like I have been.

caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis    

I fell in love with this right away.

Let me know what you think and if it is helpful.

 That looks pretty good.  Another good site which gives you a complete breakdown including percentages of carbs is:

www.fitday.com

There are several that are good for analyzing recipes. I like http://www.nutritiondata.com It gives you the complete nutrition lable - calories, fat, sodium, cholestrol, carbs, fiber, protein, etc. If you are someone with an inflamatory disease, it can also give you the Inflamatory Index for the foods.

http://www.calorieking.com also has an extensive food database that includes resteraunt foods.

Never hurts to have lots of tools. :)

I have found that it isn't hard to simply write down the ingredients as I add them, the calories and fat grams for the quantities I use, total them up, and divide to get cals and fat grams per serving.  I had to measure at first to know how many servings were in my pot I use for making soup, but now I can estimate pretty well. 

I've been doing this for quite a while, and if I use low fat ingredients and mininal meat, I have consistently found that a large (2 1/2 cup) serving of vegetable, bean or potato based soup comes to about 175-250 calories and about 8-11 grams of fat.  Or thereabouts.  Your mileage may vary. :-)

Caroline