eating out
 

Hi all,
I'm in my first week here on FitDay, and could use some help.

Does anyone have any tips about the best way to construct a custom food that you ate at a restaurant? Today I had this yummy item called "Vegan Butternut Squash and Mushroom Stew" and I have no idea how to enter it in, because other than the obvious, I'm not sure what was in it.
The restuarant didn't have nutrition information to give me, and when I did a google search for that type of recipe, I don't have much success.
Ideas?
Hints?
Words of wisdom?

Thanks.

I would ball park it with the ingredients you do know, butternut squash, mushrooms, vegetable stock, then I would throw in a margin of error. If you're up tomorrow and you hadn't expected that, your estimate was off, if you're where you expected to be, your estimate is maybe pretty good. The recipes I have for butternut bisque all contain whole cream, so I would throw in an amount for that as well. Maybe you can call and speak with the chef? Sound delicious by the way and quite possibly very fattening.

Well if it was "vegetarian" there could be cream, but "vegan" wouldn't have cream. There could still be olive oil or something like that though. Vegetable stew maybe? It would at least give an estimate.

True, but are you really going to trust a chef with the very specific requirements of that diet? I wouldn't. My brother-in-law is a chef and his wife is a vegan, and let me just tell you he would serve her soup with cream in it and not even guess it's not part of her plan. Unless the chef is a vegan, anything goes.

Thank you
 

Thanks to you both. I guess estimating is the way to go.

Oh, and while normally I am skeptical about "vegan" labels - this particular place is very good about it. One of the two owners is vegan, and they are known for handling food limitations really well.