There’s nothing to eat in this house!

[InigoJollifant]

Endless refrain from my teenager. Drives me mad. What she wants is a freezer full of crap & a cupboard full of crisps & biscuits. I’m not up for supplying that... but I probably am a bit crap at keeping the kitchen stocked with a ready supply of quick easy teenager friendly snacks/light meals.

would love suggestions - things you always have in? Quick things that are also nutritious? Half thinking of always having certain things in along with a recipe notebook so I can bat her back to consult that rather than texting me with food based complaints in my absence…

And people wonder why there's an obesity crisis in this country.

This sounds very familiar, my sympathies.
I might offer mine fermented carrots next time just for the reaction 😆. The eyes might roll right out of their head!!!

I work on the assumption that my boys eat so much good stuff and work out / do sport - that the odd crisps and biscuits isn’t going to do them too much harm while they are still growing . The younger one has started to turn down the low nutrition options of his own accord ( most of the time )- best form of learning is figuring it out themselves

You know what OP? This is what I would do! Compromise a little.. buy 1 bag of multi crisps and 1 packet of what she wants and tell her once they are gone.. they are gone and none till the next shop 🤷🏻‍♀️

How do you keep that stuff in stock all the time? Not the rice and pasta type food but the other stuff. I always see posts like this or saying keep cooked chicken in the fridge to snack on.
I find I buy or bake things and they’re gone in two days or less. DH is as much a culprit as the teens for this tbh. A pack of bagels can be gone in one breakfast or a packet of biscuits one round of brews with their mates after school.
When I cook a load of chicken and it’s the week they’ve got ‘the chicken ick’ or they’re eating out and nobody wants it so I’m stuck eating it before it goes off. I stock up on apples everyone said were good but the next lot are bruised or woolly so fester in the fruit bowl.

Pasta, pesto and cheese

A lot of that stuff comes in quite long life forms - you might not necessarily want to eat it after looking at the ingredients though

What she wants isn’t in the house? That’s a shame. Perhaps she could buy what she wants herself? Oh, she doesn’t have any money or a job? Then she needs to get one. That tends to facilitate having what you want.

Dd is very sporty and likes to snack on nuts, fruit, hummus with pitta bread, cheese, noodles, pasta with a simple tomato sauce, scrambled egg on toast, beans on toast.

Well, don’t you understand that ‘looking’ for something in the fridge means just opening the door and expecting it to jump out at you?
Tut tut…

This, plus peanut butter, boiled eggs, pate on toast (made with mackerel or salmon plus cream cheese or mayonnaise).

Bread
Cheese
Cold meats
Hard boiled eggs
Loaf of banana bread/ pumpkin bread
Bananas
Instant porridge
Tuna mayo
Cooked sausages
Cheap biscuits
Cocoa mix
Ritz crackers
Orange juice
Ice cream in huge tubs

Hummus
Baby carrots
Peanut butter
Baked beans
Small bagels
Pot noodles
Yogurt

Yeah, we always have the ingredients for pancakes, all varieties of eggs, flapjacks, quesadillas and pasta sauce in. Happy cooking kiddo 😆

(They'll thank us when they leave home. I hope)

So did I.

My Mum used to say - there's apples. My brother would have a complete meltdown.

I don't remember being the same, but I do know that he settled on toast. Constantly.

My teens will cook themselves meals if they are hungry. We make sure that they always have a selection of suitable stuff to hand, often involving some of the following:
pasta, tomato sauce, tuna and cheese
noodles and pesto
frozen pies, veg and instant gravy
bread, cheese, tomatoes and ham for toasted sandwiches
cooked chicken, salad, and wraps (I cook chicken thighs several times a week for quick meals, soups, curries, etc)
part-baked baguettes and bacon
puff pastry, beans and cheese for cheese and bean puff slices.
home made soup to reheat
hummous/ ham and salad
eggs and smoked salmon for scrambled eggs

Reading some of these lists, I see now that I practically starved our teens.

In what possible way? Becuase there was no tomato sauce in the house?

Is this the definition of disorganised these days?

Ah, thrown back to the days when my five were all teens. I'd go shopping and bring back enormous quantities of snacks and they'd throw themselves upon them as though they hadn't seen food for weeks, eat the lot in half an hour and spend the rest of the week complaining that there was no 'nice' food in the house... My sympathy was very limited.

Well that goes for me too! Sometimes I just want to open the fridge and have something quick (I don’t mind putting in the airfryer).

If they otherwise eat healthy the odd quick junky snack is not a big deal.

I have hummus and breadsticks/pitta bread in which always gets eaten and is very quick. Crusty bread and ham (or with olive oil and balsamic dip), my son likes a Scotch egg so I sometimes have those (I’m not making them, they get bought). Bananas. Also crisps and the occasional steak slice.

They also like cold new potatoes so I’ll often use more than I need and stick the uneaten ones in a dish for them for later, with butter and salt (Mmmm).

Does she bake? I make banana bread for DS and DH (I can't abide bananas), it's a recipe with no sugar so pretty healthy and you can do variations.
I mash 3 very ripe bananas, add 125g softened butter (I've used baking spread to make it dairy free for work and it worked fine) , add two beaten eggs, mix together, at this point you can add some honey if you think it needs sweetening DH and DS are fine without.

in another bowl sift 250g self raising flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder (the bananas need the help) , then combine.

Variations I've done are cinnamon (add to the flour) with chopped dates/sultanas

Almond extract with honey and chopped dried apricots

Replace 30g of the flour with cocoa (you made need a splash of water/milk to loosen the mixture) and then swirl through whole nut peanut butter which ups the protein content.

Bake on 160 in a lined loaf tin for 45-55 minutes

DH likes a slice with a cup of tea, DS with a glass of milk. It's a good after school, before activities snack too.

Other than that, fruit, bread, cheese, hummus, pittas, crudités etc. All easy to grab.

Also wraps to make quesadillas, do you have a George foreman or a toastie maker?
I also today a chicken on a Sunday for lunches, but both will occasionally just grab a leg from the fridge.
DS is only 6 and eats like a machine, I'm going to need a second job before he's 15. He's really active and if anything at the low end of weight for his height so I'm always trying to think of ways to get healthy calories into him.

so in conclusion I have established that DD ate leftover potato salad with halloumi, avocado, cucumber & tomatoes.

what she wanted to eat was
a) crisps (only had mini cheddars in)
b) hummus on toast (but no hummus - we do have chickpeas & tahini though but she rolled her eyes at me)
c) cheese on toast with ketchup but she didn’t see the ketchup in the fridge

this was ‘literally nothing edible in this house’

😂 sounds like there was plenty but she's seeing it through teenager eyes.

This sounds good. This teen doesn’t bake but my other one does - off the back of this thread we just made some brownies & ginger biscuits for the week that are currently in the oven. Still no crisps in the house though!

Ha ha teen refrain, toast, or bread for toast, cheese, jam, Cereal, she' ll live.
We all know she means there isn't bags of crisps and other assorted shit to binge on. Ignore .