to think that they can't possibly have teenagers?

[RuddyDuck]

Since Christmas I seem to have read lots of blogs and newspaper articles about how to cook frugally. You know the sort of thing - buy a 3lb chicken and it will feed you family for a week, including a delicious casserole for 6 made out of the leftover leftovers. Plus how to turn a pot of yoghurt into dessert for 8.

My 15 year old is currently cooking the pizza meant for tomorrow's lunch because he " fancies a snack", having demolished a full dinner 2 hours earlier. There are NEVER any leftovers in this house. AIBU to assume that none of these frugal food authors live with teenagers?

i agree OP. DS has demolished over a pound of cheese in 3 lunches this week. As well as 10 eggs.

YANBU. Mine aren't too bad but it costs a fortune to keep the house full of the required sort of food.

I think maybe no kids full stop! Mine are 10- eats like an adult 8-would eat like an adult if I allowed him to and 4- eats roughly half an adult portion. I am lucky if a large chicken is enough for a roast. I usually go without meat, let alone have any left for anything else!

Oh... and I should say... DS is about 6ft 2in and weighs about 10 stone. He needs to run around in the shower to get weight. He seems to need this amount of food/calories just to maintain his skeleton!

weight??? I mean 'wet'

I saw what my brother could put away as a teenager and truthfully I think he could have (and probably still could) put a 3lb chicken away himself in one sitting...

YANBU, there was 2 packets of cheese in my fridge this morning, now we have no cheese, three teenage boys (only one is mine) had a little snack after college. I did say they could have cheese toasties so only myself to blame.

I can't get a dozen eggs to last a meal - it's a good thing I don't like eggs cuz there's never any left for me!

I've also just had a pound of cheddar go missing, probably into the eldest, and he too looks like a walking skeleton.

Ds1 is 13 and eats a loaf of bread a day, and its homemade so more filling.
He has also been known to eat 4 big bowls of cereal for breakfast followed by toast and still proclaim he is hungry.
He is 5ft4 roughly and 44kg, does a lot of exercise and is all muscle.
He is eating adult portions now!

YANBu, i have 4 DC, 2 of which are teenagers. No leftovers here for next day

Exactly, tootired , I keep reading these articles which sound amazingly worthy, and make me feel like we are extravagant gluttons because we cant exist on a handful of lentils. Then the teenagers descend and my fridge is bare....

I'm in denial I'm old enough to have 2 teenagers, although my shopping bill does say otherwise! When do they stop eating you out of house and home?

YANBU.

I have 2 teenage boys, we never have leftovers. If we do, they are gone before the next morning, a box of cereal lasts about a day. DS1(19) frequently has a midnight snack of fishfinger sandwiches.

Sometimes I am about 2 minutes from dishing up dinner and DS2 starts eating bread because he can't wait that long!

Teenagers are food hoovers.

YANBU but we fed a family of 7 teens and adults on a chicken for one meal plenty of weeks with tonnes of potatoes and veg and probably had curry the next day with admittedly meager leftovers. Not all teens are huge eaters we certainly wouldn't have been. We did eat sliced pans like they were going out of fashion but not so much dinners.

It did make me smile a couple of weeks ago the see Ben in Outnumbered sitting down to a snack of 4 pork pies.

I've just been to Tesco
Spent just over £100 , will need to go again on Monday
DS needed some of those big oranges (£2-20 for 4 !! )
Luckily we have our own chickens , so at least I didn't need to buy eggs
although probably £30 was on wine for DH and me to survive the weekend with 2 teens
Do yours do the thing with standing in front of the loaded up fridge or cupboard , look in despairingly and say -- but there's nothing to eeeeaaaattt ?

Ha ha. I agree. My 19 year old has been in NZ since Christmas. I can't believe how much money I have over at the end of the month. I think I'm spending about £50-£60 pw less.

Now what did we have left over at the end of every week when he first went: ah yes, two pizzas, loaf, two litres of juice, packet of ham, huge pasta/mackerel salad, packet of Kiipling pies, slab of walnut cake and I'm now cooking much smaller meals and if I make chilli con for two nights, it lasts for two night. And we have a lot of shower gel, shampoo, bog roll, etc., building up and oddly enough the little car has petrol in it when I use it.

DD didn't come home this weekend. I've saved £50 on my big shop

No chlorinella mine look in and say "thank God you've been shopping and there's food in the house for 24 hours . They also say "Oh, it's lovely to have a full fridge"

YANBU - our two eat non stop. My idea of a full meal is now their idea of a snack.

Tonight DS1 has three of his 14 year old friends staying over. I have literally bought Tescos.

hmmm...if money is short, then you simply have to tell your teens to eat more boiled spuds and not tomorrow's dinner.

That's what I remember from my childhood and my brothers were six footers with huge appetites. They just knew what they could do with those appetites and what they couldn't.

Even in these degenerate days, I do manage to get a chicken to do for two meals (two teens). But then I dish out the meat and they get to help themselves to spuds and veg.

I have two girls of 22 and 21, They were never allowed to eat like this, I couldn't afford to! Once the food was bought for the week, there was no money to buy any more so if something was eaten as "extra" then that would have been a meal gone for another day in the week. I didn't really buy anything much for snacks as there was just no money. Things are a bit better now, but we still live quite frugally.

YANBU

when I was a teen I ate in one day what I eat in about three days now and I weighed half as much!

There is no way I could get a "medium" supermarket chicken to do two meals for four of us. It does one meal and a sandwich.