To ask what you feed the hoards of visiting teenagers when your DC are older?

[AjasLipstick]

DD1 is now 14 and over the past year she's gathered a lovely gang of mates around herself. Many live locally to us and some in neighbouring towns.

Our house is quite ramshackle and we're chilled in general. As a result of our scruffy relaxed house, I think they all feel comfy here and so it's becoming common to find up to 6 enormous teens in my house at weekends plus DD ...all playing guitars and eating all the bread.

I don't mind that at all but sometimes think what I could get in the cupboards to always have something in the house that they can eat quickly.

I don't buy biscuits and stuff like that...well, rarely. So they seem to survive on endless toast and tea when here.

Is there something else I could get in that's cheap and cheerful but not too crappy?

Last night I planned to not bother making dinner...I thought we'd have cheese toasties. Then I came home at about 4 to discover DD and two friends here, planning to spend the night. I had to make a vegetarian curry then and bloody flat breads as I'd not been shopping and had to fill them up!

My best friend from school's house was like this... her mum always used to do baked potatoes, so she'd put on enough potatoes for the people in the house at the time but always had a massive block of cheese, catering jar of Branson pickle and a huge tub of coleslaw on the go. You'd sometimes get a salad if she was worried about scurvy! I loved her so much, didn't get a lot of care at home.

I make spaghetti Bol with meat or quorn or buy jar of pasta sauce and make pasta oven bake with bacon, peppers, courgettes etc and cover with cheese fills them up. I get £1 apple pie from supermarket

I have loads of bread, pot noodles etc.

I gave 3 teenagers and their friends like hanging out here. We do have a shop at the end of the road and the friends often bring sweet treats etc.

Chicken drumsticks cooked in sesame oil

Noodles

Eggs can be made into all sorts

What sort of meals are we talking?

If it's dinner I would expect them to sort themselves out if it was impromptu tbh. If lunch/afternoon snack I don't see why you need lots of stuff, nothing wrong with just toast or toasties. I'd probably get some wraps in and some tins of beans so they can make quesadillas or enchilladas. Good enchilladas are tin of black beans, tin of sweet corn, cheese and some seasoning and the topped with cheese and tomato. Just basically a bit more cheese and some bread in.

How many people are you having round? If its only once a week why do you need so much extra food? I don't ever remember having special food as a teen, if I was going for dinner I would either buy a pizza on the way or the parents would know in advance. At lunch just normal sandwiches or again we'd go and buy something. They shouldn't be coming to yours everyday for dinner they should spread out

Our house was the designated meeting place for the whole village when mine were younger. Now we've only got 2 DDs left at home, their BFs semi permanently live here so it's always mass catering.

We always have strong white bread flour and yeast in for making pizza bases, tomato puree and mega blocks of cheese. Lots of bags of pasta and jars of pesto, again with cheese. Garlic bread to go with either. Huge bags of spuds so you can do jackets easily, and I always try and have some huge pots of homemade soup on the go...... the fave at the moment is to slam chopped up butternut squash in a hot oven, after 20 mins add red pepper and onion cubes, roast for another 20 mins then bung into tinned tomatoes, veg stock and a generous amount of red lentils. Cook for 30 mins then blend. I add chilli and paprika in copious amounts!!

I have a house full of strapping 13 and 14 year old teen boys right now. I've just handed over a platter of pizza, nuggets and waffles to DS for them to scoff.

I love them coming here. DS is an only so we are popular as there aren't any siblings to annoy or be annoying .

So, 'beige' food they can eat with their hands while chatting and goofing around or big pots of things like spag bol or curry/chilli go down well here.

And YY to the HUGE shoes in the hallway .

Agree with Dishranaway..

Get pizzas in freezer, plenty of pasta to make pasta n sauce, hummus, bread, veggies, fishfingers, potato waffles, peas, eggs.
Often they’ll order pizza in although dd doesn’t tend to have impromptu gatherings and if she does it’s after they’ve already eaten a meal out so they’ve brought snacks.

And when I was younger I stayed at my best friends and it was always cheese n bread/crackers after we’d beeb put or in the morning after staying over.

I think it's lovely that so many of you have created wee hubs for your DC's friends by the way, if you read my post above you'll see some of us really needed it.

My house used to be the meeting place but my rules were simple - cook for yourselves and clean up afterwards or my generosity stops.

Any one taking advantage would not help to clean up afterwards so my kids had to so they learned pretty much to manage it themselves.

Instant noodles
Popcorn
Eggs
Beans
Bread

That was pretty much it

Blimey I don't know how you all afford to do this, my DD is only 10 and sometimes has 1 or 2 friends round but the most I ever do is make them a sandwich or some toast.