To do beans on toast once a week?

[MollyAndMuck]

Doing a different work pattern soon and two nights a week will be a lot of pressure to pick up DCs (infant age) from after school, feed them and not end up putting to bed too late.

I can't cook from scratch these nights and realistically don't think I'll be organised enough to batch cook for both nights.

AIBU to give my kids beans on toast every week for one evening meal? I know it's UPF but at least it's some kind of veg and very quick. They'll be having a hot lunch at school and are pretty good at eating it.

Perfectly fine, as is egg and chips, ham egg and chips, corned beef hash, fish fingers and so on.

Mumsnet is a weird place when it comes to food. Teeny tinies who live on 1 meal a day and black coffee, others congratulating each other for eating 3 McDonald's meals for lunch, now an OP who seems to need mumsnet to give the ok to feed her own kids beans on toast once a week and others insisting beans on toast can only ever be a meal, not a snack. Wild! 😂

i agree. Plus the food shop bill must be enormous!

Not really. Beans and bread are cheap. My teens also had/have eggs, cereal, flapjack, cheese and cracker, cheese on toast, yogurt, tuna, sandwiches jackets etc as snacks, as well as fruit/veg. All cheap really, but yes it adds to the shopping bill as they're growing, but that's part of having kids? How old are yours? Not teens yet I presume?

We're talking about beans on toast as a snack, not 4 pints of milk and a family sized pizza in one sitting.

With two slices of toast and a tin of beans plus butter that’s about 600 + cals. That’s a meal not a snack.

Not if you have it as a snack. 😂

What are you talking about?

Nothing wrong with beans on toast.
As a kid we had dippy eggs, beans on toast or bubble and squeak with fried eggs at least once a week. Normally on a night that mum and dad were short on time.

You should feel so guilty....that you're not giving them alphabet spaghetti on toast once a week 🤣

A very underrated meal, OP. Every time I have beans on toast I think 'bloody hell, this is nice. Why don't I do this more often?!'
It cools down quicker than I'd like, but it's otherwise fab.

Sausage pasta was a winner with my kids. Pasta with a jar of tomato sauce, with chopped frankfurter sausages stirred through.

JMSA · Today 22:34
A very underrated meal, OP. Every time I have beans on toast I think 'bloody hell, this is nice. Why don't I do this more often?!'
It cools down quicker than I'd like, but it's otherwise fab.”

not sure how you make yours but, tablespoonful of olive oil in the saucepan, let it warm up then add the beans and simmer for 5 minutes til the juice is really thick. Food of the gods.

And about the same for 2 slices of toast with peanut butter

There isn't an awful lot of calories in porridge and meat and 2 veg dinners that you were talking about, unless you had a load of shit in your lunch box 600 cals on beans on toast is fine for a teen

Although @greengreyblue you really shouldnt be obsessing like this about how many calories your teens are having as a snack when it's beans and bread we are talking about .

Same. I had beans on toast along with the family after a day on the coast and I didn't want to cook anything. Was too tired. DH broke the mould and had a tin of Heinz Cream of Chicken soup instead.

@OnAndOnAndonAgain I’m not! My DC are in their 20s and eat well thanks!

Oh and peanut butter on toast means one slice to me as an after school snack.

To you. Do you not understand that other people will eat different foods in different amounts to you? And even if it's more than you would eat, it can still be a snack!

Agree — a reasonably active teenage boy (not even massive amounts of sports, maybe half an hour of activity a day) can need up to 3000kcal a day, depending on the individual. Maybe even more during a particularly fast growth spell, or if they start training a lot.

If they have a 500kcal breakfast, a 750kcal school dinner (which is the first figure I found when I searched for average secondary school dinner kcal, though I know many don't have a standard school dinner at secondary), and a solid 1000kcal at teatime, that still leaves 750kcal or so to find from snacks and drinks throughout the day. Makes more sense to have a snack that's on the heftier side if you're going to be taking the time to prepare something, rather than spending your time making lots of smaller snacks, or going for multiple easy prepared snacks which will likely be more expensive and less healthy.

A normally active 16 year old boy requires between 2500 and 2800 calories a day. It's really not a huge stretch that a plate of beans and toast totalling 600 calories would be used as a snack and still eat 3 meals a day plus a couple of smaller snacks.

Blimey. I’m not sure which direction this thread has zoomed off to.

Can we agree beans on toast are yummy please?

And how about a 6’ 2” teenage boy in the rugby team who walks to school, 2 miles each way, versus a 5’ 1” teenage girl who loves science and lives two houses away from the school. They both have very very different needs.

And (just to stir things up a bit because why not) why do we have to focus on how many calories they need? Assuming their diet is mostly healthy ish, can they not just have breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks if they want and adjust the amount accordingly?

One of my kids is very tall, the other is average height, I’ve no idea how many calories they ate growing up. They just ate enough to fuel their bodies and the activities they wanted to do.

@StrangerOnThePlane i was replying to someone who had quoted me as having 2 slices and in this conversation and context the number was relevant.

Yeah god forbid someone might think you had 2 slices as a snack!

Get a grip!

It was relevant because someone said I had toast with peanut butter which is the same as beans on toast.