After school snacks, ideas please.....

[mrsobriain]

My daughter recently started secondary school and is getting acquainted with the new found freedom of the school canteen and all the delights on offer - she used to have school meals at primary. Any ideas for after school snacks ? She gets home now around 4.30pm and this is too early to have dinner (especially since I get home same time so haven't cooked anything) but too close to dinner to have anything substantial. However she is always hungry when she gets home and fruit or toast isn't enough.

My DD(Y8) has just had 2 scotch pancakes,a handful of grapes and some strawberries. We'll be eating at 6. Some days she'll have toast or a crumpet and a banana or nectarine.She could eat a full meal when she gets in but if I fed her then she'd be starving again by bedtime!

Croissant with Nutellaaar! Yum

My baby girl started secondary too!

Do some baking on a sunday and have a victoria sponge or flapjacks to tuck into through the week.

Garlic dough balls are the snack of choice here at the moment

Mine usually have a piece of homemade cake/packet of crisps/biscuit.

They are always starving.

my DD is tucking into dry roasted peanuts to make up for not being allowed them during the day at school.
DS isnt home yet from hockey practice, he will be starving.

in my day we used to have a bowl of frosties cornflakes

cereal
bananas

Yogurt and fruit, cheese on toast, bowl of soup

Garlic dough balls? Do tell!

Rice crackers, cheese, fruit, homemade cookies or cake, sushi, cheese and bacon rolls. I find they want fruit if the weather is nice, carbs if not!

Oh, and if anyone has a recipe for homemade garlic dough balls please share! They were my favourite thing in pizza express but I've never seen them here in Oz. The homemade bread I make isn't the right texture - I'm guessing you could do them with pizza dough but then do you bake them first then add the garlic butter, or stuff with butter before baking?

5 cup cake aka bran loaf
One cup of all bran
One cup of sultanas/raisins
One cup of milk
Half cup of soft brown sugar
Leave to soak for an hour
Add cup of self raising flour
Cook at 150 until cooked I think it is 40 mins
You can eat it like malt loaf with butter on.
Sounds disgusting but is fab.

Mine have fruit and a biscuit/toast, but then insist on having tea at 5.30

The bran loaf sounds good - will give that a try!

sunnydelight yes, use pizza dough and just roll it into little balls, let rise and then bake. As for stuffing them you can do either. Sometimes I'll stuff them first and then they taste garlicky but don't ooze, sometimes I do it after and their all melty. Yum.

Ooh, thanks TheSkiingGardener, I'll try those.

The bran loaf sounds yummy - I will give that a try at the weekend.

Both my ds's come home from school starving. Crisps are always their first choice though I try to steer them away if possible! Cereals are good, either with milk or just dry ( sounds strange now but both boys like them that way), also flapjacks as they are quite filling. Toast is the other favourite, ds1 will eat two slices with butter while deciding what to put on the third!

Thanks all, will give the loaf a try. I know I just need to be better prepared, not enough time in the day.

Clearly I'm a meany mum. If you are hungry there is always weetabix, shreddies and milk.

DS (15) usually has 3 weetabix and a pint of milk when he gets in and is still hungry at dinner time!

If they had access to cake/flapjack it'd disappear LOL. I couldn't keep them in bread if they started on toast!

You could do pancakes if you use Nigella's recipe you can mix the dry ingredients on the weekend.

Watching

I always ate a peanut butter sandwich when I came home from school, with milk and an apple. Granted there wasn't much else on offer! Last term dh sometimes made our two an extra coming home from school meal (he is a SAHD) which I thought was a bit OTT, but they do obviously get very hungry. It's not unusual for them to be crying hunger by bed time too.

mine aren't teens yet but are huge eaters at times. I often will do a slow cooker and feed full meal when school is out and then they will sit up again with dh and me and eat with us (usually a smaller portion).

Thanks all, I have now taken to cooking for two or three days at a time so there is always something to eat that is reasonably healthy. Plus, she is now taking packed lunch to school - usually hot soup and a sandwich/fruit/something sweet and this seems to be helping too.