Making Food Last?

For breakfast I share a 3 egg omelet made of egg, bell peppers, onions, zucchini, and cheese, wrapped in a (1) tortilla, with my 8 year old.

On the side, I serve a handful of strawberries or split a banana.

She may need a snack before lunch. At lunch I serve her a sandwich of meat and cheese, a side of soup, or chips.

Around 3:00 she will need a snack and then I make a hot dinner. I try to balance the dinner with a starch, meat, and veggie.

If they are active, which mine is, they will eat a lot!

I would stick with the no cook meals for breakfast and lunch. It makes life easier.

Many kids are snackers. Beans (hummus), nuts (peanut butter) and apples will make them feel full longer.

They are normal growing girls. If they were at a preschool, they would also get snacks. It's only going to get worse!!

Good God man, you think they eat a lot now, wait til they're teenagers!

:)

T., kids this age need snacks, or the option to eat snacks, otherwise they do get whiney and cranky.

Try low cost, fiber and protein rich foods for snacks. hard boiled egg and wheat crackers, peanut butter and apples, cheese and grapes. Try adding rice and beans to every meal.

Sometimes they get whiney and cranky despite having their fill of food.

You expanded your family twofold, be prepared to adjust your budget.

Best,
F. B.

Toddlers have small stomachs and high caloric requirements. So they really ARE hungry pretty much all the time. As they grow, their appetites will fluctuate greatly. They will go from seemingly living on air to devouring everything in sight and back again as they hit growth spurts. Just accept that your days of cheap eats are over.

Kids need to eat every 2-3 hours. Period.
The in between snacks can be simple like goldfish and grapes or a string cheese and apples. But they can't go more then a couple hours without eating a little something, their bellies are small :)

And really, their actual meals aren't much bigger than their snacks. So it's more like 6 or 7 mini meals all day.

Snackwise, always lean toward higher in protein if you want them to keep on a good energy level and mood. Peanut butter and apples. Yogurt and graham crackers. Turkey and cream cheese roll-ups. Hard-boiled egg and string cheese. Cottage cheese and olives.

Hydrate. My kids get super cranky when they forget to drink.

I remember spending $70 a week when it was just me and my husband. Now it's more like $150 a week with two girls who eat like birds and a baby. You're lucky though, my girls rarely even like my delicious dinners and just want cereal or something. I guesstimate that when the boy grows up I'll be spending upwards of $200 a week because I hear they can really eat.

My girls were just at the doctor today for their yearly well check. We discussed snacks and she said they should be a complex carb and a protein. The carb gives them the initial energy and the protein sustains that and keeps them feeling full. So, snack options could be celery with pb, whole grain bread with almond butter, crackers with cheese, carrots with hummus, bean and cheese wrap, apple with pb, a bowl of cereal, a baked potato with Greek yogurt, an orange and a slice of cheese, pita with hummus and peppers, yogurt with strawberries, banana and a hard boiled egg ...

I find that soups and pasta dishes seem to lend an extra helping or two so they can be eaten for lunch the following day or dinner for the kids.

I concur with the others, you cannot realistically expect to eliminate snacks so you will have to experiment with dinner to see what lasts in your household. Good luck!

The snacking thing isn't going to go away, they need to eat between meals all the way through childhood. I feed a family of 6 (4 kids from 8-16) on around $225 a week and that's shopping at Trader Joe's, where the produce and some basics are cheap but the meats are very expensive (organic, free range, pastured etc.).

For foods that last more than one meal, my go-to items are whole chickens and roasts of pork or beef. I cook a whole chicken every week. If everyone is home and hungry, sometimes I'm left with just bones and a little meat and in that case, I'll just make broth from the bones and later, some soup. I'm usually the only one who eats the soup but it's nice to be able to pull a Mason jar of soup from the fridge and have a healthy lunch in a hurry. If there is leftover chicken, I'll make something like quesadillas or fajitas another night. With beef or pork, I'll serve it one night with traditional "roast" sides like potatoes and vegetables and then another night, do a stir-fry or simmer it into pulled pork sandwiches or slice thinly into steak and cheese sliders.

Buy "family size" packages of cheaper cuts of chicken like thighs or legs or bone-in breasts and cook them all at once. Change up the sauce and style a bit (BBQ one night, Mexican or Asian another night) and you can get two different meals but only do the bulk of the cooking once. Rice is great to cook in bulk, especially if you use a brown or other whole grain that takes a while to cook. I cook other sides in double batches too, like corn bread or biscuits - if I'm going to mess up my kitchen, I might as well get a second batch to throw in the freezer.

Oh and pasta...something like lasagne or a pan of baked stuffed shells or ziti is good to stretch. You're never going to just make 4 servings of those foods so go ahead and make a whole pan, then freeze individual portions to have later.

Hope that gives you some ideas!

Please be aware, kids this age need to eat a meal or a snack about every 3 hours. You can't just not feed them when they're hungry.

A regular schedule for this age child would be just about what you said.

Breakfast

Mid morning snack, something light like graham crackers with thin thin thin Peanut Butter and 1/4 to 1/2 cup fruit. That would be like breaking a large banana into 3 pieces or a small banana in half.

Lunch, around noon-1pm, a meal that has serving sizes for their age, not adult portions.

Afternoon nap, about 2-3 hours.

Afternoon snack, around 3pm, something high in protein will be very helpful here. It will tide them over and keep them stable until dinner.

Dinner should be around 6. If you often eat later you'll need to feed them something light, appetizer maybe?

Then I do snacks after bath time. They're in jammies and we do a snack right before bed. Then brush teeth and go to bed at 9pm. If they don't seem hungry and don't wake up during the night and if you eat later they may not need that evening snack. I had to do that in child care because I was open until 2:30am for nurses, call center employees, strippers, and other bar/nightclub workers.

Kids get hungry and nothing else matters. Having prepared foods they like ready all the time is very helpful.

I loved my Idiots Guide and Feeding....for Dummies cook books. Both were all about babies and toddlers. Your pre-schooler is of course not a toddler but she can still eat a lot of the foods in those cookbooks.

I got mine at a local library and finally my hubby bought me my own.

Mine are a similar age. They eat a lot considering their size and often. We do three meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) with three snacks (a.m., p.m. and before bed). I have yet to figure out a way to skip any snacks. Like yours mine get snarly. A giant no thanks so I stuff them full of food and carry on with happier little people. I haven't found any food which holds them over better than others either. Good luck.

The need snacks. Kids at that age need to eat every 2 hours. You're not doing anything wrong. They are just growing girls.

You will go through stages where they eat very little. Don't let that worry you. It just means that their growth hormones have slowed down for a bit (a few hours, a day, maybe a week), but they'll be back to growing in the blink of an eye.

Please let their tummies dictate how much the eat. Our bodies are supposed to lye us know when we are hungry. It's good for them to eat if they are hungry and stop when the are full.

Toddlers are working on doubling their size. Mine routinely eat more than I do. As long as they are eating healthy food, give it to them whenever they are hungry. Even kindergarteners routinely have snack time at our school because they can't make it through the day.

My go-to snacks are carrots, apples, and yogurt. To save $, I buy whole carrots and cut into sticks. I buy the bags of Gala apples. I don't buy organic apples or carrots, but I do wash them well with a water and vinegar solution. And I buy the big tubs of yogurt and spoon it into small bowls - no need to buy individual serving sizes of yogurt.

Well, a good old fashioned casserole will last a couple nights.
Use a slow cooker to cook meats, soups, chili.
You always wondered why families made those. Now you know why!
It's time to learn to really cook. Stir fry, taco meat, roasted chicken, are left over gold. Look for cook once, eat twice, meal plans.

Give them that glass of milk. Protein in dairy is a good thing. They make Greek yogurt dips now. Smoothies can be made and broken up to different snacks. Have you tried the Greek yogurt and honey? Yummy desert! And because it's more protein, it makes you full for longer. It's great for dipping fruit.

Use the search engine on here to look for ways to save money on meals. You might not have to worry about money but it will turn up ways to strech meals.

Well you made big changes to your lifestyle when you adopted these children. These changes make a big difference in your food budget. These children NEED more than you and your wife have been accustomed to having for your meals. Two more people, even toddlers, run up a grocery bill.

Children do eat a lot. As long as you are not giving them junk you should be ok. Many children and adults (including daughter and I) are grazers. We hardly eat a large meal a day, we eat about 3-4 small meals which consists of fruits, veggies, cheese, salads. We do eat red meat often because I have a top notch butcher with high quality meats.

Do you feel like your children are overeating because they were under nourished or not properly nourished before they got to you? Maybe they were food deprived wherever they were before you took them in.

I would not make a huge deal about food because food issues are the last thing you want to deal with due to the self esteem issues that can occur, ESPECIALLY girls.

They need snacks... provide healthy snacks like veggies with yogurt dip, apple slices with peanut butter, cheeses, boiled egg, etc. Of course they will get cranky if they are hungry. One sign that was a given that my daughter was hungry was her attitude changed.. she'd whine, be bitchy and just not herself. As soon as she had a decent snack, she was fine.

Shop smart and don't focus so much on your food bill. Focus on buying quality products and don't skimp when it comes to nutrition. You are feeding 2 more people in your house who NEED the food right now to grow and be healthy.

Good luck.

Umm.. you can't. They are young children. They NEED snacks. The way you save on your grocery budget is to PLAN your snacks with equal skill as you have been planning your meals before... only you have to plan for snacks for the littles as well.

If you didn't expect your grocery budget to change, then you didn't plan very well for the cost of having kids. You might want to sit down and look at the longer term picture as well. Kids are expensive.
Did you plan to spend more on clothing? If not, you'd better get busy rewriting/rethinking your clothing budget. They need new clothes constantly (not brand new necessarily, but they are growing and will need the next size up before next season most of the time... so it is a constant purchasing process... or if they happen to fit during the right season, you might be able to hand-me-down the older's clothing to the younger sib).

Good luck. Sounds like you are all going to need it.

Grab some child development books while you are at it. You need to learn what to expect as children grow, and honestly, it doesn't sound like you have much of an idea at this point. This sort of thing will be necessary to learn, otherwise you will be fighting exhausting battles simply because you don't understand children, and what is typical and expected as they grow (both physically and mentally and emotionally).
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If they are eating what you are cooking for dinner, but there just isn't enough to have leftovers, the simple answer is to make more of it. Double your batch/recipe size and freeze/refrigerate half for later in the week.
As for snacks, empty carbs/sugar won't fill them up. So try to include some protein in every snack/mini-meal. A handful of grapes is fine. But include a piece of string cheese, or offer one and then the other a little after. Milk to drink (instead of juice). Sunflower seeds/pumpkin seeds/nuts instead of crackers or chips. Apple slices with peanut butter to dip it in. (my kids always preferred green apples over any of the red varieties when they were small). Even olives can be a snack.
It doesn't have to be something you cook/prepare. And it doesn't have to be something you buy pre-packaged, either. My kids always liked cheddar cheese pieces on Ritz crackers. Buy the cheese in bulk and slice the size pieces you want. Even raw broccoli with ranch to dip it in can be a great snack.

But kids this young need to eat frequently. My kids had a piece of string cheese as a "before bed snack" just before brushing their teeth for years...

But yes... they can put away a large amount of food. And it can and will fluctuate and vary throughout their lives. This is why I suggested getting a book on child development. It will help you notice/understand some of the patterns you will undoubtedly encounter.
Even now, my almost 16 year old son will eat like a vacuum cleaner for days, and then eat like a bird here or there. He eats when he is hungry. Sometimes it's a lot. Sometimes it is not. On days when he wrestles, Sally bar the door! Then other times, he is fully satisfied with a salad with grilled chicken on it.
Kids still need snacks, right up through elementary school. They might drop their mid-morning snack, but they will need something after school to tide them over until dinner for years to come.
They just don't eat ONLY 3 times a day. Really, not until they are close to adulthood. And then, a lot of adults are happier eating smaller, more frequent meals than 3 x a day.

Try adding more protein and good-for-you fats with the veggies to fill them up longer. Lots of water too. This way you might be able to cut down on the in-between snacks. Sounds like you are avoiding eggs, but if not, they might help in the AM vs the carbs. You will get hungry about 2 hours after eating carbs. If you eat protein, fat and veggies your body will hardly ever feel hungry. Nuts, avocado, eggs, cheese, chicken, fish, seeds are great options. Limit the fruit too, since carbs and fruit convert to sugar and you'll need to fuel up again in 1-2 hours after eating them. Kids usually eat about 5-6 mini meals a day though, so don't be too militant about cutting out the snacks.

I understand how crazy it can be trying to figure out how kids eat! As soon as you think you have it figured out, they will change on you. My 3.5 year old will quite literally eat 4 pieces of pizza for dinner one night and a week later will eat 4 bites from one piece and be full. In general, protein is more filling. But when they are hungry, they should eat, and when they are NOT hungry, youdon't want to force feed them. You are not alone in being confused by their eating habits, you just haven't had enough time with them to learn their wide, wide range of "normal."
As a general rule, my kids eat at roughly 7am, 10am, noon, 3pm, "happy hour" at 5:30pm, dinner at 7pm.

Yes, kids use up a lot of energy and so they are hungry. Their brains and bodies grow so fast, they need to be refueled throughout the day. Think of their bodies as cars. They need more fuel the harder they play needs to be refilled more often. In the summer you are using the air conditioner in that car so it also uses up more energy. They all have snacks. Your children are just like all other children.

Breakfast can be oatmeal, cereal, eggs, Bagel
Along with fresh fruit and or juice
Big glass of milk

Snack- Ants on a log Celery with peanut butter and raisins
Cheese and crackers
Fresh fruit salad (just a mixture of cut up fruit)
Cottage cheese and some fruit slices
Pretzels with mustard?
Dry cereal like Kix, Shredded wheat squares, Cherrios, Just keep some small ziploc bags with these cereals in them.
Raisins, dried cranberries, Dried apricots.

Lunch - sandwich, Tortilla wrap, Can include cheese, a nut spread, Tuna, lunch meat.
Or it can be tortellini filled with cheese topped with a fresh sauce
Grilled chicken legs (grill a ton of them and freeze them to be stored. They heat up great in the microwave).
Left over vegetable pizza.
Spring rolls with cooked chicken, lettuce or sprouts, carrots
Big glass of milk

In the refrigerator always have ziploc bags of fresh raw vegetables for the kids to snack on.
We always had Raw, carrots, celery, cucumbers, jicama, radishes, cherry tomatoes, we also know a lot of kids that love sliced red peppers, snow peas.

When I was enthusiastic I would even steam fresh green beans, our daughter loved them cold.

Our daughter was never into dips or dressings, but if your kids like dips, make your own by using low fat cottage cheese, blended with spices and herbs, or purchase pouches of ranch dressing mix, I use half of the packet so it is not to salty.

Purchase a watermelon and slice it up so you all can snack on it all day

They will eat a good lunch, wake up and need a snack.. go out and swim for a few hours with them, give them a tiny snack while you make a nice dinner.

The output of energy will require input of food afterwards.

In our car I had a bag of snacks (peanut butter or cheese crackers, goldfish, or a dried snack mix and a cooler filled with water bottles and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. It was our daughters job to keep up with what needed to be refilled, replaces and thrown out. Your 4 year old will love having this responsibility

LOL. My toddler shot my grocery bill up by 200 a month! She is only 16 months old, yet, she is 50 a week!

I make a lot of homemade mac and cheese. It's super filling, healthy and they love it.

But the others are right, young kids need to eat every few hours.

Eggs. I feed the kids lots of eggs. Egg salad for lunch, scrambled for breakfast. Eggs are cheap and satisfying in a way a bagel isn't. I also make pancakes all the time. Serve with some eggs, and my kids will eat so much that they don't have room for a snack.

I'd try higher fat breakfasts and lunches, but either way, they will need to snack until at least 6.

They are growing girls. Snacks are a must. Be thankful they are good eaters. A piece of fruit as a snack is good. A yogurt. You don't want a snack,to fill them, then they won't eat their main meal. Just something to hold them over. Even dry Cheerios are a good snack. I would think $150 a week should be more than enough. Make a list and stick to it. Plan meals and snacks ahead of time.

let go of your sweet, doomed hopes to 'make food last.'
kids are food black holes. adjust your expectations accordingly.
do NOT expect them to go long periods without food. i'd be whiny and mean too if i were hungry.
it sounds as if your meals are healthy, so what you have to do now is resign yourself to offering plenty of snacks that are equally healthy. lots of protein, and healthy fats. in fact, let them free graze on fresh fruits, whole grain crackers, string cheese and so forth.
seriously. stop thinking that you can feed meals that will negate the need for snacks. these are small, rapidly growing children. they need lots of water, and lots of food. buy in bulk, keep some nuts or grapes or protein bars to which they can help themselves, and let them eat.
khairete
S.

not sure how old your toddlers are.. but it is absolutely normal for them to eat often..

mine ate.. breakfast snack-- lunch snack-- dinner snack...

now that they are older (7 and 8) they don't get 3 snacks a day because they eat more at meals.. however.. some days they do get snacks..like tonight they had dance class after dinner and came home starving.. or sometimes an activity interferes with normal meal time so I give them a healthy snack cause dinner will be late...

but kids eat .. often and a lot..

you have to consider that grocery prices have gone way way up.. so you are paying a lot more $$ for the same amount of food..

You can't make it last. You can go online and get some ideas of what to serve your girls and keep it in the house. Make up some large meals and divide them into smaller servings and freeze the rest.

Time to become a family of four and not just two adults. If you are concerned about snacks contact a daycare center and ask what they serve. This will give you ideas.

You are going to break open the pocketbook on many other things later. Right now make sure they are getting the foods they need to grow. Vary the foods so that they don't become bored of what they eat.

Enjoy your new family and take lots of pictures for later in their lives.

the other S.

Water.
It's the manna of snacks.

I'm in the same boat, with the exact same dietary menu, and I'm being eaten out of house and home.

Best of luck!

Are you buying more prepackaged foods now for your kids? All those packaged foods cost a lot...kid yogurts, kid granola bars, juice boxes, etc. If you stay away from things like this it should save you some money. Also, groceries have a totally different price depending on where you live. My mom lives in Houston and I could spend about half of what I spend here bc the cost of living is so much cheaper there. Some kids really need protein with snacks. My son is like this. Maybe your kids were cranky bc a bagel and cream cheese is basically a bunch of carbs and some fat..then they crashed in their mood afterwards. I don't know though. Some kids are fine with that for a snack. I think your grocery bill sounds a little high. But I bet you make much larger meals now and take more care than when it was just the two of you. You probably server more veggies and fruits and you are also buying snacks for two little people. It all just adds up. We live in a very expensive area and we spend about $200 a week in groceries. It kills me that groceries are so high.

Shopping in bulk for beans, grains (rice, oats, etc.) helps. So does buying big bags of potatoes. Potatoes are cheap and filling and you can do SO much with them, they are extremely versatile.
Same with produce, buy in bulk when things are in season and FREEZE (or can, if you are willing/able to do that.)
Not sure what else, other than trying to make as much as you can from scratch. And using rags and homemade cleaning products rather than buying commercially produced products.
There are some good ideas on Pinterest, if you're not on there already check it out.

I['m giving a different take on this since you seem to have enough food advice. I was just wondering where/how you shop. With that amount of food it wouldn't hurt to look around for coupons, shop in bulk, find cheaper veggie stores for instance in our area we have markets and then the major food chains . you might have Costco and Sam's club or Aldi's around you.
You might want to make gigantic batches of things and rotate them in the freezer weekly. Good luck. I had two sons with friends who loved to eat. You will find your place in all of this. You sound wonderful to adopt.

You won't. After having 3, 2 boys and a girl, and helping with 6-9 others, I can honestly say that most of tge kids that I know eat every 2-4 hours. I have made high fiber fruit shakes that seem to help. I let the kids pick the fresh/frozen fruits I add an orange or peach fiber mix and ice or milk. I have seen my 50 lb out eat a 6'3" 13 yo football player!
They're developing good eating habits that will comein handy as they grow up. I promise that they will slow down consumption later, but they are busy growing right now.

It's healthier for them to eat smaller portions more often than bigger portions less often. If you want obese children, keep trying to fill them up to the brim at every meal. Pretty soon their little tummies will be so stretched out and your grocery bill will be even higher.

I don't really understand how you can spent nearly $300 per week at the store and claim that you are eating mostly veggies. I spent just under $200 per week and I feed 3 adults and 1 -12 year old and we eat meat EVERY night. I'm sure the extra adult and the 12 year old eat more than your little girls.

Lol, you added two growing bodies to your house and didn't expect them to eat?

One of my favorite fillers is potato. They are so versatile, and kiddos tend to love them.

Just be sure that when you feed them, you're not over-filling their plates and that you cut apples clean from the core. Those little bites that grown-ups might toss can fill corners of toddlers' tummies. Shop for good discounts, and buy things like cereal in bulk. On days when one bit of snack isn't enough, they can eat cereal.

Maybe you can cut back on something else right now? This is when they are exploring tastes and textures and even competing and influencing each other's food tastes. If you can avoid limiting that enthusiasm and just keeping it going in a healthy direction, you'll probably come to appreciate their healthy eating habits in just a few years.

cheerios puff puffs and juice..the holy toddler trinity. if you can get young kids to eat broccoli, you have arrived at kitchen hero status!! as long as you use real cheese, not fake powered "stuff" , you are still ahead of the game. typically, if you offer a small child healthy snacks throughout the day, they eat better and are less whiney,and sleep better. more later K. h.

You can feed four people on $100 a week including snacks. Plan your meals, including your snacks, buy what in season, stock up when things are on sale. Typically individually packaged food is more expensive so I grab a few things from costco or Sam's for the month and I stay away from those things during my weekly grocery trips. I make muffins, pancakes, breads, cookies etc for snacks too. They are cheaper and healthier and my kids love to bake. We drink water with the exception of the summer I will buy the kids juice boxes since we are out a lot but we just all tend to prefer water even when other stuff is available. My budget is $150 a week or less and $100 a month at costco. That's for 5 people with another on the way. Kids eat a lot! My parents always comment on how much my kids put away when they spend the night at their house.

Hi, T.:

What needs to be done is NO snacks between meals.

Give them their meals and no snacks.

They are bored and are using snacks as a method
to appease themselves.

Good luck.
D.