Help! My tween and teen eat like grown men!

I don’t know how much longer I can stretch the budget to meet their meat needs.

I know my two daughters are just growing girls but they eat like men!  I’m not kidding you; I can’t keep up with them!  Not that I’d want to.  I’m afraid I could never burn off that kind of daily caloric intake.  And when they’re feeling peckish they don’t just crave sweets.  Nooooooo. They’re all about the meat.  We’re living with a couple of carnivores.

I’m now purchasing at least two rotisserie chickens from the Price Club every week just for them to pick on – as a snack!.  No cookies for these girls – chicken.  That’s in addition to all the beautiful dinners:  meat and potatoes; stews; chicken kebabs; endless tacos; roast beefs; salmon steaks; salads; grilled vegetables; vegetable juices; all kinds of fruit; you name it, if it’s delicious and expensive they crave it.  Believe me, I’m grateful that they’re not looking for sweets and are choosing foods that are nutritious and that should sustain them for at least a couple of hours…but my goodness!  My food bill is at least $800 bucks a month!

How much do your teenagers eat?  My neighbor’s son is 16 and I’ve seen him devour a complete rack of lamb!  It’s not like he’s overweight either, he’s in tremendous shape.  He’s so Team Jacob.  He’s our local high school track champion and he’s even leaner than the steaks he eats for breakfast. 

My 13 year old is a lean mean eating machine too.  I make both my girls a hot breakfast every morning and my teenager can put away a veggie, egg white omelet with 2 huge slices of whole grain toast in 4 minutes.  I timed her!  I couldn’t believe anyone could eat that quickly and not choke.  I keep a Heimlich Maneuver Poster in the kitchen just in case but have yet to even reference it.  (They think Heimlich is a kind of backwards German hug.)  My tweenager, about to turn 8 in one week, is only two inches short of 5 feet tall and weighs 79 pounds already!  She’s a virtual wall of muscle too, an amazon.  The only person who has better abs than she does is Jesus – I always thought he had great abs.

In the past year, I’ve joined a coupon club at our local library just to keep up with the dietary demands of my daughters.  I’m always downloading them, searching for sales, buying in bulk, emailing companies looking for samples – what most Americans do just to make ends meet or in this case – meat.  This year, my husband’s back in school full-time (to become a nurse) and only working part-time.  So basically, I’m the sole support around here….as per usual.  Needless to say, I’ve accepted every invitation for holiday get togethers this month.  With all the sales going on in the stores, a few presents are still cheaper than food. 

For the holidays, my father wants to take all the older grandchildren with him hunting upstate New York.  Now, I don’t know what the legal ramifications of that are but I’m sure he knows all the rules.  He wants the children to realize that food does grow on trees, that meat comes from living creatures and that the Wii is fake.  He’s a pretty good hunter so I’m looking forward to having venison in the house this winter….cheaper than a grocery store.

Some of my single, childless friends were like ‘hunting is brutal and children shouldn’t be exposed to it’.  Do they think cows commit suicide?  Meanwhile, all my friends with children who are struggling just to pay their bills asked if their teens could join my father.  Needless to say, we’ve now got quite a group of teens going upstate with Nagy papa (dad is a Hungarian refugee) and a few other fathers to glean nature’s shopping market.  We’re all looking forward to that neighborhood venison pot luck dinner.

Who knew all those years of unnecessary warfare and tax cuts for the wealthy (and people living above their means) would result in our young people hunting for their food?  Oh well.  It’s good for them.  As they say in my old Brooklyn neighborhood, “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

How much do your teens eat?  If you have more than one teen or tween in the house how are you managing?  What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen them eat?  For example: my daughters downing a whole chicken for a snack.  How do you make ends meet?  Any tips for shopping on a budget?