Feeding a Bottomless Pit?

[tanabutler]

It all comes down to my philosophy on raising my kids "My job is to prepare them for life, not to be their best bud." 

As their Stepmother, I get to do both.

That's because they're boys. If you were the stepmother to girls (at least, girls with a difficult mother), believe me, you wouldn't be able to remove that "KICK ME" sign from your butt until they were older.

Lucky ducky.

(The good thing is that both my stepgirls, ages 23 and 20, finally have come around. They drop in just to visit...and without being begged.)

[flip6577]

As a former "bottomless pit" myself during my growth spurt (7 inches in 3 months) my mother filled the fridge with all sorts of goodies. First leftovers were known to disappear during the wee hours of the night ( the dishes vanished too, but I eventually returned them on request). Then items like cottage cheese and canned peaches, were a favorite after school snack. I could not eat enough pasta, mostly tossed with a bottled salad dressing of some sort. During that time my mother should have purchased stock in the makers of Minute Rice, I would go through Sam's size box every week.

Most importantly my mother was on a health kick then and we had no overly sugared snacks around. Except for my spoiled little brothers marshmallow laden cereals, but I was never a fan of breakfast anyway.

Flip

[tryska]

oooh...cottage cheese..i forgot about that one.

it goes well with peaches, pineapple, mangos.....tuna fish, sweet potatoes.....

[razzar]

These are all excellent suggestions, and I'm sure more will come.

As one who is on the tail end of a decade long eating binge by miscellaneous teenagers (we not only fed our own, but a whole bunch of other adolescent boys too), you'll also find out that you get used to buying in these large quantities and you'll need to relearn how to buy "small."

We're still learning.

[Stone]

I was about 5'7" until 13 or so. I was 6'2" by the time I was 16.

[Toliver]

The first thing you will want to do is buy a milk cow. They'll be drinking it like it's going out of style.

My parents had to contend with 4 bottomless pits (all boys), three of whom (including yours truly) ended up about 6'5".

Peanut Butter was my mom's secret weapon. One of my older brothers liked it on Ritz crackers and I liked it on Saltines and that was the usual afternoon snack after school.

I'm not sure if the suggestion of ramen is a good thing....heard the noodles are fried....but I could be wrong.

Teaching them how to make their own snacks/meals is a great idea. Teaching them to wash their dishes is a better one.

[foolcontrol]

Wait until their friends come over. My high school friends and I used to plan where we were going to hang out depending on when our moms went to the store.

[jsolomon]

I'm 27 and still a bottomless pit. You can see evidence http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=49221]here. Most any saucy Mexicanish thing is good and stretches well with rice. One of my favorites is to stretch homemade enchiladas with rice. Once fabbed, those freeze well and are microwaved well also. They are made well with pork, chicken, turkey, beef... and on and on... cheap, too.

Potato salad was always a good one for me, as were baked potatoes. Most teenaged sprouts don't mind nuked baked potatoes.

Stir fry is usually really good as leftovers, as is lo mein, and those use lots of rice/noodles which are cheap cheap cheap. Those would also be good teachers of the cooking arts to the sprouts.

Best of luck!

[GG Mora]

It all comes down to my philosophy on raising my kids "My job is to prepare them for life, not to be their best bud." 

As their Stepmother, I get to do both.

That's because they're boys. If you were the stepmother to girls (at least, girls with a difficult mother), believe me, you wouldn't be able to remove that "KICK ME" sign from your butt until they were older.

Lucky ducky.

(The good thing is that both my stepgirls, ages 23 and 20, finally have come around. They drop in just to visit...and without being begged.)

Nope. 4 stepkids – one boy. The whole story is somewhere in here, if you dare.

I have my moments with the girls, but we're still all friends because I'm so much cooler than their Mom. Two of them have yet to get hormonal, though, so I could be in for a nasty surprise.

Edited August 30, 2004 by GG Mora (log)

[Susan G]

Never been a teenage boy, nor do I have one in the wings, but when my brother went through the "bottomless pit" stage, Mom used to keep several dozen boxes of the BLue Boxes on hand, and several dozen hotdogs. Quick, filling, relatively cheap, and has protein!

I also like the whey powder suggestion.

I used to love canned pineapple with unsweetened yogurt as an afterschool snack. Haven't craved it in years!

[Daddy-A]

The first thing you will want to do is buy a milk cow. They'll be drinking it like it's going out of style.  ... Peanut Butter was my mom's secret weapon ... Teaching them how to make their own snacks/meals is a great idea.  Teaching them to wash their dishes is a better one.

Sounds like we grew up in the same household.

Once mom got her Bosch mixmaster/blender thingy, she bought a couple attachments. One made peanut butter (although I can't remember if that was its intended use) and the other was a juicer. The only thing I drank more of than milk, was home-made juices. Something about pulverising things appealed to me. Of course we never cleaned up the "pulp" that was left over after juicing.

I have no juicer (yet), but the boys know how to use the Saeco to steam their own milk. We also buy boxes of low-fat puddings from Costco. Of course, the veggie crisper and the fruit bowl are always available.

Now if I could just get them to load/unload the DW without hastle.

Arne

[bergerka]

Oh wow, did THIS post ever give me deja vu! I shot up from just over 5'5" to 5'9" in a year (growing that fast actually hurts, did you know that? I had this deep ache in my bones & muscles that kept me up nights), and a few years later (just to prove he could grow more than I did faster, I'm convinced), my younger brother went from 5'9" to - no, I am not kidding and my mother has pictures to prove it - 6'3" in a year and just about seven months (Jess and I were very weird - we each grew MORE between the ages of 20 and 22, me two inches, him one). All he did - ALL he did was sleep and eat, eat and sleep, with swim team and a little school here and there.

Here are some of mom's winners from that time:

homemade pizzas: Bobolis had JUST come out, she would buy a bunch of those, throw together some tomato sauce to keep in the fridge, and buy a bunch of different and interesting kinds of cheese. Brother and I would put our own pizzas (with tomato sauce for me, white for him - he was, and is, the most bizarrely picky eater I have ever met) together on nights when Mom & Dad were out or if we were hungry after school.

meatloaf: good for dinner, good in sandwiches, good cold for breakfast.

chicken fried steak: a hell of a delicious way to cook an inexpensive cut of beef. And you can serve it with mashed potatoes (see below).

potatoes: mashed, baked (maybe with spinach or broccoli or radicchio and/or caramelized onions and cheese on top), twice-baked, boiled, broiled, as pancakes with sour cream or applesauce, in a kugel...cheap, fun to assemble (if we're talking baked & topped), filling, healthy.

hard-boiled eggs, and lots of 'em: good by themselves, good as egg salad, the perfect after-school snack, especially when eaten as a side dish to a plate of celery and peanut butter.

homemade roll-ups: deli sliced ham, turkey, roast beef or *cringe* bologna (still my favorite) and either thinly sliced cheddar, jack, some other hardish or, er, "american" cheese (calcium enriched!). Lay slice of meat flat on cutting board, lay slice of cheese on top of meat, roll up meat and cheese and anchor with toothpick.

I second (or third) "Mom's" homemade Mac-n-cheese, and you can add a little tomato and ground beef.

I also second "do-it-yourself" type Mexesque dishes. Keep tortillas, tortilla chips, grating cheese and refried beans (the canned are perfectly fine for this sort of thing, heresy though that may sound...I like them) and salsa (depending on where you live, you can probably get good inexpensive homemade, or you can just make a quick pico de gallo yourself and keep it in the fridge - it will NOT go bad before he eats it, I promise) around, and once in a while slow-cook (Mom used to and I still crock-pot, but you can do it just as well in a big Dutch Oven and that way you could even sear it first for crunchy ends and still only get one pot dirty) a pork butt (you can marinate it in garlic and lime juice overnight first) or a chuck roast (or other cheap stewing cut) with garlic, onion and chopped jalapeno slow-cookin' along with it. Shred the meat out after it's cooked - and pop into the fridge, great for homemade tacos, nachos, burritos.

Peanut butter is of the gods. Peanut butter and jelly, or honey, or banana, or bacon, or whatever may be his pleasure...ants on a log, just a spoonful all by itself - filling and cheap.

For my picky-ass brother, mom used to get protein powder or - oh hell, what's it called, the high-protein, high-calorie liquid you see advertised on tv all the time, comes in chocolate and a few other flavors - and dump it into the blender with whole milk, a banana or some strawberries or blueberries or something, a couple of scoops of ice cream of one flavor or another and maybe a little peanut butter and blend it all up into a shake, which he'd have either with his breakfast or after school.

Hope that helps. I'm now craving those burritos I mentioned, damn it.

K

Edited August 30, 2004 by bergerka (log)

[helenjp]

We're just getting used to this too...12 year old started growing and developed pimples at the beginning of summer. So how to provide food for him, without feeding the zits?!

1) No sweet drinks. Japan's cold barley tea is a big help here.

2) He drinks a LOT of milk, and it's his first choice when hungry (you know, to hold him while the snack is being prepared...or when it's less than 2 hours since he ate, but he SAYS he's hungry). I'm thinking that it might be zit-food, and hope that yogurt might be better than milk.

3) Hint from another thread -- keep sandwich makings/toast toppings such as tuna/egg/chicken salad in the fridge. Hummus also, plus yogurt cheese or cottage cheese.

4) Another Japanese item - natto is a high protein food ready to eat right out of the packet.

5) Roast vegetables - easy to do an ovenful, and then keep the (regrettably few) leftovers in the fridge.

6) I'm thinking of starting the dinnertime miso soup at lunchtime, because it's easy to drop in an egg, some tofu, etc. for a quick snack.

[GG Mora]

Wow, y'all, there are so many excellent suggestions here. I'm suspecting we'll be okay once me and Hub get over the shock. Boy came home this afternoon and made huge-ass tuna melts for himself and his sister. Now that I think about it, she's probably gearing up for a spurt, too. 2 years younger, but only an inch shorter, than her brother.

I shot up from just over 5'5" to 5'9" in a year (growing that fast actually hurts, did you know that? I had this deep ache in my bones & muscles that kept me up nights)........my younger brother went from 5'9" to 6'3" in a year and just about seven months....(...we each grew MORE between the ages of 20 and 22, me two inches, him one).

None of that surprises me. I actually grew just over an inch in my LATE 20's. My legs hurt so much at times that at night I would lie in bed jiggling them to distract myself from the pain. A friend of Boy's grew 6 inches in 5 months, and had to be under a doctor's care (and give up soccer for the season ) because his legs got so fragile (he's fine now).

...and salsa (depending on where you live, you can probably get good inexpensive homemade...

Green Mountain Gringo salsa (which, if you've never had it, is My-T-Fine for bottled salsa) is made near here, and a local store carries their 1-gallon food service size for something ridiculous like 18 bucks. Now may be the time to invest for the future.

Edited August 31, 2004 by GG Mora (log)

[Rebel Rose]

Oh yeah. Raised one of my own, and #6 stepchild Hoover is thundering around me as I Egullet. . . at twelve years, he's 5'4' and about 150 lbs.

We buy lots of protein, whole chickens, locally butchered beef, but kids this age just need to EAT. We keep whole potatoes, nuke 'em and top 'em with leftover vegies and yogurt. Always have Kosher hot dogs, and tortillas. Nuke 'em, wrap 'em. Tortillas are so versatile -- eggs become a breakfast burrito, sausage, beans, vegies, cheese, if you wrap it in a tortilla it's suddenly less healthful and more fulfilling. Go, Mama Rosa!

When your bananas get dark, peel them, drop them in a ziploc bag and freeze them. Instant sweet snack, and perfect for smoothies. No need for ice. We just break up the frozen 'nanners and drop them in the blender with the other ingredients.

And yes, order your beef in big cuts, cook it all for dinner, and carve up the rest for sandwiches, stew, whatever. Oooh, smoked ham hocks and lentils. Buy 6 hocks, because four will be eaten before dinner. Cook the hocks first, in water and broth, slowly for at least 4 hours (a crockpot moment?). Add the lentils when the hocks are fully cooked. (In other words, ignore the instructions on the lentil bags. So stupid.) You'll end up with pork falling off the cartilege. Hence the filched hocks before dinner. Add some garlic and spices to the lentils and finish cooking.

Also, we encourage Hoover to drink milk or water before snacking, and we make lots of homemade soup for snacking. Get liquids into the kids as often as possible to fill them up nutritionally before they tackle other foods.

[hillvalley]

Even the dreaded Blue Box would probably be ok - it's easy and quick to make, cheap, and (reasonably) tasty, and easy to doctor up with additions to balance it a little.

I have a friend who adds goat cheese and white truffle oil

[Marlene]

I have one of these. 11 years old, 5'4 (he just passed me in height) and eating every 5 minutes. Lots and lots of fruit in the fridge. I also keep fresh meats so he can make his own sandwiches and usually I'll have a dozen hard boiled eggs in the fridge he can munch on. Although lately he's developed a passion for sushi

[dumplin]

I have one, too. He's 27 and eats all his dinner and then mine. Its my fault though, I MARRIED HIM. I'm regretting introducing him to gourmet food. He can't be bought off with a can of Chef Boyardee anymore. Since he's eating himself and me out of house and home, I'm making sure he's eating healthy. He's going to wake up 30 with a pot belly if he's not careful.

[tryska]

2) He drinks a LOT of milk, and it's his first choice when hungry (you know, to hold him while the snack is being prepared...or when it's less than 2 hours since he ate, but he SAYS he's hungry). I'm thinking that it might be zit-food, and hope that yogurt might be better than milk.

milk is a big acne-inducer for those susceptible to food related bumps. it has to do with insulin levels in the blood - and basically milk is some complicated sugar mixed with water and some fat. yogurt and fullfat cottage cheese are better alternatives.

[norsk]

HELLO, if your children are having pain in legs/joints from growing spurts this may help.Schwepps makes a tonic water with Quinie. It tastes very bitter, but you could add some soda.I know this because I broke my leg.After multiple surgeries and casts I was going nuts with the crampes and the pain.I dont know why it works,but it does.

[bergerka]

HELLO, if your children are having pain in legs/joints from growing spurts this may help.Schwepps makes a tonic water with Quinie. It tastes very bitter, but you could add some soda.I know this because I broke my leg.After multiple surgeries and casts I was going nuts with the crampes and the pain.I dont know why it works,but it does.

I was JUST going to add this - my dad and I both still get painful tingly cramps in our legs at bedtime, and the quinine in tonic water is one thing that helps - the other one is yoga or Pilates-type stretching (yoga actually might be good for a quickly growing kid anyway, as it will help with the inevitable temporary balance and coordination issues while he or she gets used to the new body - and then gets unused to it again at the next growth spurt).

Tonic water is best with gin, but I don't necessarily recommend that for a teenager...

K

[SobaAddict70]

I'm 33 and still a bottomless pit.

The stories my mother could tell you. A gallon of milk bought on Sunday that was gone by Tuesday or Wednesday. A loaf of bread that was half gone by Tuesday. Tons of food going in and nothing coming out.

And now that I eat six times a day, it's gotten worse.

Let me just say that Mr. Mayhaw and tryska have the right idea: a blender is a bottomless pit's best friend, amen.

Soba

[tryska]

(yoga actually might be good for a quickly growing kid anyway, as it will help with the inevitable temporary balance and coordination issues while he or she gets used to the new body - and then gets unused to it again at the next growth spurt).

just one note on this - best not to try the inverted positions or bridge when you're going through puberty.

i'm still suffering damage i did to my neck when i went into a bridge, and essentially dropped on the top of my head jamming my neck up pretty badly when i was 13 or so.

[Jaymes]

HELLO, if your children are having pain in legs/joints from growing spurts this may  help.Schwepps makes a tonic water with Quinie. It tastes very bitter, but you could add some soda.I know this because I broke my leg.After multiple surgeries and casts I was going nuts with the crampes and the pain.I dont know why it works,but it does.

I was JUST going to add this - my dad and I both still get painful tingly cramps in our legs at bedtime, and the quinine in tonic water is one thing that helps -

I suffered from severe cramps for years. They frequently woke me up at night, and were often incapacitating, striking everywhere from the arches of my feet up to the sides of my face. My doctor at the time prescribed quinine tablets, and they worked. They did, indeed, stop the pain.

But then one day a different doc told me that most cramps, by far, are caused by varying degrees of dehydration. "Just drink your recommended 64 oz of water a day and you won't need to take the quinine. And furthermore, the water is a lot better for the rest of your body, which is undoubtedly dehydrated too."

I was very reluctant to give up my quinine tablets, but decided to give it a go. That's been about two years ago and sure enough, the doc was right. I do try to keep my water intake high, and I have had not one single cramp in those two years.

[jgarner53]

So how did I get to be 6'1" eating white bread and water for lunch for at least a year in high school? (Hello, how dumb is that? ) I honestly don't remember being a bottomless pit. I have the stretch marks. I know I shot up at some point.