Day 19: Planning Snacks in Menu Planning

I have five teenagers in my home. This makes planning out our snacks essential to menu planning.

I used to think, falsely, that people were exaggerating when they described how much teenagers ate. Seriously. Then, my first child hit a magic number, and my grocery budget jumped. When I had a teen daughter and a teen son, it nearly doubled. Now I have an 18 year old, a 17 year old son, and 15, 14, and 13 year old daughters.

Cha-ching.

If someone could bottle up “metabolism of teen boy” into pill form, they’d be rich.

On more than one occasion, I started to make dinner to find no veggies in the fridge, missing ingredients in the pantry, and cupboards stripped bare of essentials. It was as if a hoard of locusts had swarmed in during the night.  Add to this a husband working nights, coming home with the munchies.

This has caused some problems with my menu plans for a while, as you might imagine. Finally, I figured out that I also needed to plan for snacking.

I don’t plan out which snacks to use for which days. Rather, I write down which foods are available for free grazing at the moment. I have one bag of carrots in the fridge with a band around them that says “Don’t use!!!!!!” because I know I need one bag of carrots for the next two weeks. The other carrots, they are free to eat at will.

Naturally, Leftovers are always available for snacking, too.

How do you plan your snacking? Please share!