To my frustration, the more I stock up, the more my family eats! We really cannot go more than ten days without a grocery run. I bought 6 gallons of milk a week ago and we are down to 1.5 gallons, which will take us to Monday or Tuesday at the latest. The eating schedule goes something like this:
- days 1-3, eat all the snack food
- days 4-6, turn up nose at leftovers, eat all frozen entrees
- days 7-9, cereal and milk, bread and Nutella
- day 10: We're out of milk! We're out of bread! There's nothing good to eat-- Moooooooooommm!
Maybe you could show our kids what rationing looked like during WWII? We watched
The 1940s House with our boys years ago, and they really got a sense of how limited food was. Not that food is limited now, so much as we all need to do our part to prevent the spread of Covid, which means staying away from stores as much as possible.
I suppose I'll come across as a mean mom, but at some point in the past I decided I wasn't going to let the kids control the food situation. The strategy has served me well during the pandemic, because they're already used to the rules.
I buy very little that would count as snacks. Pretty much fresh fruit and vegetables, tortilla chips (eaten with Aldi salsa at $1.18 per jar), and granola bars for taking to school or work (back when they could take their classes in person). I knew from the beginning of the pandemic that we'd need to figure out the fruit situation, since my oldest would easily eat 5+ servings of fresh fruit daily (competitive athlete). I decided to bring in canned peaches, canned pineapple (for the youngest), and jarred applesauce. They don't love these things as much as fresh fruit, but they're making do. The oldest has also had to stop eating raw vegetables as a snack, but we do our best to make sure there is a big salad everyday, which we've managed even when getting produce every 2-3 weeks. Romaine lettuce is surprisingly hardy, often lasting 2 weeks, and we also make cabbage salads, carrot salads, etc. I buy a reasonable amount of tortillas chips and when they're gone, they're gone. The boys can make popcorn if they want, and if they say it's too much work then I figure they aren't really hungry. In the past, when they were ravenous adolescents, I also used a "fill them with carbs" strategy, which basically meant since I knew I was serving plenty of nutritious food with more than adequate produce and protein, I would offer cheap carbs to fill the constantly hungry bellies. Most of the time this was as simple as making rice in the rice cooker and keeping it available all day. My boys douse rice in olive oil and can eat it in huge quantities (which is why I use cheap white rice, since they eat so much rice the arsenic content would be a big concern if it was all brown rice).
We've had to work on the leftovers situation, as my youngest is fussy about them. Not all leftovers, but he doesn't care for leftover vegetables and he often refuses leftover soup, which makes zero sense since most soups tastes better the next day. He does fine with leftover meat and leftover rice. I do reinvent leftovers on a regular basis -- just yesterday I used the leftover sautéed cabbage and bacon to make an egg casserole, adding in plain frozen hashbrowns. But my youngest wouldn't eat this meal even if it was made fresh, so I saved it for a meal he wasn't home for. Once or twice a week we have a leftovers night and pretty much indulge him by giving him the leftovers he likes best. I've never purchased frozen entrees, so that's not an option if they don't like leftovers. If they really don't want what we're having they have to do the work to make something else, including clean up. Now that they are young adults, DH has more than once pointed out to them that they're free to pick up fast food, using their own cash and riding their bikes. Not surprisingly, the've never made that choice. Food they don't love but which has been paid for and prepared by someone else is preferable to paying for their own food or washing extra dishes.
I don't allow unlimited cereal and milk. I buy enough to last and that's it. I had to make a rule they can't have cereal as a snack or for more than one meal. My youngest can't drink milk as a beverage unless it's clear we have enough to not run out. Kids who are getting plenty of good food don't need milk as a beverage (or any caloric beverages). If they run out of cereal, they make do until the next time we get groceries. There are other breakfast options such as eggs or oatmeal. As for bread, both boys eat gluten free bread, and there were issues with wasted bread, so I won't buy it anymore. They can use corn tortillas. (I bake regular bread when DH and I eat it, but it's rare now.)
For us, being out of certain foods isn't a reason to go shopping. When my boys were younger I would make sure we could stretch the shopping time. If we were out of cereal I would make cornmeal mush, bake muffins, make granola, etc. for breakfasts. A common meal as we approached needing to get groceries was lentil casserole, sweet potatoes, and cabbage salad, because it combined pantry staples like lentils and rice with long lasting produce like onions, sweet potatoes, and cabbage. I've tried to teach them that there's plenty of food in the house even if it isn't their favorite foods. We talk about it, too -- they know DH and I eat foods that aren't our favorites, too.
I'm not saying my kids don't have food preferences or get fussy and sulky about food -- they do. And maybe it's easier for us in that they never got used to seeing other kids with snack foods because they were homeschooled throughout. I'm not unwilling to make easy accommodations for them (youngest doesn't like tomato sauce on pasta, so I serve them separately, things like that), but I won't cook entirely different meals. They get the snacks we have and if they can't ration themselves they can make popcorn. They've never had frozen entrees, so that's not something they default to.