Feeding the Hordes

I just finished the dinner dishes, wiped the counters, and then got out the ingredients to make a couple of snacks. Nope, I'm not hungry...but you can bet my teen son and preteen daughter will be, given a couple of minutes! So I put together some guacamole and an herb dip to toss to the ravening hordes when they appear.

That's what it feels like sometimes with growing young adults around the house. Sure, toddlers and little kids can go into growth spurts where they eat quite a bit. But those times are interspersed with lulls when they hardly seem to eat at all. I'd been warned about the appetite of a teenage boy, but you really have to witness it to believe it.

Well, today was a good day for cooking, anyway. It was cool, damp, and drizzly once again. BlackLion and I made some spaghetti sauce for dinner, putting it on to simmer in the mid-afternoon. Then we finished processing the big bundle of chives we'd harvested from the garden. We cleaned them, chopped them up into little bits, froze them on a cookie sheet (so they don't clump together as they freeze), then transferred them to labeled freezer bags. We got quite a good crop, with much more to come. BlackLion also made two loaves of banana bread, some to share with his gamer friends and some to eat at home.

This morning we made our meal plan for the week, and did the requisite grocery shopping. Tonight we had the pasta and tomato sauce, tomorrow night we're having minestrone soup and homemade English muffins at my parents' house, we're bringing vegetarian chili to homeschool group this Wednesday, and Friday will be homemade pizza for Quester and the kids. On Thursday, we're hosting a role-playing game here, and we're going to have a baked potato bar. The toppings we'll have on hand for the baked russet potatoes: leftover chili, broccoli and cheddar cheese, chives (from the garden) and sour cream, and butter. We also have the makings for salads, sandwiches, and snacks on hand. Not to mention some leftover curry from last night. Hopefully that will satisfy the hordes of hungry adolescents we hang out with!