The Meal Strategy

My boys are home for the summer working their tales off to save enough money for another year of college. And when I say working their tales off, I mean it!  My older son is working for a landscape company mowing grass, edging yards, clipping and trimming bushes, pulling weeds, and even uprooting trees when necessary.  The labor is hard, and it is in the sun, the heat of the day, from 6:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night, sweating his way to another year of school.  My younger son is also doing manual labor.  He is working in a steel plant lifting heavy steel ties to a hook where it is lowered into acid, raised up again, where my son removes it and puts on the next hook, and so on.  He requires helmet, goggles, gloves, steel toed boots, and a shield of some sort that covers his ankles.  They receive continuous safety training.  He comes home filthy, sweaty, and exhausted.  I failed to mention his hours are 3:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon sometimes.  To say they both come home hungry would not come close.

When it's just my daughter and I, our meal plans consist of a nice big salad with salmon, or egg whites with spinach and a fruit salad.  With the boys, it is more than a meal plan.  It is a strategic and calculating procedure to make sure I can keep up with their hunger.

Dinners are chicken pot pie, salad, fruit, rolls, and a gallon of whole milk.  Another favorite is meatloaf, with potatoes, green beans, jello, rolls, and a gallon of milk.  This may not seem like an overly large meal, but you must know, this is only the "dinner".  Of course there is always dessert to follow, but then there is the "post" dinner which consists of the left overs from previous meals, but suffice it say, it is as large or larger than the first dinner.

Packing a lunch for a twelve hour shift is no simple matter either.  Two sandwiches, Naan with hummus, yogurt, cheese and crackers, a Clif Bar, a large fruit salad, fruit leather, cookies, an apple or nectarine, and the only reason there isn't more is because it won't fit in their lunch box!

This is a sponsored post for Xango, however, all the points and views are my own.