Appetite for consumption: Feeding hungry teens

Check your watch or cellphone. If two hours have passed, it's safe to assume 15-year-old Quinn Sterling is hungry.

This is why mom Eileen arms her kitchen with 44-count sacks of flour tortillas, mega packs of shredded steak, dozens of eggs and gallons of juice and milk. Then there's the extra fridge downstairs, the one that comes in handy when Quinn's two older brothers come home from college.

"If I was doing pasta, or chicken fajita mix, I'd do three, four pounds of it and always have leftovers," Sterling said. She speaks of when her water-polo-playing sons were shorter than the fridge, back when she and husband Kelly still had to urge them to eat more.

Soon enough, the goal became preparing enough food to make it through the day.

Welcome to Cooking for Teens, a time when many parents, especially those with sons and daughters into team sports, dance, skateboarding and other calorie zappers, suddenly notice food evaporating from the pantry.

It's a time when a little planning can prevent endless pizza deliveries and fast-food drive-through runs to sate their hunger. It's also a vital time for nourishment and to pass down good nutrition concepts that can last a lifetime, says Cynthia Lair, a member of Bastyr University's nutrition faculty and author of cookbooks "Feeding the Whole Family" and "Feeding the Young Athlete."

"It's not just going to the grocery store and filling your grocery cart with packaged foods and shoving it down your teenager's gullet," Lair said. "You want food around that you feel good about them stuffing down."

On her list: whole-grain bread, high-quality nut butters, brown rice and oatmeal; whole-grain wraps that easily can be stuffed with meat, tofu, cheese or vegetables; frozen fruit and quality yogurt for quick smoothies in the blender; hearty soups heavy on the beans and lentils.

Ultimately, Lair said, any chance you have to provide an alternative to fast food and junk food adds up, even if it's just making sure there's a sandwich and banana in your teen's backpack before he or she heads off to school or practice.

What to do when teens ignore your advice or efforts? Call in the reinforcements — coaches, pastors, teachers — to point out the short-term benefits of healthful eating, including higher energy, greater stamina and oftentimes a healthier appearance.

"They're hungry, they need calories, they're growing. So we want to make sure that their growing food is of higher quality so they'll build a stronger, more virile body," Lair said.

But back to the front lines: our kitchens. Faced with suddenly ravenous offspring, many home cooks suggest planning at least a few meals in advance, keeping a rotation or cooking ahead to avoid constant trips to the supermarket, a real budget buster.

Grace Steiner of Edmonds plans out menus for the week and considers how she can best use leftovers to feed her five children, two of whom are teens. Iole Aguero of Bellevue, an Italian cooking instructor, created multiple batches of homemade pasta sauce and soups she could store in the freezer to feed her husband and three sons.

"I always make enough for four meals. You have it in the freezer. You pull the sauce out from the freezer, make salad, pasta and bread, and you have one meal a week that is done and not that expensive."

To make all these eating habits stick, parents also should encourage their teens to feel at ease in the kitchen, Lair says, even if it's just showing them the basics of cooking rice and beans and other simple dishes. If no one in the family's a confident cook, experiment together.

"I think our job as parents is to help our children be able to live on their own," she said. "One of the things that's been lost that's terribly sad is the ability to cook a meal for themselves."

Karen Zapata of Shoreline agrees and is proud at least one of her four sons now cooks regularly. She worked nights as a nurse while raising her brood with her husband, Frank, and leaned on brown or Spanish rice and corn tortillas as the base of hot dishes of meat and vegetables she'd prepare in advance so her kids could zap something nutritious in the microwave. Easily reheatable meatloaf and turkey chili with plenty of celery and tomatoes were repeat performers as well.

She had her work cut out for her: Even when they were small, years before they rowed crew, her boys would chant, "We want food! We want food!" in the back seat of the family car.

"We wouldn't have too many leftovers," she guffaws.

These days, cooking for her grown sons poses a different challenge.

"Life was a lot easier when I didn't have the vegetarians and the high proteins and the no cheese," she laughs.

One way to slip more wholesome food into teen diets is to have meals or snacks available when they are hungriest: at breakfast and after school, Lair says.

"They get home from school, and they're looking for anything. They just eat the packaged junk out of the cabinet because that's when they're starving. You make this nice dinner, and they're not interested in it. If you're going to make the beautiful curry and rice, save it and have it ready to be warmed up after school."

Eileen Sterling knows this drill all too well. For years she rose with her sons in their Mercer Island home to make sure breakfast burritos or French toast filled their bellies before school. She made sure there were plenty of leftovers in the fridge to fill them up when they got home.

"When everyone was at home, I'd fill up a whole cart at Costco. We had to graduate from the cart to that long rolling thing," she said. "When they're doing this much, you just want them to have nourishment and not live on junk food, chips and all that.

"The worst thing is if I want to go to bed at night and they come home from practice and they're in the kitchen looking for food. I didn't do well promoting them to be self-sufficient," she said with a laugh and a sigh.

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com