A few days before we left for our vacation I jotted down quickly on a piece of scrap paper a menu for the days we would be gone. My mother laughed at me saying that I really wouldn't be on vacation if I was still having to cook. Yes I would have enjoyed a "vacation from cooking" but we always do this. When we go somewhere, anywhere even if it is a soccer game an hour a way I will pack up a cooler with sandwich stuff for our dinner.
To make my menu as simple as possible - because after all it is vacation I used some of my ready made foods and I also made up some things before we left.
For example:
Breakfast
I took along a package of pop tarts and a bag of cereal (we bought milk once we arrived) BUT I made up a double batch of my homemade biscuits and enough sausage patties to go along with the biscuits before I left. I also pulled two loaves of Friendship bread out of my freezer.
Lunch
I have to admit because we tended to sleep a little later and were out driving and sightseeing so much we skipped lunch most days but I took along the fixings for ham and cheese sandwiches on the days we did eat lunch.
Dinner
From out of my freezer I took a bag of frozen spaghetti sauce, hotdog sauce, and taco meat. For spaghetti night all I had to do was warm up the sauce and make our pasta. We had hotdogs a couple evenings (one over a camp fire) but all I had to do was warm up the hotdogs and sauce. And on taco night I just warmed the meat and chopped my veggies. We ate good food that filled us up and saved a lot of $$ in the process.
It wasn't really all that hard either because of the prep work that I had done at home.
What about you? Do you generally eat out while on vacation or do you cook? If you cook do you take along already prepared foods?
We always cook while camping. It's part of the fun!
ReplyDeleteWhen doing road trips, conferences and that sort of travel, we try to keep a cooler stocked with things like yogurt, bread, cheese, fruit, etc. That gets us through at least two meals a day. We might splurge and eat out once a day. But, we don't really do fast food. So, it's either a Mom-and-Pop place or the grocery store.
Last summer we took a trip from Los Angeles to San Antonio for a conference and did the whole trip completely fast food free! We've blogged about the Fast Food Free Challenge. Perhaps it would be of interest:
http://theprovisionroom.com/2012/07/11/lessons-from-the-road/
And our YouTube video comparing the drive thru with the grocery store:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-D-S437AHfs
I try to take as much as possible with us, too. Even just thinking to grab some string cheese and trail mix to take with us in the car for a trip shopping can help us avoid an emergency trip to the drive thru if we're out longer than expected.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the biscuits and sausage idea for traveling. Sounds very portable and filling, and it's something we really like.