Today we’re going to be talking about food for a vacation – for when you go away on a holiday. We recently went to the beach for a few days, and it was amazing! I’m going to talk a little bit about what meals we did, and give you some general ideas of what to do on a vacation.
Obviously, when you’re away, you’re going to eat out as much as you can afford to. We found it worked well to alternate – every second day, we’d have food out. The way it actually worked out was that we ate out more near the beginning, but you can plan to alternate. Eat out one day, and then cook at home one day.
I think that by far the easiest and most fun way to cook on a vacation is the grill. Hopefully the place you’re staying has a grill. The one where we were staying was a bit of an old broken grill, but it did actually work. There’s so many things you could make on a grill. Then, if it’s a nice warm place, you can sit outside together, chat, and enjoy the evening under the stars.
Have some fun drinks together, like passion fruit soda, or lime and soda. Then just do the things that you enjoy grilling. We did burger patties on the grill, and added a little cheese so that it melted. Then we just had the usual toppings – tomato slices, cucumber slices, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, pickles – you can even do avocado or fried eggs if you feel like it. You can have whatever anybody enjoys on your burgers.
You can also do something with chicken on the grill. If you take chicken breasts and slice them in half so that they’re nice and thin, then they grill very well. It’s easy to marinade them with some olive oil, maybe some herbs like oregano, as well as salt, pepper, and maybe some paprika. You probably won’t have many herbs with you on your vacation, so use whatever you brought from home. We try to bring salt, onion powder and maybe something like paprika or oregano.
After the chicken’s marinated, just put it on the grill and cook it up. We like to do something like haloumi cheese on the grill as well, or we just cook in a pan nearby, and eat it with the chicken. Then you can put that inside wraps with a bit of lettuce and mayonnaise. You can easily buy the wraps wherever you are.
I try to make a little bit of a meal plan beforehand, like, as I said, deciding which nights to eat out and which not, but I only planned the meals properly once I was there. It was a quick plan – What are our simplest meals from home? Now I’m at the grocery store, so what do I need for those?
One of the older kids cooked some chicken stir fry. We have quite a few cooks in our house, which is quite helpful. If you’re the only cook, it’s not quite as simple, but still you can cook with your kids around you, and they can help do the chopping and all those things. My oldest daughter made chicken stir fry. That has three components – the chicken, the noodles, and the vegetables. My middle daughter cooked the vegetables stir fry style. They were Julianne style when we bought them, and we just stuck them in a pan with some tamari or soy sauce and salt.
You just cook the noodles in a little bit of boiling water. You can either just pour the boiling water over and wait fifteen minutes, or you can do it in five minutes if you have a bit more of a boil. Also, it depends on your noodles – if they’re very thin or not. If they’re ribbon rice noodles, they work well.
Then chop the chicken up and stir fry it in a pan with a little oil – we use coconut oil – a little bit of soy sauce, some sesame seeds, and maybe a little bit of honey. Then you just mix all the elements together. People can dish up their own and mix it, or you can pre-mix it. It makes a delicious meal.
We also love to do nachos. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about it before. My youngest son likes to cook the ground beef for those. You can also use chicken. If you’re doing ground beef, just brown it and add some kind of tomato puree or tomato paste, and some seasoning like salt, onion powder, and et cetera. It’ll cook for about half an hour, and then you’re good.
If you’re using chicken, you should cook it in the oven. Just put some chicken breasts in the oven with some olive oil, salt, onion powder, or whatever seasonings you like. Once it’s cooked, everybody can help shred it. To make a nacho or taco style seasoning, you want to add things like a little bit of chili powder and a little bit of smoked paprika, or you can buy a pre-made taco mix, which is easier when you’re on vacation. Just add a taco mix to your meat. You can add it to the mince as well. That gives it a bit of spice and a bit of a Mexican flavor.
Then you can add either a bit of tomato puree or some salsa to your chicken, and mix it up. Get your chicken tasting good by adding the seasoning mix and tomato. Then, when it tastes a little spicy, Mexican style, you’re going to use it either on its own or make a layered dish. You’ll want to have some guacamole. For that, you can just mash up avocado with the same spice as you used for your meat. You can use yogurt or sour cream, as well as grated cheese, some extra salsa, and your nacho chips.
Either you can dip into a dip, or you can each create your dish with the mince or the chicken. I think that chicken is probably more common. You can also put it in the oven with a little cheese on top to melt before everybody dishes up. So, people will dish up their nachos, and then either their ground beef or chicken mix, and then get some guac, some yogurt or sour cream, some salsa, some cheese, and whatever else you like to have with your nachos. That was an easy meal – we did one at lunchtime.
Another item you can do on the grill is kebabs. You can buy pre-made kebabs at a grocery store. Maybe you can bake some potatoes to go with them, and make a salad. You can do anything on the grill – maybe steak. You can buy a little barbecue sauce to add, or you can buy pre-marinated steaks, especially when you’re on vacation. You can buy marinated ribs – beef ribs or pork ribs – that you can do on the grill. So, the grill’s really helpful when you’re on vacation. It also means less cleaning up inside.
Another easy meal – my oldest son did this one while we were away – is a pasta meal. You can do a simple pasta and chicken meal. Cook the chicken in the same way as I mentioned before, and then shred it, and then add something like cheese sauce, which is easy to make. You just need equal amounts of flour and butter, and you make a roux, and you cook that a little bit. Then you add your milk, whisk it until it thickens, and then you add your cheese and some salt.
You could also make mince and pasta with the same mince recipe as for the nachos, though you could leave out the spicy seasonings. Add the mince to the pasta, put a little bit of cheese on top, and put some garlic bread on the side. You could also do a simple cream pasta. Cook your pasta, and then add some cream and some basil pesto to a pan, or some pre-cooked bacon and cream. Or you could make a nice, simple pasta with a little Parmesan on top.
For another meal, or even for a fun breakfast, you can do different types of sausages on the grill. There are chicken sausages, pork bangers, and beef sausages. You could cook French toast with that. French toast is less messy than regular eggs and it’s easy to eat outside. Just whisk up some eggs with a little milk and some seasoning like salt and pepper. Soak your bread in it, and then fry it on both sides with a little more salt. That’s delicious! You can eat it with maple syrup alongside your sausages.
Again, you can also do chicken wraps with the same chicken recipe, and then add some lettuce, some cheese, and some mayonnaise. You can add some feta if you prefer that kind of cheese, some baby tomatoes or red pepper, and whatever you like in your wraps.
Don’t be afraid to look for some ready-made meals for some of the time if that’s going to make it easier for you, especially if the kitchen at the place you’re staying is not great. Sometimes you can find ready-made supermarket lasagna or cottage pie. Here’s a tip – try to take oven gloves with you. I don’t know why, but no places have nice oven gloves if they have them at all. I find that it’s always hard to get things in and out of the oven, so take some oven gloves that you like with you.
Don’t do anything complicated! Don’t take a whole lot of pre-made stuff to use, like don’t take your own sauces, or things like that. Just try to keep it as simple as possible, because if you really need something, you can buy it. Remember, you’re on vacation, so eating hot dogs on the beach is completely fine. Maybe you can get some Cornish pasties or pies from a nearby vendor – that works for a meal. You can even get a quick takeout burger.
My last ideas are a taco bar and a potato bar. Tacos are easy. You can buy the tortillas once you’re there, and again, use whatever taco meat you like. You can use beef. You can sometimes even buy pre-shredded beef, although that’s probably more expensive. You can also use shredded chicken, and add similar things to what you would add to your wraps, but maybe more in a Mexican style. You can even do some beans. You can often find beans in cans. Just add those to your ground beef, and then it’s very easy. They’re often already seasoned, or you can season them with a taco seasoning. Use those in your tacos
For a baked potato bar, buy a bunch of potatoes, bake them in the oven, and add some toppings – cheese, sour cream, bacon or chicken, a few vegetables or salad things. There you go! It really doesn’t have to be complicated. The most important thing is that you can be relaxed around your children. Enjoy the little bit of shopping you have to do while you’re away. Keep it minimal, though, because you may not use all the meals you buy if you end up eating out somewhere.
Try to be present with your family. Enjoy being outside with them if you’re grilling, and try to make it much simpler than you would at home. You don’t even necessarily need a vegetable or a salad each time – it’s completely fine to skip that now and then. I’d love to hear if any of you have some other ideas for what you can cook on vacation. My email address is Karyn@familyfoodformoms.com. I’d love to hear from you!
