Eating Well {& Cheap} on Vacation–Part 5

If you are just joining us, we are wrapping up our series on how to eat well {& cheap} on vacation. 

• Part 1 raised 5 essential questions to ask before your trip
• Part 2 shared 30+ recipe ideas that work well for the road
• Part 3 discussed what to bring from home vs. buy when you arrive
• Part 4 helped you determine how not to bring “the kitchen sink”

Today, we’re talking about how you can actually enjoy your vacation, despite cooking!

Some might say, a vacation isn’t a vacation if you are doing all the cooking.  I’m here to say, you don’t have to do all the cooking, and by choosing the right meals, you can make cooking on vacation stress free. 

The Top 5 Ways to Make Cooking on Vacation Stress Free & {dare I say it, fun}!

• If you’ve done your work ahead of time, the most time consuming part of making meals on vacation will be chopping and slicing fresh produce.  Remember that cutting board I recommended you bring?  Put it to good use by asking others to slice and dice. 
  
• Do double duty.  That is, if you are slicing bell peppers one night for fajitas, slice enough that same night for breakfast and/or dinner the following night.  Cutting produce 1-2 days ahead of time will help reduce the time needed to bring a meal together. 
  
• Rely on meals that use leftovers, and prep the next meal when you’re putting away the first!  This tip is especially important from dinner to breakfast.  When you are done, toss those leftovers into your breakfast egg bake or crockpot breakfast for tomorrow’s meal. 

See this dinner (above)… the leftovers went right into this breakfast (below):

• Take a morning to sleep in.  On a morning with an egg bake or crockpot breakfast casserole, you can easily ask the first person up to add the milk and egg mixture and set the breakfast in the oven. 
  
• Enlist others to clean up.  The trade off can be, you’ll cook, others will do the dishes.  It’s wonderful.  Try it. 

I can’t guarantee a stress free trip, but these tips should help you feel like you get a vacation too. 

Join us on Saturday for a bonus to this series.  Many of you have asked to see a list of what we brought vs. what we bought, and Part 6 will show you our packing list.  Stay tuned. 

Do you have any stress-free tips for us?