Ideas for cooking in the villa

[quandrea]

We are here now at Kidani for a two week visit. I'm doing lots of cooking in the villa because we are trying to save money given the poor Canadian dollar. Thought I'd list what I'm cooking as others sometimes ask for easy meal solutions.

Pizza, wings, salad

Chicken stew with biscuits and salad

Chili with rice and salad

Tacos

Quesadillas with salsa and chips

Deli sandwiches with chips, carrots, dip and pickles

Spaghetti night with garlic bread and salad

Chicken fettuccine Alfredo with salad and garlic bread

Salisbury meatballs with rice, veggies and salad

Chicken tenders, oven fries, veggies and salad

Roasted chicken with all the trimmings

Baked chicken with cream chicken soup, stuffing and cheese with baked potatoes and veggies, salad

French bread pizzas

I do lots of baking too since dd has a nut allergy--whoopie pies, brownies stuffed with Oreos, chocolate chip cookies

Kitchen is filled with breakfast foods, fruit and snack foods

I did meal planning and used Amazon pantry for dry goods and garden grocer for fresh foods. We are still enjoying the odd meal out.

 

[Julylady]

Great list! We also cook most of our meals in the villa. It saves money and the girls actually prefer it to eating out so much. On a 10 day trip we might have 5 ADRs at table service locations, and another 5 times we will eat counter service. Like you, we do spaghetti and tacos. Also, meatloaf/baked potatoes/green beans, chicken on buns, and sloppy joes. I also make an egg/ham/cheese casserole early on and its available for breakfast several days.

We bring one piece of luggage filled with non-perishable foods (love Southwest!) and order the rest from Garden Grocer. There are also a couple of meals that you can make just using ingredients available at the resort store including: grilled ham/cheese, turkey sandwiches with chips, hot dogs, and breakfast for dinner (eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast). The resort store is also a good place to restock on eggs, bread, and chips as they are pre-priced. We reserve the last night for ordering pizza (Flippers or Giordanos). Some trips we have enough leftovers so that pizza is not needed! I also order a brownie mix and marshmallows/rice crispies for rice crispy treats. Those are the items that the kids ask for the most at WDW and they are so expensive to buy them in the parks. We also pack several snack items that we carry into the parks like granola bars, peanuts, fruit snacks, trail mix, gold fish crackers, cookies, gum, candy. I let the girls pick these out at Target a few weeks before the trip. They normally don't get to buy "junk" food, so its a treat for them. They can take as many snacks to the park as they can carry. We have found that this really cuts down on the asking for snacks in the parks. My last tip is to take microwave popcorn to pop in the villa!

Using these tips, I estimate we spend about half of what it would cost for us to purchase the meal plan for our family.

 

[quandrea]

Thanks for your reply! My kids prefer eating in the villa too. I love to cook and it's no trouble on holiday. We too bring snacks into the parks. We still eat out enough that I feel like we try some fun meals and I get a break.

 

[DonnaL]

It's only DH and I for most of our trips now....our kids are all adults and the trips with adult kids and grandkids haven't started yet!! So we don't cook as much in our villa as we did when we had the whole family with us, but, one tip I still use (we fly Southwest also) is taking an insulated Thermos soft sided cooler as my carry on ....size is about 18 x 15 x 12..... filled with frozen precooked items (as long as nothing is liquid shouldn't be a problem with TSA). My usuals are homemade frozen meatballs (for meatball subs or added to doctored up jarred sauce), precooked frozen boneless chicken (chicken w/butter/garlic sauce over rice, chicken cacciatore, chicken salad), precooked frozen ground beef (tacos, sloppy joes, chili). On top of the frozen stuff, I usually throw in a block of hard cheese, a stick or two of butter, etc. We have a two hour drive to airport, plus arriving two hours before flight, a two hour flight to MCO, and the drive from MCO to Disney....so the items are usually in the Thermos for about 8 hours...and are still frozen when we arrive. It really speeds up prep time if the meat is already precooked and only needs to be thawed and added to the remaining ingredients....some of which I've shipped FedEx to myself at the resort scheduled to arrive either the day before or day we do...the rest ordered from Garden Grocer or a stop at Publix if we're renting a car that trip. I've used this method for years, especially when our three kids were younger and we ate in a lot more....we would usually have one TS and a few CS meals during our trip the remaining meals were eaten at our villa. We saved a boatload of money on trip food costs over the years and our kids probably ate better, since they were all picky eaters, than they would have by eating out.