What Do You Cook in Your Villa?

[momoflizandains]

I love all of these great ideas. Thanks and feel free to keep them coming.

 

[FindTheMickeys]

When my son and I went to WDW in 2005, we stayed at ASSport. I spent the $10 a night for the fridge. I added up the money that we spent on meals at the resort (not what I spent on food in the parks) and I was astounded! Needless to say that when I purchased DVC on that trip, the kitchen was a very big selling point for me In our last 3 trips to SSR, we have usually eaten breakfast in the room, lunch in one of the parks (cheaper than dinner in the park and it feels a little more like a vacation) and then dinner in our room. I love a huge salad. Or loaded baked potatos. Spaghetti. Fettuccini with chicken and broccoli (all out of a bag - noodles, pre-cooked chicken strips, frozen broccoli and 3 cheese sauce from a jar).
Since we are driving down, I will be taking most of our groceries with us (Florida food prices are definitely higher than Indiana especially since Orlando is a tourist venue). The only items I plan on purchasing in Florida are milk and eggs. I like having 'munchies' in the room, just like at home

 

[Alexander]

Here's what I did one summer. We were driving and could bring pretty much anything we wanted. It also saved TONS of time, shopping, and clean-up.

I made mac 'n cheese, lasagna, and cooked some chicken breasts before leaving home. I put them all in those plastic Glad pans that you can bake in. They were just the right size for one meal for my family--no leftovers to deal with. Then I froze them. They stayed frozen on the drive down and I then put them right into the freezer. I just had to grab one out, let it thaw, and throw it in the oven. There was no prep, no extra dishes, and if I didn't want to deal with the pan, I threw it away! You could use foil pans too, but the plastic ones have lids that seal down pretty tight. By making everything at home ahead of time saved me from having leftover ingredients too.

 

[Melani]

We only had a studio.
The guys fav was chili cheese nachos.
My fav was breakfast burrittos.

One ?:
2 of the eggs cracked even though I wrapped them,
if I go ahead & crack them open and seal in a bowl or jar,
how many days while they last?

 

[LuckyMamaInDE]

The five of us stayed in a Kidani 1br for a week last month. We decided to cook as much as possible to save some money and to enjoy our resort more.

Dd14 has multiple food allergies so I packed certain grocery items from home in case I couldn't find them in Florida, but other than those, adult beverages and food for the drive down, I purchased all our other food at the new SuperTarget on 192. Lots of fruit to choose from, that was nice. I wasn't thrilled with the meat selection, though.

One night we had friends over for dinner and dh made chicken fajitas, with salad and yellow rice. We also ate nachos (tortilla chips, canned chili, cheese, salad stuff), turkey burgers with storebought sides and fresh veg, sandwiches with deli meat and cheese, and SuperTarget's take and bake pizzas. We were going to grill the turkey burgers but had to use the broiler instead as it POURED that night. I had planned on spaghetti, meatballs or sausage and garlic bread (plus salad) but quickly changed my mind in the store when I saw those take&bake pizzas!

We had six ADRs over an eight day trip and ate only three counter service meals (trickier that ts with dd's allergies). That seemed like a really good number to us.

 

[GrumpyBelle]

This is the first time will we be cooking in our villa.

We are taking boxes of cereal and poptarts for breakfast. We have also ordered things to make simple foods such as chicken fingers, hotdogs, BLTs, and tuna salad for this trip.

This thread has me thinking about ideas for meals for future trips already.

 

[mmcguire]

We had a 2BR at BCV, and didn't do much actual "cooking", but we did prepare a lot of meals in the room. We bought everything at Costco in Orlando.

For breakfast, we had a variety of things - cereal, fresh fruit, Pop Tarts, cheese toast done under the broiler.

For lunches/dinners, we had sandwiches with either delicious Costco chicken salad or ham & cheese. The kids ate Hot Pockets a couple of times. We also had a variety of sides -- chips & salsa, pita chips & hummus, potato salad and baked beans. For desserts we bought a big tub of two-bite brownies.

One night for dinner we ordered Dominos pizza & wings. Not the best pizza in the world, but it's more affordable, and a lot tastier than WDW pizza delivery!!

 

[kim532]

n our last trip, my sis-in-law made an easy, tasty aleit not the healthiest of dinners.

She just cooked spaghetti and then served it with cans of Hormel Chilli that were heated up in the microwave, cheddar cheese, chopped onions, and sour cream. Took 15 minutes to get it all togehter and we all had full bellies after 30 minutes.

Easy.
Cheap.
Quick.
Tasty

Kim

 

[brandylouwho]

We are big fans of eating in the villa, but we tend to do simple, heat and serve type things along with fruit and sandwiches. If we ate out every meal, my picky kids would eat nothing but chicken nuggets & fries for our entire vacation! Plus, we generally have a lot of resort time built into the trip, so planning around ADRs or even running out to a CS would cramp our style.

We have also discovered that we like to use WeGoShop and often buy things from Sams Club. For a longer trip or a trip like this year, where we have 8 people to buy for, the larger sizes work out pretty well. I go online to browse what they have available and plan accordingly.

Heat & serve lasagna, eggs & bread for breakfast, sandwich meat, spaghetti, maybe a turkey breast, pizza...things like that. Fresh fruit, milk, soda, etc. We are thinking about grilling out, my DH isn't so sure he wants to be cooking over a grill in Aug in FL--too hot!

 

[LIFERBABE]

We had a 2BR at BCV, and didn't do much actual "cooking", but we did prepare a lot of meals in the room. We bought everything at Costco in Orlando.

One night for dinner we ordered Dominos pizza & wings. Not the best pizza in the world, but it's more affordable, and a lot tastier than WDW pizza delivery!!

Love Costco!! When I saw how close it was to WDW this last trip, I was thrilled! Costco has Awesome fresh heat and eat meals The Chicken Alfredo, the premade salads, Chicken Salad, Shrimp Salad are all great. A little too much to buy on our regular grocery budget, but perfect for our vacation grocery budget.

We will buy the cupcakes, and croissants and maybe a cake for the villa too. Costco has premium quality foods prepared by chefs for very reasonable prices. Very close to having catered meals.

We have another tradition at SSR when we have guests, we host a midnight BBQ. Not really midnight, but late like 9 pm or 10.

It's way cooler, the kids swim, the adults sit around talk laugh discuss the day, soak in the hot tub and we have a blast.
Disney Dining closes fairly early so this gives everyone a chance to meet back up and have a great meal and a soak in the hot tub or a swim.

We got the idea because we were checking into Congress Park and getting ready to grill and another member passed on his spatula and lighter to us as he was checking out that day. He said they had a blast and BBQ'd almost every night. It is pretty fun, and SSR is set up perfect for it.

We love the resorts. Love resort days.

I also agree, that while I am glad that Kidani does have a BBQ pavilion (that is the only one by the sport court btw) it looks prety inconvenient. They should have at least put a few parking spaces over there. I guess if you dont have a rolling cooler, you could ziploc everything and put it in a rolling suitcase and roll it over there that way. It's pretty enough though

 

[LuckyMamaInDE]

We checked out the Kidani BBQ/sports court area while we were there. If you are staying in the rooms south of the lobby (Jambo side), you are really close to the BBQ area--just take that elevator all the way to the parking level and walk over on the sidewalk. However, staying on the pool side would involve quite a hike!