What meals do you cook off-site?

[cey]

We also do the long 3 day drive from Canada and also bring frozen casseroles along for the ride. The best purchase we ever made was a soft sided electric cooler which we can plug into an outlet in the back of our Nissan Murano. We just bring the cooler into our hotel room at night and either plug it into the wall with the adaptor or transfer the contents into a fridge ( just turn down the temp!). Works like a charm and allows us some great options during our trip and our first night in Florida. This April we even travelled back to Canada with a homemade frozen Lasagna which we reheated in our hotel microwave. It was such a time saver and was so much better than ordering in food or climbing back into the car to find a restaurant in an unfamiliar city! We always tend to have leftover bagged salad and salad dressings and finish off those on our trip home! PS Pyrex containers are great as you can heat your casseroles in the oven or microwave! Love the ones that come with snap on lids!

 

[jsmla]

Just got back from a trip to visit our daughter out of state. She's really missing Louisiana cooking so I loaded up the Yeti with gumbo, red beans, étouffée, etc. we stopped overnight on the way. The ice chest remained in the car. I added a little extra insulation by covering it with extra bedding.

I packed the ice chest very tightly, filling in any empty spaces with frozen water bottles, and everything was still frozen when we arrived 21 hours later.

 

[Mickfarland4]

Taco seasoning, frozen chicken breasts, and a jar of salsa makes really good chicken tacos. Just throw in crockpot on low. Will be ready in 6 hours but, can cook longer. I add drained corn and rinsed black beans too.

 

[HopperFan]

BIG on saving money on food even when I stay onsite. We have showed up with way too much food, and too little food and making that run to Walmart or Publix. One of these days we'll get it just perfect

- Bring soda to enjoy at lodging, drink water in parks.
- Bring case or so of bottled water.
- Breakfast at lodging. If kitchen, eggs, sausage, bagels, bananas, muffins and yogurt. Hotel leave out eggs sausage.
- Enough to pack lunch about 1/2 our days. Prefer Torta rolls because don't get mushy. Lunch meat, Cheese, Mustard. We also buy a tube of Pringles for each day we plan to take food in park. Keeps them fresh and unbroken.
- Snacks for lodging or backpacks so think individual wrapped and stuff that won't break like peanuts, trail mix, dried fruit, breakfast bars.
- Dinners will be easy, fast and depends on time of year and park schedule. We do some TS meals (I have TIW) and might grab something like Chickfila on way out of park. Dinner could be spaghetti (jar sauce, pasta) with rolls and if hit local grocery salad. We have cooked steaks on grills and baked potato and salad but was a low key day and of course we had hit grocery. Grocery pizza can be good.

I think the key is to make a schedule for your days, determine how your days work for dinners and meal plan so you don't waste food.

 

[BadgerGirl84]

I only cook breakfast at our rentals.

We all like a hot breakfast, so I do eggs, sausage (the pre-cooked kind you just heat in the skillet), frozen hashbrowns, toast and smoothies in the blender. (Not ALL of that at every meal, but you get the idea.

We are always at the parks for lunch and we like to eat out for dinner or get carry out.

 

[GoBears 1980]

I take the top off the rotisserie chicken from Publix.

And put a serving spoon in the potato salad.

 

[soma151]

I love to cook and eat out, but on this next trip we are renting a house. I am just now learning where the speciality stores are close by, going to pick up most of the bulk stuff at Target & Publix but the meat, chicken, pasta, breads, cheeses, oils, veggies, i want to find a whole foods? Nature kind of store? Any tips? I am planning all my meals and putting together a shopping list for the first day. Don't see any need to take any thing from home?

 

[GoBears 1980]

I love to cook and eat out, but on this next trip we are renting a house. I am just now learning where the speciality stores are close by, going to pick up most of the bulk stuff at Target & Publix but the meat, chicken, pasta, breads, cheeses, oils, veggies, i want to find a whole foods? Nature kind of store? Any tips? I am planning all my meals and putting together a shopping list for the first day. Don't see any need to take any thing from home?

Whole Foods is at 8003 Turkey Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32819 and there is one in Winter Park as well.

There are also two Fresh Markets close by.

 

[soma151]

Thanks gobear, we all love to cook big sit down meals. Any farmers or Seafood markets you know of? ( i can google ) We arrive on a Sat. late after a long travel day, but don't start going to any parks till Mon. So we have all day Sunday to sort of get all the things we need and do a little exploring?

 

[GoBears 1980]

The only Farmers Market I've done is a Saturday one in Winter Park. As to seafood, Whole Foods and Costco both have great seafood. The Fresh Market does too. I don't know of any specific seafood markets in Orlando, but again, in Winter Park, I like Lombardi's.

 

[quagmire0]

We're very simple.
Breakfast for adults is eggs and bacon. For the kids they'll get either hot or cold cereal, maybe frozen waffles.
Lunch for kids will usually be PB&J or hot dogs and mac and cheese.
Dinners we always do out, in most cases TS on property, otherwise we'll do carry out or delivery from a local restaurant.

 

[floydfamily4]

So glad to have found this thread! We are driving for the first time from TX and will definitely bring my spices and cleaning supplies to avoid purchasing new items we will have to bring back home. I hadn't thought about precooking and freezing items but we may do that. I will also bring my crockpot - great idea!

 

[velvetsqueeze]

Late to the party, but I'll still chime in. Heavy protein breakfast with eggs and bacon or sausage for park days, and pancakes for resort days. Lunches are usually light and involve lunchmeat sandwiches made on flour tortillas (we aren't big on bread), fruit, and maybe some chips. Dinners are made in the crockpot using either a crockpot or one-dish recipe book. There's something wonderful about coming back to the room after an exhausting day out and just sitting down to eat.

 

[pigletto]

We've only stayed offsite once, but did a fair bit of cooking in the condo. I want to say we spent about $100 on groceries. That covered all breakfasts, 3 or 4 lunches and 2 dinners over our one week stay. I stuck to easy things.. pasta and meat sauce, bagged salad, premade deli items like chicken wings and fried chicken etc. We ate far less healthy than at home ,and lots of convenience items that I wouldn't normally buy, but we still did better than if we had eaten all of our meals out. We were able to have a big serving of fruits and veggies with every meal and fresh fruit for snacks. We also started our day with eggs and turkey sausage or greek yoghurt and granola. I just felt that we ate better than we normally would on vacation while still being able to indulge. Between having a kitchen and going to Sweet Tomatoes twice I think we ate better on this vacation than any of our previous trips.

 

[2Pirates2Princesses]

We stayed in a condo at Windsor Hills for our last Disney trip and I loved having a full kitchen. I know a lot of people say that they don't want to cook on vacation, but with five kids sometimes being able to throw together a simple, familiar meal is a welcome break from always eating out at a restaurant or food court in addition to the bonus of the added savings involved. I agree with keeping things simple, it is a vacation afterall . For most breakfasts we had basic stuff like cereal, bagels, Eggo waffles, yogurt, and fruit. I love having a coffeemaker in the condo so I can enjoy a fresh cup of coffee on the balcony before getting the kids ready for the day. We usually have a couple character breakfasts during our trip and since DH is our resident breakfast guru, he likes to have one day to make a big breakfast for us (pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage) while I get the kids ready. For lunch, we primarily buy counter service lunches in the parks unless we have a lunch ADR or late breakfast ADR. For dinner, I'll usually cook 3-4 nights of the trip. For those nights I'll brown ground meat and use this for two separate dinners - spaghetti and garlic bread one night and tacos and rice another night; and I'll make grilled chicken breasts for grilled chicken strip wraps and soup one night and a simple grilled chicken & veggie stir fry and baked potatoes another night. For the other nights that I don't cook we like to have at least one Disney dinner ADR (e.g., 'Ohana) and a couple nights of takeout from places near the condo (pizza, Chinese food, etc.). I definitely recommend packing some seasonings, non stick spray, aluminum foil, saran wrap, and some sandwich baggies from home so that you'll have less stuff to purchase when you make that grocery store run. We love the Super Target off of 192 and the nearby Publix (Orange Lake).

 

[LibrarianBecky]

Great thread! We are staying at WBC for ten days in November. I'm hoping to take advantage of having a kitchen to save us some money and time. I especially like the suggestions of stuff to take like foil and sandwich bags. We're flying, so I won't be able to freeze food ahead and bring it, but I'm not above throwing a roll of foil in my checked bag! We will have a rental car, though, so grocery shopping shouldn't be a problem.

Some things I'm planning for us to have:

Breakfast: toast, freezer waffles, yogurt, fruit, maybe scrambled egg muffins if I feel creative

Lunch: Most days this will be a CS in one of the parks. I'll probably pick up my lunch meat and sandwich rolls in case we are in the condo at lunchtime.

Dinner: I'm sure we'll eat out at least a couple of nights (either in the parks or outside the World), but I agree with the person who said it is sometimes easier to just cook something simple instead of going out to eat. I'm planning on:

Breakfast for dinner (pancakes, sausage links, fruit)
Pasta and sauce, garlic bread, salad
Chicken tenders, roasted potatoes, steam in the bag veggie
Tacos
Stir fry
I'm hoping to grill one night at WBC--either hamburgers or steak

 

[artemis4]

I'm late to the party too, but I want to mention one thing for those doing longer road trips: DRY ICE.

We always bring two coolers of food on our road trips. One has the things we will use during our road trip (sandwich fixings, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, etc) and things that start out frozen, but I don't care if they stay that way (bagels, bread, etc). This cooler gets packed with a couple of rubbermaid containers that I filled 2/3 full of water and froze. These do double duty since the rental house/condos never have enough food storage containers.

The other cooler gets packed with 10# of dry ice in the bottom, a layer of insulated bubble wrap, the food, then another layer of insulated bubble wrap. Everything that goes in this cooler comes straight out of the deep freeze. Once we close it, it does not get opened until we get to the rental house/condo. It goes into the back bottom layer of the back of the van storage, so it's also insulated by things around it. We took a road trip last month with a cooler packed this way. We put in the dry ice at 8 pm Wednesday night. We opened the cooler at 4 pm Saturday. The things on the top layer were quite cold and half thawed. The things on the bottom layer were frozen solid. I had actually expected things to thaw more than they had given the long time in the cooler, and it caused a small problem for our Saturday night dinner.

Dry ice is available here at Hyvee or Walmart. 10# costs us about $14.00, and it's money very well spent. http://www.dryiceideas.com/ has a retailer locator.

 

[GoBears 1980]

We stayed in a condo at Windsor Hills for our last Disney trip and I loved having a full kitchen. I know a lot of people say that they don't want to cook on vacation, but with five kids sometimes being able to throw together a simple, familiar meal is a welcome break from always eating out at a restaurant or food court

In Orlando our vacations are usually short ones 7 nights or less because we go often enough we don't need longer. When we do a two or three week vacation where we stay in one or two locations, one of the locations will always be a condo/villa/apartment because I would go nuts eating out 21 days in a row. Even if we are in WDW for only a week I still enjoy a Costco/Publix chicken or take out pizza instead of all sit down restaurants.

 

[lborne]

I do the cooking and hate having to do it on vacation, except for breakfast. Things I normally cook are: grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, mac n cheese, hot dogs done in the oven, pasta and veggies - I just cut veggies, cook it all in the same water as the pasta and toss with olive oil and lemon or a pesto sauce, red beans and rice, and we also enjoy breakfast for lunch or dinner - all pretty easy things to make quickly.

 

[staceywj]

great suggestions, thanks!