You remembered to pack all the essentials for the trip, survived the long journey, and finally check into your holiday home, the last thing you want to do is think about making dinner. Meal planning during holidays shouldn’t be complicated; after all, traveling with family can be stressful enough.
These tips will simplify mealtime and give you more time to relax and enjoy your vacation. They will also ensure your family has healthy and satisfying meals, so you’re not tempted to indulge in dining out or fast food.
Top Tips for Holiday Meal Planning
1. Plan Meals Based on Kitchen Equipment
Before starting your holiday meal planning, it’s essential to know what equipment you’ll actually have available to use. For example, if you love a morning smoothie, will your rental have a blender? If your kids only eat toast for breakfast, will there be a toaster?
2. Research Local Grocery Stores
While it’s great to book a holiday home with incredible views and away from the city bustle, sometimes that means you’re limited in grocery stores. When planning holiday meals, it’s important to consider where you’ll buy your ingredients and supplies.
You don’t want to spend most of your day searching for grocery stores or spending your holiday budget on fuel. Not to mention the time it takes to familiarize yourself with the layout of a new grocery store.
3. Consider Dietary Restrictions and Preferences
If someone in the family is celiac, it can sometimes make eating out difficult, especially while traveling. This is another reason why I find holiday meal planning important. It can be hard to find some ingredients we might need to make our favorite gluten-free dishes.
However, it’s also important to note if you’re trying to find easy holiday meals for a group, not just your family. It will save you so much money, stress, and time if you find out everyone’s dietary restrictions and preferences before you arrive. Whether there are allergies, vegans, keto restrictions, or simply picky eaters, it’s best to find out before going grocery shopping or starting meal planning. This will give you more time to research and plan meals everyone will enjoy.
4. Create a Shopping List and Stick to It
While one of the many joys of traveling is trying new foods, the main point of holiday meal planning is to save time and money, so when you have a list, stick to it. Don’t be tempted to throw extra items into the cart because you might regret it later. Arriving at a new grocery store without a list can feel overwhelming and stressful trying to find and remember all the items you need. You’re more likely to miss ingredients and have to make return trips, wasting your precious holiday time.
5. Plan Ahead with Frozen Meals
This is one of my favorite tips for holiday meal planning as it will save you so much time. Whether it’s a long journey or after a busy day of sightseeing, having freezer meals is such a relief. Not only can you reheat them in minutes (even without a microwave), but you’ll also have minimal washing up. You might spend some time on your first batch-cooking day to fill your freezer, or you could bring frozen meals in a cooler from home. Either way, it can save you lots of time and money during your holiday.
6. Use One-Pot Meals and Slow Cookers
No one wants to spend their holiday sweating over a hot stove or at the sink with piles of dishes. Instead, let one-pot meals and slow cookers do the hard work for you. Recipes like minestrone or risotto are some of my favorite easy holiday meals for a group as they are quick, healthy, and delicious. Take a look at the VerdeGusto recipes, you’ll find plenty of ideas.
Slow cookers also make holiday meal planning a breeze because you can dump your ingredients in and then spend time with your family instead of babysitting a pan on the stove. Slow cookers are also ideal if you need to batch cook for the duration of your stay or feed a crowd. Again, saving valuable holiday time.
7. Use Leftovers for Lunch or as Ingredients in Another Meal
Use leftovers for lunch or as ingredients elsewhere as this will save you another trip to the store and keep you out of the kitchen. For example, if you make something like pesto chicken or roast chicken for dinner one night, those leftovers could be used as a topping on homemade pizza or in white chicken chili or tortilla soup the following day.
When planning holiday meals, I always try to make a bigger batch than necessary to ensure we have leftovers for the next day. If you’re already cooking the food, it requires no extra effort but can save brainpower and energy trying to find another meal idea.
8. Bring Non-Perishable and Stable Items from Home
If you don’t want to struggle navigating a new grocery store or spend time shopping during your holiday, a great idea is to bring ingredients from home. Stocking up on pantry staples means you have the basics covered for your holiday meal plan.
It also saves food waste because there’s nothing worse than reaching the end of your holiday with cupboards full of food you have to throw away. Instead, start with non-perishables you can bring from home and build your shopping list around that. It will minimize waste and the amount of time needed to spend on holiday meal planning or grocery shopping.
9. Bring or Order Meal Kits
There are so many companies offering meal kits nowadays, you probably have your pick. Even if you don’t have a visit planned, a holiday is the perfect opportunity to try a meal kit as it saves you time, effort, and food waste.
If you’re not familiar, meal kits are a convenient way to have healthy, balanced meals delivered to your home (or rental). They generally come with recipes and corresponding prepped ingredients. This means you don’t need to think about a holiday meal plan or buy so much grocery shopping—the meal kit covers it.
Meal kits can also be a fun activity since the whole family can help prepare dinner, so it won’t just be one of you stuck in the kitchen. It’s worth noting that most kits only provide dinner ideas. You’ll still need to provide breakfast and lunch, as well as other essentials like tea, coffee, and snacks.
10. Order a Meal from a Local Restaurant
After all, you’re on holiday, so if you fancy a night off or simply crave your favorite restaurant meal, this can be a great option if you’re looking for easy holiday meals for a group.
When you have many mouths to feed, eating out can be a hassle. From the time it takes to get everyone ready to organizing transport and finding something on the menu for everyone’s taste, the experience often requires more effort than it’s worth.
Instead, if you provide a meal from a local restaurant, you can relax in your rental enjoying delicious food you don’t need to cook. You can also use leftovers the next day.
11. Bring a Water Filter
Often, when planning holiday meals, we focus too much on food and forget an essential element: water! Many holiday homes don’t have filtered water, and it can be hard to know if the water filter in the fridge is up to date. Instead of wasting money and polluting the earth with bottled plastic water, I recommend bringing a travel water filter.
Even if the water in your holiday home is considered safe, sometimes switching to unfiltered water can cause stomach upset, not to mention it tastes very different from the water you are used to.
I hope these holiday meal planning tips have given you some food for thought for your next trip. When you have suitcases to pack, transport to organize, and tickets to remember, having food covered is one less thing to worry about. Having a well-thought-out holiday meal plan will ensure your family makes the most of their holiday time. Planning delicious and balanced meals will minimize angry arguments and save you money along the way: that sounds like holiday happiness to me.
