When planning a vacation for our crew, food is one of the first things I work on planning. Aside from where we'll be staying anyways. We love getting a rental house. And we have several things that are non-negotiable. It *must* be a two story house because we have zero stairs in our home. It's too hot in Florida for a two story home. But that's just my opinion. 😃 It also *must* have a pool. Even though we live in Florida, we don't own a pool. We got one a few years ago, one of those inflatable above ground pools, but we kinda killed it. Ahem. But that's another story.
So! Here we are, at a two story rental house for a week. We opted to go with a private owner instead of a rental house company this time. So the outside area is bigger than we've gotten in the past. Very nice! We've had several meals outside near the pool and the kids have had some snacks out there too.
Back to the topic at hand though. Vacation meals for large families. Since this is such a big part of my planning, I thought I'd share what we are doing.
My husband gave me a budget of $250 for this week. WAY more than I spend for a normal week. But hey, it's vacation. We rarely do snacks in our home, but "since it's vacation" (we used that phrase a *lot* haha) and we're spending more time outside, I knew we would both want and need snacks this week. When I started making my grocery order up, snacks was the first thing I worked on haha! Not sure what this says about me....🤔
We arrived Thursday evening, so I only had to plan dinner for that day, and we'll head home Wednesday, so only breakfast was needed to be planned. I enjoy being in the kitchen, so I usually do all the cooking. My husband tries to step in and do the clean up so that I can get a break from that.
Dinner - ham and/or turkey sandwiches, chips, and ice cream bars
Friday
Bfast - fun yogurt cups (m&m's or Oreo yogurt were the choices), bagels, frozen French toast sticks
I spent about $170 at Aldi's. We opted to use Instacart and have it delivered not long after we arrived Thursday afternoon. I could have gone myself, but it just made life so much easier to have it delivered. And this vacation is all about resting, so using Instacart really fit the bill. My shopper wasn't able to find a few items, so I took one of the kids out the next morning to get those items.....and a few others that jumped in the cart.
When you have 8 kids eating snacks, it goes really fast. Crazy fast! #9 is only 5 months, so no eating for him yet. Monday, Daddy and I ran out during nap time to get a few more things to tide us over. Did we need to do that run? Pffttt nope! But hey! It's vacation! I still have a bit of money left too.
When I'm planning vacation meals, I keep it simple. Simple in that it's easy to make, simple in that it doesn't take a lot of ingredients, and simple in that its easy to clean up. I bring some basic seasonings with me and a couple of pans. Rental houses are usually stocked pretty well with basic kitchen items....but it doesn't always cut it for a large family. I remember one house we got years ago I had to make the same dish twice because nothing was big enough for me to make it in. haha! Now I take some items with me. 😁
If you need inspiration for feeding larger groups on vacation, search Pinterest! One thing I've searched for is "meals for family reunions" and found all sorts of fun ideas! I also use this when we're are hosting a larger group. I have a page called Large Family Budget Meals you can check out. I don't have a ton there, but I'm adding to it. :) Jamerrill over at Large Family Table has a couple of YouTube videos up about her vacation meals. She's fun to watch. :)
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