#106: How to Meal Plan Before, During, and After Vacation

It's almost Summer and we're tackling vacation meal planning in this episode!

Vacations are for slowing down and making memories, not stressing about what’s for dinner. In this episode, we’re talking about how to meal plan - before, during, and after your trip - to keep things simple and stress-free.

Whether you're road-tripping with snacks in the cooler or coming home to an already-planned grocery list, a little planning goes a long way! Enjoy!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner.

Roni: Hello. Welcome back to the Plan podcast. Today Riley and I are going to be talking about meal planning for vacation. We had a dinner dilemma that was all about this. I think it might've been our very first dinner dilemma question, and I feel like we had so much to say, so we just decided to do a whole episode on it.

, It feels like a very. Opportune moment to talk about meal planning for vacation since we are on the cusp of summer vacation for most people. I think we're gonna break it down to tips for before you leave for vacation, tips for while you're on vacation, and tips for after vacation.

Riley: My first, I'm over here grinning, which no one can see 'cause this is a podcast. But [00:01:00] you might be the kind of person who's hearing this and saying, who in the world meal plans on vacation? Isn't that what a vacation's for? Not meal planning.

Roni: So

Riley: I don't disagree. I don't disagree, but I think every trip you take is different.

And not every trip I take is one where I'm completely free from cooking.

Roni: Yeah. I think though that this is why it's important to think about the, before you leave for your trip situation. So I, I have a couple things to talk about with this. Related to this. One of the ideas of before you leave for your vacation is. To plan some meals for post vacation before you even leave.

My husband and I recently went on a, a one week vacation and I did this and I was so grateful to my past self. When we got back from vacation, I, I only put like three meals on the meal plan. It wasn't anything special, but just having that jumping off point where the next day after we got home I could go to the grocery store and, you know, just [00:02:00] buy the things that we needed for those few recipes.

It made it so much easier to just like get back into the groove of life. I didn't have to sit there and look at my phone and be like, I have no idea

it was the best move ever. I think everybody needs to do that When you're create, if you're going on vacation and you're making your current meal plan, just add a couple recipes for after, even if you change those recipes around or delete the ones that you put on your meal plan, at least at that point.

You're not just like starting staring at a blank page kind of a thing. You have a little bit of something to build off of and you can either say, Hmm, this me, this recipe doesn't actually sound good anymore. I'm gonna swap it out for this one. At least you have that idea in your head, because otherwise you just end up sitting there being like, I have zero ideas, and that feels bad.

Riley: Yes. So yeah, mostly I wanna go on vacation. When I get back. I'm too, I'm like tired from my vacation. The last thing I wanna do is make a new meal plan. So doing it on the front end, it's just a little save, it's like a [00:03:00] little piece of candy for your future self. Like, I did this thing. Then you just go to the grocery store.

Putting things in the freezer. I, I feel like. That stuff is fine, but I feel like in this, usually I feel like this pre meal planning for when you get back is the best way to do it. Potentially having something to eat when you get back is great. 'cause who wants to go straight from the airport to the grocery store?

Nobody. So having something at home is super helpful. Often what we do before we go on vacation is we eat everything we have. We're, we have no eggs left, we have no vegetables left. Every apple, like all those kinds of things, like everything we ate, everything we had in our fridge is pretty much gone.

So I do try to have some things in the freezer that are easy to pull out and eat. Um, maybe even like some kind of like breakfast sandwich, breakfast, like microwaveable breakfast something or other. Not the greatest, but at least it gets us through when we get back.

Roni: So that was another suggestion that I had for. Before you leave for your trip is have like a number one. If you're creating your meal plan, maybe [00:04:00] plan less than you would normally plan, just so that way if you do have leftovers or something, you're not left with a bunch of extra food in your fridge. Or just like random stuff that you're throwing in the freezer that you might not ever pull out and eat.

Um. And I think it's really good to then have like a fend for yourself kind of a night, you know, maybe the night before you leave for vacation. It's just like we're eating the random stuff that we have. We're reducing the amount of waste as much as possible. I think especially if you're leaving for an extended period of time, if you're just leaving for a long weekend, I think a lot of stuff is gonna stay good.

But if you're leaving for an extended period of time, I would just try to. Purge as much. As much as possible. And when you're making that meal plan, I would recommend thinking about the type of produce that you're putting in your recipes. So maybe don't buy the really delicate leafy greens and cilantro and those things if you know you're not potentially going to eat them all.

I would say get things like. [00:05:00] Cabbage and carrots and stuff that can stay in your refrigerator for a week and not go bad. 'cause it's hardier vegetable.

Riley: Absolutely. Yeah, we do the same thing, the fend for yourself kind of thing. Usually I'll try to keep, like, depends on when we're leaving for the trip, right? And all of this, this is all a planner's dream, right? You, you and I are planners. So we look at the calendar and we say, okay, I. We're leaving Wednesday night for this trip, which means that the week ahead has to be planned accordingly.

The vegetables we buy need to be used up. We don't wanna overbuy. And so if this is not like your forte, just maybe giving it a little bit of forethought, it, it is helpful. So like, hopefully this is like one of those like pushes in the right direction for people who aren't as, um. Planner centric as you and I are.

'cause we're, we know we're leaving on Wednesday, which means that single egg can't be in our fridge the entire week. It has to be eaten. Or I'll boil it so I take it with me on the road trip to the airport or whatever. But I am the same way. I'll [00:06:00] plan just a few things in the middle night before. Is gonna be okay.

We've got yogurt, so someone's having a yogurt bowl. We've got berries. Those have to be eaten. And you can make a conglomeration of a dinner just to get us through, because I don't wanna leave anything in the fridge while we're gone.

Roni: You're so right that this is just like, I, I almost like relish in this because I, I do love planning, but it is this idea that we've talked about multiple times where like you have your, so you have your day that you're leaving for vacation. Just work backwards from it, to, if you're leaving in a week, like just work backwards from the day to try and like figure things out.

I have had this. It is silly to say it's an epiphany because it's the stuff that we say all the time, but I have like a phrase for it right now that feels like my epiphany, which is that easy doesn't happen on accident, right? easy comes with intentionality and that like planning ahead, you know, like your life is easy when you actually go through these steps and do these [00:07:00] things.

So just think about that. Easy is not accidental. You have to like put in a little bit of work and then things get easy.

Riley: Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that. And it makes so much sense, right? Like, we're gonna get back from our trip and my meal plan's gonna already be made. Why? Because I did it before I left, so I'm, my life is easier when I get back. But it wasn't an accident, it wasn't a happenstance. It wasn't that I just walked into the grocery store.

In the grocery store, gave me the food that I. Was gonna eat. I had to do the work for myself. I love it. Easy doesn't happen on accident. That is so accurate.

Roni: All right, let's move on to a meal planning during vacation. Uh, if this happens to be a vacation that involves meal planning, not, we are taking a vacation from meal planning.

It's not necessarily just meal planning though. Like I, I'm kind of personally considering this. Just like ideas for while you're on vacation. I think the dinner dilemma that we answered, the person [00:08:00] mentioned that I. I think her mother-in-law brings like spices to them when, with them, when they go on vacation.

And so that made me think of the idea that like if I'm going, if I'm driving somewhere and we're staying at a home stay, I pretty much always bring my own chef's knife because I've rarely ever stayed at a home stay where they had quality cutlery. And to me that's like the most important part of cooking is like.

I get really frustrated when the knife is bad. so you could also bring, you know, any of your own, small utensils like that, that just like make you a happier person when you're cooking. And so I kind of consider that part of this, like during travel situation, I.

Riley: Yeah, that's great. I, I have done this in a variety of ways. We went to Hawaii one time and ate out every meal, and we came back and we said, we will never do that again because it was so expensive. It [00:09:00] felt like we were constantly eating, because you go from one restaurant, you do an activity, then it's restaurant time again.

And we didn't do that. And so we, we just basically walked away from that trip and we, we said, we've gotta do it differently the next time. What can we do different? So we rented a house. The next time we went to Hawaii, we rented a house, with a kitchen, I think it was actually a condo. So like a tiny little condo with a kitchen.

And it, our planning wasn't extensive because obviously you don't wanna buy too much that you throw away half the stuff you buy. But we just determined that we were gonna eat out for dinner every night. That was set. And then beyond that we said, okay, we wanna have a couple of lunches on the beach, so let's get a little bit of sandwich stuff.

And then I think we chose like three out of the five days we would have breakfast at our condo. So we just got enough, just enough. Um, which is why the planning was helpful because we didn't buy more than we needed. We just had enough for the days and the meals that we planned. We went to the grocery store and spent just a little bit of money on those things, and it covered us and helped the trip feel, [00:10:00] just like, I don't know, feel it felt more relaxing, honestly.

But easy doesn't happen on accident,

Roni: yeah, that's right. Uh, yeah, I think one thing, that's good if you're planning on cooking at like an Airbnb or something, or. Whatever. If your hotel is the type of hotel that has a, like a suite, you know, with a kitchen in it, go check in first and see what kind of stuff is available already at the place.

Like, is there salt and pepper and olive oil, whatever, you know, some like basic things already at the place, or are you gonna need to furnish it with literally everything. Then I think it's just kind of like you pick, pick some basic staples and make sure you have some of those basic staples so that way you're not going to cook dinner and you're like, oh, well we don't have any butter, or we don't have any olive oil.

Like we can't actually make this thing very easily 'cause it's all gonna stick to the pan.

Riley: Yeah, that's a really good piece of advice. And I've definitely gotten myself into trouble where I go back to the Airbnb and there's nothing, or there's no, you know, [00:11:00] pork cooking spray or anything along those lines. No oil. And I probably wouldn't wanna use them if they were there. So like, buying your own is better.

And ever since, like I made the mistake, I've done a better job of saying, okay, we at the minimum need some butter. You know? 'cause you can use that for such a variety of purposes.

Roni: Yeah, I think exactly what you said is really good of like leaving room for going out to eat. Most of the time we go on vacation, we wanna experience whatever the local restaurants are. And so if you, if you are doing some meal planning for a vacation, you know, make sure that. You're not planning every single meal or every single thing.

And like you said, you even left room in breakfast. I mean, I love going out for breakfast, so I always leave room for going out for breakfast. But I think that's, I, I would err on the side of planning less. And then potentially needing to just like do a quick run to the grocery store if you don't feel like going out to eat that night or just, getting pizza or something instead.

I think it's better to err on the side of a little less when you're on vacation.[00:12:00]

Riley: Absolutely. We take an annual trip to Moab every year. And this is like, if you've never been to Moab, it is, we take our Jeep or our Razor and we go and rock crawl and, or we bicycles. I think you bike when you go, hiking, like you're, it's an activity centered vacation spot. We don't usually go for very long.

It's not terribly far from where we are. So we'll go for four days or a long weekend or something like that. But almost every time we've rented a house and we've actually taken. Pre-made meals, like homemade meals taken them. I've done breakfast casserole. I've done like hamburger patties, frozen, so you can just throw 'em on the grill at the house or in a pan at the house.

And we do this with other families, some good friends of ours. So we'll split the food so that they do some and we do some, and then you just take a bunch of sandwich stuff or wrap stuff for lunch so that while you're on the trail or hiking or biking, whatever you're doing, your lunch, you can pack it.

And so that does mean we're taking and [00:13:00] packing coolers with us, but it has honestly made those trips. Amazing. And so again, that's just pre prepping all this food, putting it in the freezer or you know, making patties, put it in Ziploc bags, those kinds of things. And it's, it's worked out really well for us.

And it doesn't take away from the trip 'cause you can relax at the end of the night that part of the work is done. You just throw something in the oven or on the grill. And I don't know, I know that sounds like a lot of effort, but it really does make the trip more enjoyable.

Roni: Well, and if you do it in the same way that you often batch. Cook, we talked about this in the last episode, where you just make an extra portion of whatever you're eating and then it either goes in the fri, the fridge or the freezer. You know, that's a whole meal that you would just bring with you. You just, maybe you save it in a, like an aluminum foil tin instead of saving it in like your glass, Pyrex or something.

I think this is also a good opportunity to bring some of those staples items with you. So like if you like half and half in your [00:14:00] coffee, well, it can be a, you know, you may not wanna go to the grocery store and buy a whole new thing, a half and half if you still have, a half a port of it at your house or something.

So that way you're also not wasting some of the things that you have at your home too. You can just, you know, we have extra grapes, let's just bring 'em with us. You know, like somebody will eat 'em at some point.

Riley: Absolutely. So another example of meal planning on vacation. Um, my entire family, like, so there's like 16 of us. I think it was 16, could be wrong on the number, but it was quite a few people. Um, we all went to the beach and we had one beach house for all of us. Actually I think it was 18 people. And we chose to do every meal at our Airbnb.

And so I actually took on the meal planning portion, who was shocked, nobody. I took on the meal planning portion of this and I was able to use plan to eat in the most functional way possible for vacationing. I was, I added the meals to the planner. I set serving sizes, and. We [00:15:00] ate a lot of very basic meals, but the reason for that was that we didn't wanna go buy every spice 'cause we flew to the beach that we all went to.

And so I didn't wanna fly with spices. I didn't wanna have to go buy every spice and then throw them away afterwards. And so we did a lot of things like tacos where we just bought a packet of taco seasoning to put into the meat that we used. We had things like spaghetti where we had spaghetti sauce and pasta and.

The meat that we used in the side salads and like the one bottle of dressing that everyone used for the salad. Like, those are the kinds of, it was very basic, not super thrilling meals. They were great and they tasted great. They fed everyone from the pickiest to the least picky. But I would say like, if you ever get into this situation, it actually went so smoothly, that I just, I actually took that role on, I did the shopping, I did a grocery pickup while we were at the beach, and it looked like we were feeding an army, but we were.

But it [00:16:00] worked really well and I, it just like, we just did very low level cooking. So like it was, we did hamburgers and I think we didn't, I don't even know what we did. I think we even bought pre. Pre-made patties for that. So it, it actually worked really beautifully and everyone was fed and it was great.

It worked great.

Roni: That sounds awesome, and I'm sure it was easier in Plan to Eat 'cause you just increased the serving sizes of all your recipes and then you got what you needed for 18 people.

Riley: Yeah. For like five days, so it was quite extensive. But it actually, I. I mean, it's like a Plan to eat success story. I would say it went really well.

Roni: I love it. Let's talk a little bit about meal planning, returning home from vacation. Say you didn't do your future self a favor and you did not add any recipes to your meal plan before you left on vacation. One thing that I have done, my husband and I went to Europe for three weeks, a couple years ago, and I realized on the day that we were coming home that.

I had no [00:17:00] recipes planned. I had no meal plan, and I had not thought about meal planning for three weeks. We had been eating baguettes and pastries and schnitzel, and I had not thought about it at all. So what I did was actually while we were in the airport waiting to board our flight, I. I planned some recipes so that I had a few things ready by the time we got home.

And the main thing that I did was I just kind of scrolled through my meal plan for what we were eating before vacation and was like, well, it's been three weeks since we ate that. I'm just gonna replan it and it's gonna be really easy.

Riley: Yeah, I would say I've done that plenty of times. I even made a comment earlier in this episode where I said, who wants to do that on the way home from the airport? But I say that, and I'm guilty of that almost every time , I'll, I am guilty of saying to my car, full of my family, Hey guys, what do y'all want to eat this week?

And everyone is like, we don't wanna eat ever again. Because that's how everyone always feels at the end of vacation. At least my family does, including me. So like, there's just this piece of like, ugh, who you just can [00:18:00] hardly get up the energy to do it. And so I often plan things that are tried and true.

So like, just like you said, you're going back in your meal plan, seeing what you were eating before vacation. I do the same thing. I'm like, well, I know we love this and that's easy to make. So I'm not going wild. But it usually also involves like going through my fridge and saying, we have no eggs, we have no condiments, we have no fresh fruit or fresh vegetables.

So usually that grocery trip coming back from vacation is a pretty pricey one. And so some of the ways that I try to help myself with that we, we touch on and talk about all the time, but that's going through my freezer and saying, what can I cook from what I already have? What um, do I already have in my pantry so that I don't have to go buy it again?

Do I have some mayonnaise buried somewhere in here? Or do I have a frozen pizza? Like, because sometimes that's what you gotta do and we'll have the frozen pizza the night we get home or whatever the circumstance is. But to cut down on those costs, going through my pantry, seeing what we actually have going through my freezer and seeing what we could [00:19:00] pull out to eat.

Um, it really does help cut back on some of those costs because I feel like the grocery, I feel like it is the most expensive of the whole year is the trip when you get back from the grocery, when you get back from vacation.

Roni: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that that, you touched on a good point there, that this is something that I do when I, I guess this is kind of a pre-planning thing that I do before vacation, but it's for. Or post vacation, which is, I'd make sure that we have some sort of really easy meal at the house, whether it is just a frozen pizza or it's like a staple recipe that comes together really easy with things that we already have.

But a lot of the times, from where we live, it's even further for you, Riley, but we live about an hour and a half away from the airport. And it's all just on the interstate, so it's not like there's a great place to stop and have dinner on your way home from the airport. And like you said, at that point in time, you're like, I'm kind of tired of eating out.

I'm ready for just like a wholesome meal at my house. So I always make sure that I have something to eat at home. Um, so that way I don't have to go to the grocery store immediately. It can at least wait [00:20:00] until the next day. And I know you are a big fan of grocery pickup and delivery, so if you're somebody who.

If you're currently like making your, your meal plan while you're in the airport or you're in your car ride on the way home, you could also send it to grocery delivery and potentially your groceries will be there for you the same day that you get home.

Riley: I have done that. It just. Depends on how much cargo we have. I mean, this might sound like really obvious, but, uh, sometimes we stop at the grocery store and get a salad kit and a rotisserie chicken or some kind of instant rice. Not us. We don't usually do like the pre-made sides at the grocery store, but some, or maybe some fruit and a bagged salad and a rotisser