Author Topic: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband  (Read 5606 times)

Melisande

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Our life is fairly mustachian except that my husband really, really likes to travel and he is not going to give this part of his life up. So, of course, we are going away again this coming holiday weekend. I'm working on getting inexpensive hotels (we've already looked into Air BNB), but this time I also thought I'd bring along our own food so that we don't have to eat out for so many meals.

I've already gotten him into the occasional bag lunch from time-to-time, but now I want to go a step farther and make a take-along main course salad for dinner (wheatberry w/ nuts and celery I'm thinking) which I could bring along in a cooler. Hubby normally loves my cooking (and I've gotten raves from lots of others too). But when I mentioned this to him, the first thing out of his mouth was: "Won't we get sick?" When I went camping with my family when I was young, my mother always brought along a similar kind of salad and we never got sick. I'm assuming you just make sure you have enough ice surrounding the salad in the cooler and there you go. Besides, wheatberries and nuts are not particularly perishable. But how to convince Mr. I-love-you-but-I-love-my-comfort too?

okits

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2016, 04:19:42 PM »
Can you leave a food thermometer in the salad and show him the temperature just before you eat, to demonstrate that it's been safely stored while you were traveling?

undercover

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2016, 04:33:50 PM »
The only thing you can do is show him the benefits to doing this. It's up to him to give you the time to make your case of course. Only he can decide of the pros are worth the cons. I wouldn't take it any farther than that.

annod

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2016, 09:47:04 PM »
This is the reason I prefer airbnb to hotels, if you book a place with full kitchen access. When we stay at an airbnb, we make our own breakfast both days, and we try to make lunch or dinner, so we eat out only one meal a day that way. (In a hotel, you can't even heat up leftovers. You are forced to eat out all meals. It is not just expensive, also not as healthy).

11ducks

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2016, 01:46:30 AM »
Can you bring the in assembled ingredients and make the salad when you get they? ( essentially the same, I know, but if it seems 'safer' for him, it may work?).

We are on a hol weekend, and have brought along foods for breakfast/dinner/snack, along with bread and spread for an easy lunch (or we eat lunch out at times- it is a holiday!).

What we take:
Eggs, bacon, tomato, bread
Pancake mix and milk
Chips/fruit
Ravioli and pasta sauce/sausages and salad mix

Why not stop at the local grocery store when you arrive in town? Even buying luxury ingredients at the store is way cheaper than eating out.

Melisande

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #5 on: July 01, 2016, 03:30:16 AM »
Thanks for the suggestions. The good news -- he's already happily given in. Maybe he was just joking about getting sick. We've been married almost 28 years and still sometimes I don't totally get him.

SimplyMarvie

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #6 on: July 02, 2016, 10:41:49 AM »
We almost always do this, but to piggy-back on this awesome thread, what are some good food that people have packed in for AirBnB/Rental Apartment stays? We do a lot of this kind of travel, and I really need to expand my food horizons.

So hey, ya'll. What are you cooking?

Metric Mouse

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #7 on: July 02, 2016, 04:50:57 PM »
I usually just go to a local grocery store and pick up the stuff I need for that meal. If I am (or, more likely my friend) really planning ahead, I'll have some seasonings measured out and packed up, but sometimes it's just so nice to experience a local market and buy a nice simple fish for sashimi or a good local cheese and bread loaf to make sandwiches.  I've found that to be the happy medium between packing a week's worth of bologna in a cooler and eating out at expensive places every day.  I like to travel light, and a bulky cooler packed full of food from home just seems silly, unless I was camping several clicks outside of Coober Pedy or visiting somewhere in Africa that didn't sell edible food, I'm not sure I would consider bringing my own from home.

abhe8

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #8 on: July 02, 2016, 09:19:34 PM »
I always bring home food when we travel. It's usually to a family members house or a condo, with a kitchen. When driving, my go to are frozen meatballs and frozen taco filling. Eggs, yogurt, fruit and veggies, pbj sandwiches and trail mix. Then we pick up taco fixings, veggies to have with the meatballs, etc. My kids eat so much better when it is their normal food, it saves money, health and time. Wins all around.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2016, 02:51:05 PM by abhe8 »

Seppia

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2016, 03:29:15 AM »
If you're staying in Airbnb why would you need to prepare in advance?
Just buy the ingredients and prepare in the room.

I am also in the "I love to travel and will never give that up" camp, and by far the best way to save money is to travel outside of the typical dates.
We would stay in NYC for all long weekends, then go on vacation in August, go to the Caribbean early December or February, etc.

Obviously not everybody can do this, but the price differences can be striking.

shelivesthedream

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2016, 03:45:20 AM »
When we went on holiday earlier this year, we decided that we would eat either lunch or dinner out but not both. For the other meal, we just went to the supermarket and bought bread, butter, cheese, ham/salami/similar and lettuce. It was so good (French supermarket OMG real food) that we happily ate it once a day for a week and satisfied any desire for variety with our eating out option for the other meal.

Jouer

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2016, 11:06:32 AM »
I second (third? fourth?) the idea of buying the groceries at the vacation location, especially with AirBnB. The main reason I like to do so is I like to purchase food local to the vacation region and try my hand at cooking a local dish.

Also, not exactly what you are talking about but.....my wife and I love road trips. We keep hearing from friends that "well, that drive will take 9 hours" and they don't understand how we can do it in 7, without excessive speeding. The answer: the packed lunch!! We make sandwiches or wraps and have nuts/chips, filled water bottles with us in the car and we eat while we drive. More affordable that stopping for lunch along the way and as a bonus, saves time as well. (file this under: works best when you don't have young kids with you)

 

fishnfool

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2016, 11:21:00 AM »
We're on a 10 day vacation right now and our first stop on the way to our 1 bedroom condo with full kitchen was Costco. We bought meat for 7 dinners, some vege's, coffee and a few other items. Later that evening we bought a few things at the local safeway. So we're pretty set on food for most of our trip.

I did pack a few things from home. Protein bars, oatmeal and a zip lock full of protein powder. We also ate bbq'ed chicken breast and snacks on the 5hr plane ride over here.

So yes it does save you quite a bit when you can pack your own food. I've even packed my favorite spices on a few trips.

Aloha

SimplyMarvie

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #13 on: July 04, 2016, 11:18:14 AM »
If you're staying in Airbnb why would you need to prepare in advance?
Just buy the ingredients and prepare in the room.


A couple of reasons, really.

First, by the time we get back to the room at night we're usually both ravenous and tired. We generally get up early, eat a quick and high protein breakfast and skeddadle for whatever plans we have that day. We grab lunch out, and then get back to the room between 3 and 4 and want to eat something warm, tasty, filling and usually with protein. What I do NOT want to have happen (so, what usually happens when we travel...) is that we get back to the room, relax and then everyone goes "Hey, mom! What's dor dinner?" and we have to motivate to shop, plan and cook for dinner when we're all pooped and don't want to. I really want something that I can easily heat up or put together that involves limited cooking/planning/thinking.

Secondly, for this kind of travel we're usually within driving distance of home and traveling for the weekend or a long weekend. So when we buy groceries on-site, we end up wasting time, money and food -- we end up buying a whole other container of something when we've already got some at home.

Stressful and frugal I can deal with. Wasteful and easy, I can deal with. Stressful AND wasteful just seems like silliness to me. :)

abhe8

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #14 on: July 04, 2016, 02:54:43 PM »
I totally agree!! Fixing the food before hand means more relaxing on the trip. I tend to bring cooked frozen meats, as they travel well in my cooler and are ready to hear up for a quick dinner.

Seppia

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Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #15 on: July 04, 2016, 03:13:31 PM »
Cool
I guess the main difference between our points of view might be cultural.
I'm Italian and "wasting time" to buy groceries is actually a pleasure for us.

On vacation we keep it short, but our usual plan is

Big breakfast
Lots of activity (we always lived in big cities, so vacation = nature for us)
Eat quick packed lunch
On the way back stop by supermarket
Buy stuff for dinner and next day.

It doesn't take awful long for a VERY satisfying dinner to be prepared:

Pasta with tomato sauce made from scratch: approx 40 minutes from start to eating

Piadina with mozzarella tomatoes and ham: 10 minutes tops 

A burger, etc

On the days where not possible, we eat out dinner and we go to the supermarket in the morning.

Melisande

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #16 on: July 04, 2016, 10:44:47 PM »
Cool
I guess the main difference between our points of view might be cultural.
I'm Italian and "wasting time" to buy groceries is actually a pleasure for us.

On vacation we keep it short, but our usual plan is

Big breakfast
Lots of activity (we always lived in big cities, so vacation = nature for us)
Eat quick packed lunch
On the way back stop by supermarket
Buy stuff for dinner and next day.

It doesn't take awful long for a VERY satisfying dinner to be prepared:

Pasta with tomato sauce made from scratch: approx 40 minutes from start to eating

Piadina with mozzarella tomatoes and ham: 10 minutes tops 

A burger, etc

On the days where not possible, we eat out dinner and we go to the supermarket in the morning.

If we were ever to get an AirBNB accommodation with kitchen access (not really an option for us, but that's another story), we would probably wind up shopping too. However, there are certain things that I would want to bring from home, or at least carry home once I bought them on vacation, e.g. olive oil.

BTW, the main dish salad I prepared -- wheatberry, pistachio, raisin, celery & coconut w/ curry lime dressing -- was a hit. My husband loved it and I think that we actually had a better time cocooning in our hotel room with our yummy salad (after a long day out birding) than we would have had going out to eat.

SimplyMarvie

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #17 on: July 05, 2016, 11:24:25 AM »
Cool
I guess the main difference between our points of view might be cultural.
I'm Italian and "wasting time" to buy groceries is actually a pleasure for us.

I love going into cool foreign grocery stores, and we always stop for fruit and cheese at the side of the road. But we're mostly traveling within the same country that we live in, so one Carrefour market really looks about the same as the next. :)

bonjourliz

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Re: Bringing home cooked food on vacation -- how to convince husband
« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2016, 07:58:25 PM »
We almost always stay in a condo or house if the trip is more than a couple days.  We plan ahead what meals we will cook and bring along the necessary spices. Like our fajita seasoning mix or a lemon pepper blend for fish.  I've also brought things like precooked and frozen pancakes/waffles, a few sleeves of Popsicles  (the kids love them but wouldn't eat a whole box on the vacation),  a week's portion of oatmeal, tea bags, sugar for coffee, a handful of coffee filters, condiments....  basically anything we will use, but not use *up* on the trip.

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