Meal Planning for Self Catering

As you all know we’re currently at The Barn for a lovely 10-day trip, but with it being self-catering we had to plan ahead for food and this took a lot of work as we don’t like spending a fortune on food! We had to sit down and see what we had, what wanted and what we could take with us in the car. We knew had plans to go out for dinner last night we needed seven dinners, food for lunches, snacks and breakfast options!

Here’s how we went about getting it right…

We first sat down and thought about meals we enjoy having; fajitas, spaghetti bolognese, sweet chilli salmon, steak,

We then worked out what we already had for each meal; chicken, fajita kits, sauces, pasta, mince, salmon etc.

We then worked out if they were things we could take on a four-hour car journey; sauces, kits, condiments, pasta, cereals are all more than ok in the car! Our meat was all frozen as we bulk buy from Costco so we packed this up in a cool box with plenty of ice packs so we could defrost as we needed during this time away. We also threw in our frozen veg with these so we could eat healthy!

We then drew up a list of items that would require picking up along the way such as hams, bread and cheese that would be tricky to take with us! We didn’t want the hams freezing in the cool box and the dates on bread are always far too short!

Crisps, tea bags and chocolate were fine for the journey so these went in with the dry goods, but milk was purchased on route.When packing items like pasta, and cereal we knew we would be using these on more than one occasion

When packing items like pasta, and cereal we knew we would be using these on more than one occasion, but as we buy large boxes of cereal and 3kg bags of pasta we were saving money so it’s worthwhile.

We obviously took some alcohol with us but we always buy the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that’s on offer. They’re usually all great so we save a few pennies there too!

Have you been self catering before?