Not too long ago, I went on a trip to San Diego with my old college roommates. It was a blast, and I would highly suggest visiting there anytime. Now, don’t get me wrong, they have amazing food, and of course we had to try some of it, but spending money at restaurants for every meal gets really old. So, before going on the trip we agreed we’d buy food to make breakfast a few times, make a nice dinner, lunches, and have things leftover for snacks.
Because I was focused on starting the blog at this time, I was determined to come up with a plan to feed the three of us for the four days we would be on vacation. And that’s exactly what we did! Here are my 5 tips for planning a no food wasted vacation:
1. Choose your meals. Start a conversation with the people you’re going on the trip with, and figure out how many meals they want to make. We decided we’d make dinner once, and lunch and breakfast twice.
2. Are there any requests? You also need to figure out what they like, what they don’t like, and if there are any foods they really want to eat during their time away. Then go from there!
Friend 1: I would like to have some fruits and veggies while we’re there, and you can never go wrong with some homemade guac
Friend 2: Let’s add some seafood in the recipe, and obviously we need a cheese board!
3. Start with a recipe in mind. When we started planning our trip, I knew there was a recipe I wanted to try, so I wrote down what we would need for it and thought about the other ways we could use some of the ingredients.
For example, I knew I wanted to make a steak and asparagus recipe that incorporated limes. Cool. What’s something I can put lime juice in? Guac. Perfect, because we already knew we wanted to make that. What goes in guac? Okay, but what are we going to do if there’s leftover jalapeños or tomatoes? Put them in our eggs. Love it!
You get the picture.
4. Planplanplanplanplan. If you know me, you know this is my favorite step! The next thing to do is begin thinking about how much everyone is going to eat. Here are a few things I kept in mind:
- I estimated that each of us would eat around 4 oz of meat per meal.
Since we were having steak and shrimp for dinner, we got 1 lb of meat.
We also wanted to make sandwiches twice. But in this case, I rounded the estimate down to 1 lb because adding bread and cheese makes the meal more filling.
Breakfast isn’t complete without bacon. We planned on making breakfast twice, so we decided 1 lb would be perfect.
- For breakfast, I estimated an average of 2 eggs per person, per meal. So if we made breakfast with eggs twice, that would be 6 eggs.
- As for snacks, I knew none of us would leave leftover guac, cheese, or crackers laying around. So in this case, we went with the suggested serving sizes.
5. Make a grocery list ahead of time. This one might seem obvious, but I’ve been in too many situations where I didn’t have a grocery list and over-bought at the store. Let’s be real, we’ve all been there. Here’s what ours looked like to give you some inspiration:
Steak (½ lb)
Shrimp (½ lb)
Lunch meat (1 lb)
Bacon (1 lb)
Sliced cheese (½ lb)
Block of cheese (1)
Eggs (6)
Tomatoes (2 roma)
Cilantro (1 bunch)
Jalapeno (1)
Avocados (2)
Onion (1 small)
Garlic (2 cloves)
Limes (2)
Asparagus (½ lb)
Veggies
Hummus
Tortilla chips
Crackers
Bread rolls
Popcorn
Mayo (tiny jar)
Olive oil (tiny bottle)
Yogurt (1 big tub)
Strawberries (1)
Blueberries (1)
Tip: If you’re staying at an Airbnb like we did, the next people aren’t going to complain if you leave bagged popcorn or any basic cooking ingredients!
Now, this tactic isn’t perfect. I can honestly tell you we did end up throwing a few things away (1 bread roll, half a tomato, some cilantro, some limes, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting about). Just remember that a little bit of planning can a long way. You can save money and minimize food waste without eating the same thing for every meal. Ask my roomies, we ate pretty dang good for those four days!
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