If you self cater on holidays - what sort of meals do you make?

Yes this! DC have now grown out of children's menus so it costs a fortune to eat out. Even a quick coffee stop comes in at around £25 because DH always orders a cake and then everyone else wants one.

The same stuff I make at home. If SC in the UK I bring bags of ingredients from home. If we are abroad I end up having to buy what we need to make bolognese ort burgers or other "normal" food. My DD as ASD and won't eat new things. No point telling me she needs to try them or she will eat if she gets hungry enough - she won't, we've tried it!. So DP and I eat out or eat exotic and I cook the same old stuff for DD. Luckily she likes steak and potatoes so that's almost ubiquetous.

I do a menu before we leave. Usually then get a delivery from one of the Supermarkets near the accommodation ( most of them deliver one way or the other), the day after arrival, for most of the food stuffs. Some nights we will eat out of course - but we drive down to the accommodation, so like someone else said, I take some stuff from home with me - like spices and olive oil etc - and if I need something I didn't take with me, then I'll buy some locally and take it home again!

Spag Bol
Buy a rotisserie chicken and make sides
Mixed grill
Omelette

These were when we were skiing. There was just a stove and microwave, no oven

Pasta and jar of tomato sauce, plus red peppers, chorizo

Chicken fajitas (use a sachet of fajita spice and buy wraps, peppers, onions, fresh salsa)

Hard boiled egg/cheese/ham/tuna or mackeral with various salads - add new potatoes or nice crusty bread or couscous (sachet of Mediterranean couscous very tasty)

BBQs with salad

noodles with stir fry sauce and veg (if I can be bothered)

nice pizzas and salad

We don’t make a big effort but we do buy a small bottle of olive oil and a bottle of balsamic vinegar and some nice cheese and baguettes - often dh and I just have that and some salad every day for a week!

Stuff in the slow cooker (Bolognese pasta, sausage casserole, steak casserole etc)
Toasties are a MUST, Pizza, chilli and rice.
Everything we would normally have at home ad well as occasionally a take out chippy and some papa johns thrown in.

If you really want to self-cater, you could take a selection of sauce/casserole mixes and just buy fresh stuff there, they're dead easy and quite good.

I think this every time I read threads about food. People suggesting lists of meals my kids won’t touch 😂

I plan my self catering trips around the availability of suitable takeaway food. Son is autistic and has quite restricted eating habits and it’s my holiday too so I don’t want to be cooking too much. A disposable BBQ one night and pasta and jarred sauce are a backup.

Depends where we go.
In the uk I stock up my freezer with simple batch cooked meals like curry/casserole/pasta sauce and take it with us (holiday cottages with freezer) so all I have to do is heat it/cook pasta. With casserole I’d just have with a crusty baguette.
Abroad we don’t tend to eat main meals in the villa so I’d just stock up on salad stuff/cheeses etc for lunches and have fruit/yogurt/toast for breakfast. We’ve had the odd BBQ or simple pasta dish when abroad.
I have taken packet spice/seasoning mixes abroad with me to add to chicken.

Rarely cook evening meals but if I do it’s going to be a kit meal eg the ones with meat, veg and stir fry sauce all in a pack, Lidl does one, or a caeser salad kit plus steak assuming we had spread in the apartment. The better self catering places I’ve stayed at had oil, some herbs and spices etc provided in the past but haven’t seen that since covid (not that I self cater much)

We only eat breakfast at our self-catering accommodation and the odd lunch. I have never cooked a meal and to be honest most self-catering facilities are a kitchenette and not really suitable for cooking a full meal. It's different if it's a Airbnb or similar as usually you'd have full cooking facilities, like at home. My opinion is that I cook at home, I'm not doing it on holiday, as it's my break too. Obviously for financial reasons, I know some people have to cook, whilst on holiday. If I had to cook, it would be simple rice and pasta dishes.

UK restaurant prices also make it prohibitively expensive to eat out every night on a holiday for us. With children that eat off an adult menu it’s likely to be at least £100 a night. Abroad we can find more reasonably priced options to eat out so will do so more frequently.

we are staying in the uk for our holidays this year and I’ve already researched local butchers, bakery options and farm shops to get great local ingredients to cook with.

if we were going away as a couple we’d eat our more in the evening but still being conscious of health and wealth not every night.

When self catering we tend to bbq, fajitas, pasta meals and the rest eat out for main meals or possibly order in.

Breakfast is a fry up and snacks is snacks we would normally have or again grab something while out.

Never bring frozen food with us. I have been known to take my pizza stones and food mixer though for fresh pizzas 😅

Grill chicken, fish, meat. Bake potatoes. Lots of veg and fruit

I’ve always been driving there if doing self-cater so I bring a cool box stocked with frozen entrees.
I can’t be bothered to cook on holiday. The most I want to do is throw a casserole in the oven.

I can't believe people are flying with frozen meat and gravy browning 😂

We have done villa holidays for the past few years. We eat out for dinner every night. We will have lunch at the villa, but that is just nice fresh bread and cheese, ham, fruit etc.

We have talked about staying in a couple of nights, but we would take some small amounts of spices etc with us and probably have grilled meat and salad.

This is what we do. Double up on a couple of easy freezable meals, take that in a cool bag along with some pizza and salad so that’s 3 days.
Other meals could be baked potatoes and tuna mayo, pasta with pesto, stir fry noodles and we eat out a couple of times.

When SC in this country, DM usually brings a chili con carne, spag bol etc with a side salad for the first night.

Then if we are not eating out in the evening, depending on the size of oven etc 0 we go to the supermarket nearby and buy things like quiche, pies with salad or cooked veg. Sometimes we visit the local butchers for sausages.

We SC when we go to Madeira. Breakfast - fruit juice, eggs, milk, fruit from a local supermarket. Cobs/pastries from a chain of bakery/coffee shops in Madeira called Opan. Probably have a couple of lunches SC on the room's balcony. This is usually some loaf from Opan with cooked meat, olives, crisps, tomatoes and beer. Plus different flavour pastel de nata from Opan.

I would always get a supermarket delivery for the first evening. Pasta, pizza, salads, fruit and veg, breakfast etc for the week. Made life easier.

funny story… my Mum once took a the tin of Heinz baked beans with us as my dad was really fussy on a self-catering Cyprus holiday…the tin of beans was in her flight bag, it came to Cyprus, we then from Cyprus went on a cruise to Egypt, tin of beans came with us, tin of beans did a full guided tour of the pyramids, went on a camel ride… the guide wouldn’t give my Mum back to us until my Dad paid a tip (ransom so the story goes)… not carrying any cash my Mum offered the tin of beans. Ransom wasn’t paid, my mums camel was slapped on the bum and my Mum galloped off screaming on said camel. Eventually some tourists we were travelling with collectively emptied their pockets and paid the ransom. Tin of beans came back to Cyprus, was never eaten and made its way safely back home to the comforts of our UK cupboard.

Rotisserie Chicken, salad and bread - all the major supermarkets to these
Ready made tortilla (chiller cabinet) and microwave to heat, baked beans and fried eggs
Pasta with a jarred sauce and grated cheese
Jacket Potatoes microwaved with beans and cheese
Cold meats, cheese, ready prepared salads coleslaw, potato etc, bag of salad and bread

In the UK we stop over night to our actual destination so I pack cereal and long life milk thats dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning and no one grumbles!

We normally end up supermarket shops and try and have simpler meals. Nothing that takes long. Depending on where we are (forest/town) sandwiches or food out for lunch.

Food allergies + coeliac disease is an issue.

In Italy we ate out every lunch and just pasta with shop bought sauce and salad for dinner. I died of boredom but everyone ate and it was quick!

This is a brilliant idea.
We take oil, a sharp knife, and a cafetiere and order Waitrose click and collect. Eat the same meals we do at home - bolognese, fish fillets and chips, sausages and mash, orzotto, except we get fridge not frozen for fish/chicken fillets, and make wedges instead of oven chips as we don't usually have a freezer where we are (National Trust cottages). This year we are going to France so looking out for tips, though there will be lots of eating out I imagine.