Food to take to Center Parcs?

[Squashpocket]

Going to Center parcs soon and plan to self cater most meals to keep costs down. Don't want to spend loads of time cooking, but also want the meals to be a bit more fun than our usual dinners and maybe some special treats for the dc (3 and 1). Thinking of getting click and collect from a local supermarket on the way.

Can anyone give me some inspiration as to what to take with us? We'll need to cater every breakfast, 3 dinners and 3 lunches.

We’ve just come back. Woburn had Cook ready meals in their freezer section this time.
We had:
Breakfast - cereal + day one croissants, day two pain au choc, day three bacon sandwiches
Lunch - sandwiches, bagel with smoked salmon and scrambled egg, soup
Dinner - BBQ burgers in brioche rolls, halloumi, chicken skewers, bakes potatoes with soured cream and chives, sweet corn and salad
Day 2 - chicken curry, naan and rice
Day 3 - lasagne (from cook)

Have fun!

JusRol croissants/pain au chocolat/cinnamon rolls in a tube to bake for breakfast (or go to Parc Market for fresh croissants/bread)
Nice OJ
Decent coffee (and teabags), sachets of hot chocolate
Jar of favourite jam/marmalade/preserve (possibly Nutella also for DCs)
Their favourite cereal

I always bring a tin of tuna and tin of sweetcorn to make tuna mic for a salad or tuna melts, or to use in a stir fried rice or pasta dish

Old El Paso do lovely easy kits for fajitas, tacos or quesedillas

A bag of pasta, pack of bacon lardons, pack of musrooms and a jar of pesto rossa is another simple and tasty dinner

Bag of rice, nice jar of curry sauce (or a tub of fresh curry sauce from chilled aisle), meat/fish, maybe some veg to add, and a pack of ready cooked puppodums or naan breads, chop a couple of tomatoes and a spring onion up together and season with freshly ground black pepper as a side dish

small jar of mayonnaise and small bottle of ketchup are essentials with DCs

And bring some dishwasher tablets from home if you can, as you don't want to washup much (I also bring a 100ml travel bottle filled with washup liquid for the little washup we need to do, pots etc, and that is plenty for a week - we eat in most meals). I have a pair of glass salt and pepper which have grinders in their lids (supermarket version) that I keep for self catering holidays, and a pack of coffee filters from various trips in case is it a filter machine.

And snacky stuff - cooked meat, cherry tomatoes, carrots and peppers (to cut into sticks), hummus and breadsticks, pesto, olives, cheese (we like a selection of cheese to slice but I also bring a bag of grated mozzarella or cheddar for sprinkling on pasta or making melts for lunches), roasted peanuts and crisps, some biscuits, lots of fruit, salad stuff etc.

Squash, fizzy water, gin, tonic, wine/beer
milk, butter (real butter is good to use to cook with as well if you don't want to bring a small bottle of olive oil, but olive oil also useful for salad dressings),
eggs are great for all sorts - use with some cream to make a sauce for pasta carbonara, or a Spanish omlette with meat (bacon or chicken is good) and veg (onion, mushroom, peppers, tomato) and cheese in it, not just boiled or fried or scrambled for breakfast/lunch

For our CP break we had:
Charlie Bigham ready made curries and rice from the supermarket.
Good quality supermarket pizzas -fancy woodfired ones, plus garlic bread, salad etc
A BBQ one night.
All very easy but felt like a treat.

Your all great, thanks so much for the ideas. Definitely sticking jus rol croissants and bacon sarnies on the list

Crusha milkshake syrup/Nesquik or hot chocolate powder for a fun pre-bedtime drink.

Cheese, ham and chive pancakes with packet mix

I use a lot of packet couscous. Ainsley Harriett does a nice range with a lot of different flavours. It only takes about 15 minutes to soak in boiling water. We like the Mediterranean style with added cherry tomatoes and some feta cheese crumbled in. I also do the lemon and coriander one with a packet of cooked prawns or cooked chicken breast.

You can get ready-flavoured tins of tuna. In the summer I use these to quickly make a cold pasta salad or in the winter have them with jacket potatoes. Tesco does a good selection.

Microwave rice is a God send. Stir in a spoon of cream cheese, some peas, chopped ham and a twist of pepper. I also tip microwave rice straight into deseeded red pepper halves, before topping with slices of mozzarella and popping in the oven for twenty minutes.

Microwave Heinz Mexican Beanz and have with taco shells (or a tortilla wrap), red peppers and lettuce. www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/301925056 The Heinz lentil curry is also good www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/301925091
For another easy dish, use Heinz Creationz Mexican Beanz and a tin of sweetcorn for nacho pie. Cover the beans and sweetcorn with chopped tortillas and grated cheese and cook for 15-20 mins.

We get the cereal selection boxes kids thought it was ace!

I've just stuck the Kellogg's variety pack on the list! They haven't had proper kids cereal yet, so minds may be blown.

Nesquik or crusha is a lovely idea 😀 we're also thinking of a barbecue one night so could do roasted marshmallows as well. 'For the kids'...

If you do marshmallows "for the kids", make sure you bring something like chocolate digestive biscuits too for adult 'Smores - put the melty marshmallow between the 2 chocolatey sides making a marshmallow sandwich and keep your fingers clean on the plain sides....mmmmmm gimme some moooooorrrreeeeee!!

I meant to add that the snacky stuff was really useful for when we got in starving from the pool in late afternoon/early evening - it bought us time to sort out bags and put togs/towels to dry, organise cooking proper dinner, and often even having a pre dinner drink together (ok, sometimes feeding DD and then having our pre-dinner drink and dinner) without major hunger-anger (hangry!! it's a thing!!) meltdowns. But we did try to make it decent food and not always crisps.