When you have a day out, do you eat out or take a pack-up?

[TwoMagnificentLabradors]

Until a couple of years ago, we used to think nothing of dropping into a low- key restaurant ( Pizza Express, Giraffe etc.) on a day out. Then three things happened:

All hospitality shut for months and we got used to taking a packed lunch on our barely-legal day-long hikes.

The kids got enormous and started ordering from adult menus. No more humous, carrots, breadsticks and a teeny pizza for £4.99.

Restaurants and cafes put their prices up to cover rising costs.

I have become the proud queen of the pack-up. We were the family shamelessly scoffing our cheese and ham rolls on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station today. Our new ways mean healthier food, saving 80-100 pounds on a day out and everyone getting what they like to eat.

We still eat out. But save those outings for special occasions and decent (not food pinged from a microwave) venues (or street food markets, I love those!)

Anyone else changed their ways of late?

Always bring a packed lunch. Eating out for us is for very special occasions only (due to cost, would love to eat out more!!)

Eat out, almost always. To me it’s part of the fun of the day. My kids are all old enough to behave in restaurants now.

I can’t actually bear the thought of slightly squashed warm sandwiches. A picnic where it’s the main focus is ok.

I used to be annoyed at my mum always taking a packed lunch for us on days out as a child but now I understand why she did and do the same nearly all the time. Sometimes we'll have a packed lunch but stop at Hesburger (fast food, far superior to McDonalds) on the way home for dinner.

We go half way between the two and buy a meal-deal picnic. I have four kids and it's normally just me prepping to take them out and again just me with them on the outing too. I know it's lazy and costs more, but it means the kids get to choose a sandwich filling, crisp and drink flavour that they don't get a home, so it feels more like a treat than a "packed lunch". Feels like a win-win really - saves £20-£70 compared to the cost of a meal out, and I still don't have to prep it!

Completely depends.

Also sometimes I go for option 3, a cheap virtuous packed lunch on the trip itself then a chippy when we get back cos everyone is knackered and can't be arsed to cook.

We ate delicious baguettes with Emmental and farm shop ham

I love how it went from saving money scoffing 'rolls' as prices rose, to fancy baguettes with a solicitor's income. Brilliant thread.

I also enjoyed how a meal out meant mediocre Giraffe or Pizza Express, completely ignoring all of the fabulous eats and street food options in that area (which they should know really well).

🤣👏

Picky bits! 👸🏼

"Why? Where I live (Yorks) everyone calls it a pack up. Its simply regional variation."

Nobody in my part of Yorkshire calls it a pack up. It's a packed lunch

"We were the family shamelessly scoffing our cheese and ham rolls on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station today"

"We ate delicious baguettes with Emmental and farm shop ham"

Make your fucking mind up love.

Also it’s different when you have little kids. Our glamorous restaurant loving teens would eye roll to high heaven if we went to London for the day and I produced soggy sandwiches!

I am imagining the Emmental and farm shop ham baguettes ( or rolls-who knows, but from the artisan bakery obviously) would be wrapped in beeswax paper, definitely no sandwich bags.

They could have jollied it up with a bag of Monster Munch or Frazzles though.

Packed lunch unless it's freezing

It isn’t just about the food, to be fair.

I don’t think I’d want to be scoffing anything sitting in a railway station. I’d happily eat cheese and ham rolls in a cafe or on a picnic. Just the whole thing sounds miserable. It’s the sort of thing my own dad would have done though. He was another who’d faint in horror if you suggested going into costa and splutter that he had a flask!

That's true. Whatever you are eating, sitting on the forecourt in a station is pretty miserable.

I don’t think the thread was going how she planned .

Eat out. My children are pretty restrictive in what they’ll eat - additional needs - so it’s usually just chips anyway 😁

We take a Tesco meal deal

Ooooh Waitrose 🤣

I don’t think she would be happy with my version of a cheese and ham roll that we slum it with on days out.

Cheapest white rolls from aldi, wafer thin water and fat ham and a sliver of whatever block of cheese was the cheapest that week if you are lucky 🤣

Farm shop, m’lady. How decadent.

After enduring my first ex's insistence that a warm cheese sandwich made with the cheapest white sliced and margarine before being snapped into a 20 uear old tupperware container specifically so it took on that tupperware smell was the only permissible food, I would always willingly pay to have something else's, especially as it meant less to carry.

Unfortunately, I then got betrayed by my immune system and unless I already know there's a restaurant within reach that does proper gluten free, it's a case of either DP lugging around giant bags of stuff as he usually does (I have no idea why, because there is no need for two ikea bags of blankets and chargers and spare coats and shit to accompany us wherever we go) and having a tiny space reluctantly allocated to a GF sandwich that'll be equally disappointing by the time I get to it - or I'll go without until I have to eat a couple of GF protein bars before I fall over.

Fellow Coeliac, I feel your pain.

I don’t even bother taking anything for myself usually, I don’t like any of the GF breads or anything ready made GF really.