Meal ideas for remote holiday cottage.

[BreehyHinnyBrinnyHoohyHah]

I'm going away at the end of August to a fair remote cottage in the Highlands. According to the maps it's a fair trek to the supermarkets so I'm planning on taking food with me.

I'm looking for ideas for fairly simple meals I can cook for a family of four. Recipes that don't require lots of ingredients so I can take it up with me. I've got a substantial coolbox.

I thought about doing Gousto / Hello Fresh, but we're traveling up a day earlier and stopping with a relative half way who will cook for us. When I've had Gousto before the use by dates for meals have only been a few days. I'm conscious that if I have the box delivered on the Friday, travel to relatives on Saturday, then it's Sunday before we can start eating the meals so some might be out of date, or all four meals need using up before the Tuesday!

Does anyone have any suggestions? Please and thank you!

What's the route? Highlands is a big place.

If you give idea of stop and destination we can tell you what's enroute.

Apols if this has already been suggested but couldn't you get a hello fresh/gusto Box delivered to the holiday cottage or your relation's house ?

veg that lasts a while - broccoli & carrots.
Most of the broccoli I've come across turns yellow on day 2.

I take A number of precooked frozen meals. Find fresh vegetables and salad tricky on holiday.

Try to base most of your meals on store cupboard supplies. I usually make things like:

Pasta puttanesca
Lentil and tomato soup
Chickpea and paneer curry (paneer does need to be in the cool box on the journey but I feel better about it not being kept super cold than meat)
Halloumi burgers with sweet potato wedges (halloumi I think can also withstand the journey better than meat)

Agree with PP about buying a load of part-baked baguettes and bread rolls for lunches.

Not sure where you're going in the Highlands? We go to a very remote spot with Fort William as the nearest (an hour's drive!) proper shopping place. There's a well supplied Morrisons there, and I think a M&S food hall opened a few years ago, but I've not tried it yet. We sometimes do a Fort William shopping run halfway through our stay. Some of the smaller towns also have pretty well stocked local shops.

We travel to reasonably remote holiday locations a lot and I wouldn't even bother trying to take anything that needs to be cold if you're stopping overnight on the way.

We generally pack some basics that don't need refrigerating for the journey:

Loaf of bread and a jar of jam or peanut butter for breakfasts.

Cereal, teabags, coffee and some UHT milk as a back up if we can't get to a shop on the first day.

Tins of soup and part baked baguettes for an easy lunch or dinner.

Bag of rice and tinned curry, pack of tortillas and tinned chilli so we can make dinner on the first night.

Wine, beer, squash, loo roll etc.

Then we just stock up with fresh things at local corner shops. There will definitely be somewhere to pick up some milk, cheese, eggs and something more inspiring for dinner. It's nice to support the local communities near where you're staying anyway and small shops tend to be pretty well stocked in remote areas.

We live in the middle of nowhere. We just eat normal food 😂
We are probably more organised with shopping because we can’t pop to the shop.

What do you normally eat that you think that you can’t on holiday?

Double check no supermarkets deliver. Asda can be good for up north and covers a surprisingly large area.

A properly packed hard sided cool box will keep food cold for days. Freeze stuff like bacon, milk, bolognese sauce etc and you can reduce the number of freezer blocks. I frequently do 3/4 days at horse events and stuff is still actually frozen on day 4 with dairy products still chilled.

I guess it depends how remote! We're just back from staying in a cottage 30 mins from anything more than a tiny village shop - we made sure that we planned ahead thinking breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next couple of days at least.

I don't like cooking in holiday cottages so we bought a lot of premium ready meals. Charlie Bingham are good and you can make them go a bit further by adding pre-prepared veg, potatoes, garlic bread etc. They're not cheap but you're still saving tonnes on eating in restaurants.

We have just returned from the highlands- super far north with no big supermarkets for a couple of hours drive. Only one option to eat out and it was not worth bothering with tbh. We still managed to get a Tesco click and collect from a car park in the nearest village- worth looking into!

We took a lot of meals with us, frozen. Curry, a pie, soup, nice bread, lasagne etc. When packaged together and wrapped in towels or similar, they stayed frozen for the seven hour trip.

We also saved a fortune doing the Tesco shop rather than the local shop which was understandably super expensive!

If there are cooking facilities I can’t see why it’s an issue? Or do you mean you want fancier things than at home? If you drive past house of bruar on the A9 they have a lovely food shop with a deli and sell plenty of gourmet ready meals. Otherwise presumably you can drive to a shop even if it’s a local one?

Unless you are actually walking in to the cottage with a wheelbarrow there will be a shop within an hours drive. Local coops are usually well stocked and spar is part of Morrisons now.
There may not be a massive supermarket or deliveries but you should be able to get pretty much anything locally.

This. We live very remotely in the Highlands and manage to eat a balanced diet with plenty fresh produce. We can even get a supermarket delivery 😂

OP either do a click and collect on the way up or get a delivery, there’ll be loads of place on the way.

It’s cooking for 6 people in a holiday cottage that I dislike and I also don’t like spending time supermarket shopping while on holiday.

Very keen to pick up local cheeses, seafood and other delicacies but really don’t want to traipse around a supermarket. And don’t want to eat ready meals on hols either!

It's a remote cottage in the Highlands, not a Mediterranean villa. Trust me on the pie and mash and booze. You won't be wanting a salad.

Thanks for all the sensible suggestions. Some good ideas there.

I don't want to spend a small fortune stocking up on basics in Coops etc when I'm there, nor drive for an hour to get to one. I'm not after fancy food. I just wanted simple recipes with few ingredients that I can easily pack. Not sure why so many people are trying to make out like I think the Highlands is some sort of backwards barren wasteland 🙄

We had a long weekend in Dornoch at Easter and it only had a Spar, Co op and a general store that was more of a deli/food hall type place so we wanted to be organised.

No idea where you are setting off from but…We drove up on the Friday and took the scenic route via Loch Lomond where we had brunch then a coffee at Glen Coe visitor centre. We took non perishables with us and then stopped at M&S Fort William and picked up a pizza deal for when we arrived that night plus some other bits. The second stop was a a click and collect order at Tesco Inverness (not much of a detour) and that covered us. We got meal supplies, milk, juices, fruit, bakery treats etc. It was about 1hr past Inverness and the shopping was absolutely fine.

I still have my meal list in notes -

Fri night M&S pizza deal
Sat morning sausage sandwiches
Sat lunch - Dunrobin Castle
Sat night Garlic and chilli prawn linguine
Sun morning pancakes and fruit
Sun lunch picnic - paddle boarding
Sun night Indian takeaway- Highland spice
Mon morning bacon bagels
Mon lunch picnic - Highland wildlife park

Self catering food - ideas? | Mumsnet

I always precook and freeze, the food is then handy as ice packs. I do a chilli, a spag bol and a casserole plus pre-made pizzas. Then take a bag of pots and have some with casserole and some as chips or wedges with pizza, the rest as jacket pots. We take 2 loaves of bread and stick one in the freezer so it lasts. Lurpack, cheese, ham and tuna with a couple of bags of salad, bunch of bananas, bag of apples and multibag of crisps sorts lunch/picnic and jacket pot toppings. Also take some tins of beans for beans on toast/jacket pot toppings.