Do you actually cater if you go self catering...

[NaomifromMilkshake]

We just use our apartment as somewhere to sleep and hang on the balcony and we use the fridge for wine and beers and snacks... and the makings of light lunch or breakfast...

My DM is horrified at what she considers a waste of money, seemingly you should cater in SC....

In her defence she is 80 and a war child.

We've always done self catering. Breakfast and lunch in accommodation and dinner out.

Although we haven't been away since DC2 was born and self catering just wouldn't be a break now there are 5 of us. So we are doing AI next year (5* as I've done some shit AI in my time )

We buy in bits for breakfast - breads, cheeses, meats etc
Loads of booze and pool snacks. Occasionally a pizza and some BBQ food if we want to stay in.

We'd usually eat out for most lunches and evening meals though but no DC - just me and DH (until Sept).

We tend to stay in quite "high end" villas though mainly as DH is very fussy so the kitchens are beautifully equipped and we only use the fridge and BBQ!

not a chance, thats not a holiday!! we do breakfast in maybe half the mornings and that's my limit. eating out is part of the holiday if I wanted to cook, clean and wash up I d just stay at home!

Just breakfast and lunch if we are in, we have lunch out if we are out, dinner usually always out. We love the flexibility a self catering holiday offers. Works better for my family.

SC gives the option to cook in. I'm guessing everyone caters according to their budget and lifestyle. Some cater a lot in self catering, some will only boil a kettle or make a sandwich.

Snacks, treats, drinks and breakfast the odd lunch/dinner.

We mostly eat out and if we do eat in, it's a ready meal

Currently I’m in Menorca, in a lovely villa.
We eat in for breakfast (yogurt, croissants etc), usually in for lunch (bread, cheese, ham, gazpacho from a carton etc) and out for dinner - because it’s our favourite thing to do !

When the children were younger, and we were holidaying with grandparents, we would do a bbq some evenings, mostly due to the cost of eating out every evening.

For us it's nothing to do with budget. As others have said, doing your own breakfast means you can sit on the patio in your pyjamas rather than having to get dressed and go out. Lunch in the style of "bung it all on the table and come and get what you want" means that you're not dragging the kids away from the pool or having fun to get dressed and go out in search of a restaurant, in the middle of the day, when it's at its most boiling.

And who doesn't enjoy a barbecue? Few beers around the pool, no negotiating who's designated driver because your villa is two miles from the village up an unlit track.

We always go abroad for 2 wks self catering and eat out every meal :D

We use the fridge for drinks and snacks also, I couldn't stand to cook on holiday! Different restaurant every night suits us just fine

We do a mixture. Breakfast usually in the villa/cottage , toast or bread rolls, ham, cheese etc. Sometimes lunch out followed by a more snacky type dinner at the villa, sometimes a snacky lunch followed by dinner out. It very much depends on the day.

We all really love visiting foreign supermarkets though and have quite often had some rather odd meals based on what we've swooped on there

Even in room-only type holidays we have 'room snacks' (crisps, cheese slices, chocolate, drinks etc)

We do, but not flashy cooking, only easy stuff. We can't afford/don't want to take the kids to restaurants every night!

Do we fuck. We're way too lazy for that malarkey.

I book somewhere with a well-equiped kitchen and we very rarely eat out. I love cooking and enjoy making meals out of local ingredients. We have one child with special needs and it suits us.
I always take my stick blender, peeler and sharp knife with me too.
I make picnics too for days out!

It depends where we are and how skint we are!

In the UK I would maybe eat out once/twice, fish and chips once and cook the rest of the week. Ideally bbqs. I'm a good cook and I enjoy it though, and a lot of the time I just prefer home cooked meals, I don't really enjoy eating out more than that. And never anything too complicated, try to do nice but quick, normally stuff like steak and oven chips or seafood.

Abroad I might eat there once or twice but aim to go out in the evenings.

I'd always have breakfast there though, and lunch normally with maybe one or two lunches out depending on what we were doing.

Self catering is nice because you have more space! Not for the actual kitchen but I think it's more relaxing and gives you more freedom

Occasional meals out, but mostly we cook/bbq while self-catering. I love shopping in foreign markets and shops for local ingredients - it's part of the whole holiday experience for me.
But I don't find cooking a chore, which I think makes a huge difference.

Breakfast- cereal, fruit, yoghurt
Lunch- fresh bread or croissants with tomatoes, pepper and cucumber sticks, cheese, meats etc. Or eggs.
Dinner - always out or takeaway or BBQ.
So we do self cater a little but try to keep it easy and eat out once a day. It’s a holiday!

I definitely do, otherwise it would cost sooo much more. Probably go out for a meal or two over the whole holiday. Last two holidays went for one dinner out.

Yes. 4 people eating out 28 times over the course of the holiday would put us in serious debt. We prefer to spend our money on having a private pool.

This thread has opened my eyes - it actually never occurred to me that people would go to self-catering but not cook. I always wondered why the equipment was often so limited when places are advertised as self-catering! Now it makes sense!

I also now understand why people's holiday budgets are so high. I could basically never afford holidays if I tried to eat out every day.

I suppose it all depends WHY you go on holiday. i.e. - to get a break from cooking every day, or to see a new place, or whatever many reasons people probably have! I generally like going on holiday because I enjoy walking around a new environment, that somehow feels less stressful than being at home.

With kids it's good to be able to knock up some brekkie and something light I. E. Sandwiches.

Cooking huge meals is a bind though.

Has anyone said they cook huge meals though? I'm one on the "sometimes cook" brigade but that's limited to boiling pasta or sticking a pizza in the oven. On a UK self catering holiday we often get ready meals.

Who wants to cook on holidays? Well we do actually. Cooking on holidays is one of our great pleasures of holidays. Grocery shopping in a French market with fresh fruit and veg and meat and fish is such a lovely experience. Cooking gorgeous food and having long leisurely meals with our teenagers is one of the best bits of a holiday for us. No restaurant food is ever as nice. We eat out on hols if we have to but only as a last resort. Cooking our own is much nicer.

No, I won't go on holiday if I can't afford to eat out! It'snot a holiday if you have to prepare food/cook/wash up. A few friends have invited us on holiday self catering and I always turn them down if they want us to eat in the apartment and cook etc. always tell them why though!

Also I hate food shopping so I don't want to do that on holiday either!

We stay in self catering accommodation for 3 wks every summer- it would financially cripple us to eat out all that time!!

We tend to eat breakfast in, make packed lunches if our for the day or eat a cold lunch in our cottage and then cook in the evening- Barbecue or whatever we’d normally have at home!

Within those 3 weeks we probably pay for lunch out once a week and then maybe have dinner out the same. So more than we’d do at home but most definitely not every day!