Make-ahead/freezer meals for holiday cottage?

[roamingcat]

Hello,

We're shortly due to go on holiday in the UK to a self catering holiday cottage. Thinking of trying to make some meals ahead and take them with us in a cool box in the car to make dinners a bit easier this time. Bolognese is definitely on the list, any other suggestions?

Thanks!

I just do easy meals

jacket potatoes and topping
quiche and salad
pizza
pasta and pesto
fish and chips

gourmet dining it is not but it saves the hassle and fuss

We quite often eat out at lunch time but if you're doing that maybe you could plan a "big" lunch a couple of days and then just have fresh bread, cheese etc for tea?

If you did that, took a pot of bolognese and a second meal, and then did posh supermarket pizzas one night and cook/fancy ready meals a second you'd be pretty much sorted.

We usually eat out once on a week long holiday - eating out every night is incredibly expensive, especially now, and we've been disappointed so often spending loads and ending up with a mediocre meal.

We usually take a curry, pasta sauce and soup so that's 3 nights covered and maybe buy a good steak, takeaway one night, eat out one night and an M&S Thai box or Cook meal or similar.

I would check the rental has a proper freezer before doing this. Would be very annoying to do all that work and find there is only a tiny freezer box! I think the slow cooker is a better idea.

I think it's a good idea if you're planning to stay in. My choice would be a vegetable lasagne, lamb moussaka, coq au vin and a nut roast, they'll travel fine with lots of ice packs in a freezer box of bag.

We do a combination of the following

1. eat out at lunch
2. rotation simple meals for little ones - eg omelette with veg
3. Gousto for nice evening meals for adults / older kids
4. cheese, crackers, olives, chocolate, bagels etc
5. cook meals with easy sides

As in the frozen COOK meals

My general holiday rule is that I cook at home, holidays are for rest. With that in mind we eat out a lot at pubs etc or we get easy to cook food like tinned hotdogs in buns, croissants and pastries for breakfast, tinned bolognese and pasta and so on. We tend to go camping so our options are more limited in terms of what we can cook, but it's definitely easy food that doesn't require much clean up, and eating out as often as we can!

At home I regularly make stews in my slow cooker enough for 6 meals, we eat 2 immediately and I freeze 4 in separate plastic boxes for another day. My concern with your plan would be the amount of freezer storage space available. In my experience some cottages have a fridge freezer and some just have a small freezer box at the top of the fridge.
In holiday cottages I book a supermarket delivery for the evening we arrive with all the breakfast stuff, posh chilled ready meals and snacks I think we will need for the stay. My cool box just takes enough for a cup of tea and a snack when we go then is used to bring anything we haven't used from the fridge home again.

Thanks to all of you who have responded with helpful suggestions! It's a good point about the potential freezer space at the cottage.

I didn't mention previously but due to ongoing health issues we're trying to eat less UPF which means that a ready meal/takeaway for every meal is not a good idea!

We have seven nights so I'm thinking of planning for something like the following:

• Frozen bolognese taken for first night
• Fish & chips on beach
• Takeaway pizza on beach (or shop pizzas)
• Prawn pasta (hopefully buy some lovely local & fresh prawns there, take spices with us)
• Chicken curry (take spices with us)
• Chicken fajitas (take spices with us)
• Some sort of cod bake/orzo thing (take spices with us)

Then for lunches we will either eat out or have a picnic on the beach - I can either make a big batch of sausages rolls when we arrive or take those with us, and then have bread/meats/cheese, veg sticks, crisps, fruit etc which we can buy there. If we have a big lunch we can have a reduced portion of the evening meal or cut it entirely and just have leftover lunch stuff.

Then the only other thing I'm going to do is make some cookies, brownies or a loaf cake to take with us - means we will have a store of lovely homemade baked goods for afternoon snacks.