Is it still a restful holiday if you have to cook?

[timberleigh]

Usually we go on holidays to places where we can afford to eat out for every meal. Often skip breakfast out because some yoghurt and granola or cereal is fine.

We are considering going to a very expensive place for a week’s holiday. A mid range meal out for two would easily be £150. We just don’t want to spend that much on food every day, so we’ve found an apartment with a kitchen so we could cook in maybe half of the nights. Will this trip still feel restful?

I'm guessing it's not somewhere like France or Spain where you could get excellent quality prepared /deli foods from a supermarket?

If not it totally depends how much you enjoy cooking/shopping for food when you don't have store cupboard ingredients or (probably) decent utensils?

We air BnB in the south of France and do a combination of sandwiches (baguette / cheese / ham) for the beach in the day and dinner out. We were pretty tired due to the heat last year so ended up eating in a couple of nights. We still eat out most days but as you say, it can be very expensive so just staying in for a night or two can save quite a lot of money. (We often also feed DD before we go out as she needs to eat earlier).

We did a couple of A.I. holidays when the children were quite small. I like to cook though, I enjoy shopping in local shops and markets, and I like the freedom that self catering gives you. We don’t have to race out for breakfast, or be limited to hotel food.

Depends where, and what the weather is like and what the local services are like. If we are holidaying in the UK we buy posh readymeals from Cook which are zero effort. In some countries there are equivalent services that you can find, in others there may be vibrant markets where you can easily buy simple foods that are near-zero effort to prepare. I certainly wouldn't do a complicated recipe on holiday, our meals are limited to things that can be thrown together with 3 ingredients and 10 minutes of effort. I don't want a restaurant meal every day on holiday - I prefer to eat more simply the day after a restaurant meal, sticking to plain vegetables and meat without lots of rich sauces and extra fat. Then I'm happy to go out again the next night

It wouldn’t be my choice of a holiday as it would feel like housework which would piss me off.

When we’ve done UK holidays, we might get a takeaway or just have bread and cheese etc if we stay in.

I’ve never done self catering abroad. I don’t think I’d want to.

Yes if you go for really easy food. We usually self cater. Pasta, pesto, bag of salad; chicken pieces in the oven with baby new potatoes, spinach, cherry tomatoes, olives and herbs; oven fries, good burgers, bread rolls and salad.

Lunch is just bread, cheese, charcuterie, salad and everyone makes their own and clears up.

Go out for some evening meals, especially on arrival day and final evening.

Hot or cold climate?
Somewhere hot we often get nice bread, salad, cold meats, cheese , olives, fruit etc rather than cook.
Colder climate some wraps with grilled lamb, hoisin sauce and salad is good or we use cous cous as quick and easy to prepare .

Not sure airports would be overly keen on sharp knives in baggage!

I remember the trouble I had getting expenses for (not extravagant) meals approved when working there for protracted periods, and that was many years ago before the further devaluation of the pound due to Brexit etc. Beautiful country, though.

Yes. Shopping for it can be fun in local markets and trying interesting foods is great.

depends what you cook; if you say that its hard work then that must be cooking a full roast meal or similar!
due to dietary issues we always self cater and take advantage of ready meals which is not something we normally eat. Plus we tend to stock the fridge with salad to have with something simple like quiche ham cheese etc. plus lots of fruit to nibble on for desert

It depends where we are and what is available.

So self catering for skiing is often easy, particularly if you are in France as majority of people are self catering so the supermarkets have a good selection of things like rotisserie chickens, lasagne for heating and the local butcher’s did a daily “ready meal” that they had cooked the day before. Not cheap, but costs less than eating out.

Not so good in Costa Rica where groceries were very expensive and there must have been something lost in translation as the very expensive rib eye tasted like shoe leather. After that we stuck to the local restaurants (sodas) where pretty much everywhere you could get a full plate called a cassada with either chicken, fish or meat, rice, salad and veg for about £10 per person.

No, I don’t want to cook or clean anything, it wouldn’t feel like a holiday. If it was just Dh and I we would probably grab cheeses and cold meats etc but with DC it’s more difficult.

Not to me it isn’t as I hate cooking. I do all the cooking as DH works double the hours I do in our shared business. But he appreciates all the extra things I do at home and knows I hate it. So when we go on holiday we always ensure we eat out or order in for our main meal of the day (except possibly the odd pizza and chips meal in the oven or a BBQ if abroad which DH will do anyway) and no cooking whatsoever for me, it is my holiday too. It’s one of the things I love about him most, how much I feel loved and appreciated and considered at all times. But if cooking is something you love and on holiday you have more free time to do it then I can see it could be part of an enjoyable holiday.

@timberleigh
Yes, yes it is still a holiday!

I’ve just bought quality ready meals like pre marinated/seasoned fish or meat and veg from supermarkets/local shops so when you get in not really much to do when you get in and just chilled with it over a glass of wine. Some days we treated ourselves to a take out also. Really helped keep costs down and still felt very much in a rested holiday mood as still less food prep to do and we did it between us so sharing the little workload there was 🙂

Nope. I don’t do cooking on holidays! If I can’t afford to eat out I’m not interested, I’m willing to slum it a bit some nights with fast food, even a rotisserie chicken and salad from a supermarket but not cooking

I also thought Norway. Even simple main dishes at cheaper restaurants cost around 30 pounds. Mid-range would be a bit more than that, then if you want to have a couple of drinks and a dessert on top you'll easily be at 150.

I travel to Norway a lot. I'll have one meal out per holiday. The rest of the time I'm either in a tent or accommodation with cooking facilities (hostel, airbnb, mountain hut etc).
Even the supermarkets aren't cheap but you can get some good quality ready meals which taste good which saves on the cooking; bread, cheese and ham etc for sandwiches for lunch; yoghurts, muesli, milk etc for breakfast.
Fruit costs a fortune.
Just buy things that aren't faffy to cook, meat or fish and two veg etc.

And Pizza Bakkeren is the best pizza on earth even if it does cost nearly 30 quid for a big one, but would be a take-away option for a night when you really can't be bothered.

It might not be Norway of course. I'm obsessed with Norway.

Never mind, same applies to any other destination apart from Pizza Bakkeren of course.

I love cooking but because I have a pantry full of ingredients and several shelves with cookbooks at home.

I am less keen on holiday as I hate buying everything from scratch or have opened/hardly used ingredients around.

Saying that we do a lot of s/c but mainly do lunch out during the day and then have just bread, cheese, cold meats or prepped meals (France is great for them) in the house.

Or we do a picnic at lunch and go out for dinner.

I wouldn’t be keen on a villa with pool where we would stay in all day.

It's fine! Just not in hand luggage, obviously. I take my knives if we're going somewhere self catering because the knives supplied are always dull and crap. That makes food prep so much more effort.

I hate cooking on holiday but my husband enjoys shopping in local supermarkets and rustling something up a few nights while we are away bit only if extended holidays not a week or 10 days but we went away 2 years ago for 2 months and he cooked maybe 2 or 3 times a week. He wouldnt get the chance to cook much at home though and he enjoys it.

I hate cooking away but do it in the circumstances you mention. Even if it's just pasta and sauce or sandwiches and saves a wedge it's worth it for the odd day.

Presumably somewhere with far fewer options than NYC. I went to a Caribbean island and the only things in the vicinity of where we were staying were pretty expensive sit-down restaurants. Even breakfast/brunch was around $50 pp with tip. Nothing like NYC where I can grab a cream cheese bagel for $6.

We almost always self cater. My DS has multiple food allergies so it's less stressful that way. We do eat out sometimes but it's more relaxing to cook for ourselves for the majority of meald. Plus I quite enjoy exploring the local supermarkets and on holiday, especially in a hot climate we eat a lot of salads and other simple meals and it's not a lot of effort really, it's not like I am spending hours in the kitchen every day.
I am always fussy about the kitchen though. I wouldn't stay anywhere that wasn't at least similarly equipped to my kitchen at home (and we've been to a few that are way better than mine.) I don't mind cooking in a decent sized, well equipped kitchen with a good sized fridge and freezer and a dishwasher but there's no way I'd do it in a pokey kitchen with a two ring hob and a counter top fridge which seems to be all you get in a lot of apartment complexes. We tend to book biggish individual houses/villas and I pay a lot of attention to the kitchen before choosing - I'm not interested in effectively indoor camping.

Not a single part of this feels like a holiday. You might as well just stay at home!

I think it’s very much a case of each to their own - what you enjoy doing, what sort of food you want to eat, where you’re going etc.

I like cooking and cook from scratch every night at home. On holiday, I think the most I’ve ever done in 22 years going away with my DP is fry a venison steak once and put some fresh ready made chips in an oven. If we self-cater we don’t do it because we want to cook.

Most of the time we have either dinner or lunch or both out when we’re self-catering. We go to a supermarket or local shops for cheese, bread, cold meats, olives, snacky things and booze, but nothing we have to cook.

When I see Mumsnetters talking about doing a big food shop for a holiday and having meal plans and making spaghetti bolognese on holiday, it makes me die inside a little bit because to me, that’s not a holiday. But I completely understand that it’s absolutely each to their own and if it works for them, great.