Instead of the Dishes » Frugal Fawn, Grocery Shopping, Spending Less, Travel » Beach Vacation Meal Plan
Beach Vacation Meal Plan
You’ve probably seen the jokes, or perhaps this article from the Onion, about how moms still have to run a household when on vacation at the beach. It’s kind of true (I swept up at least five pounds of sand, ran three loads of wash, and cooked several meals on our last visit), but homesteading in a beach condo is still pretty nice if you ask me.
One thing that makes it a little easier is to have a meal plan. I was surprised when I started looking online and didn’t find anything that had what I was looking for – simple easy meals that everyone will like along with a grocery shopping list. So, I made my own and I’m sharing it with you.
But first, here are some basic tips for planning out meals for your beach vacation:
- Go Simple – unless you are a foodie, you probably don’t want to spend your vacation in the kitchen.
- Plan meals you know your family members like.
- Select several recipes that share ingredients. It makes shopping faster and cheaper.
- Bring dry goods from home.
- Consider bringing a crock pot, or even pre-cooked frozen meals with you if possible.
- At minimum, bring one meal that you can eat on the first night when you get there, especially if you are coming in on Saturday or Sunday, as the grocery stores will be nuts with all the other vacationers who have just arrived.
- Find out if there is a grill at your vacation rental – that opens up a lot of easy options.
- Leave room to eat out a few times, and also for eating leftovers.
I asked my Facebook friends to tell me their favorite, easy meal to cook in a vacation rental. There were tons of great ideas. Here they are to get your brain going:
BLTs
Spaghetti
Chicken Enchiladas
Tacos (or taco salad)
Hamburgers and Hot Dogs with veggie foil packs on the grill
Spinach Ravioli w/ spaghetti sauce in crock-pot
Cheese Dip in crock pot
Pork Roast (all day in oven on low heat)
Mac N Cheese
Baked Potato Bar
Pasta Salad
Chicken marinated overnight in Italian salad dressing on the grill
Rotisserie Chicken
Frozen Lasagna
Stir-Fry
Shrimp Boil
Jumbalaya
Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner)
And finally, this is my 7 day meal plan that we used for our last trip to the beach. It includes three meals per day, plus snacks. Here’s a quick chart of the meals (scroll down to download the PDF).
| SAT | SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THUR | FRI | SAT | |
| Breakfast | On the Road | Eggs & Bacon | Breakfast Casserole | Cereal | Biscuits and Gravy | Cereal | Breakfast On the Beach | Cereal |
| Lunch | On the Road | Sandwiches | Hot Dogs & Mac N Cheese | BLT | Eat Out | Leftovers | Leftovers | On the Road |
| Dinner | Spaghetti | Tacos | Chicken Stir Fry | Frozen Lasagna | Leftovers | Eat Out | Shrimp Boil | On the Road |
| Dessert | Brownies | Ice Cream | Leftovers | Cookies | Eat Out | Watermelon |
Download the Vacation Meal Plan PDF, which includes the meals, recipes, and a grocery list.
Filed under: Frugal Fawn, Grocery Shopping, Spending Less, Travel · Tags: Beach, Cabin, condo, eat in, grocery list, kitchen, meal plan, save money, vacation
21 Responses to "Beach Vacation Meal Plan"
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This is awesome! We are headed for our annual family vacation in a few weeks and we always have the hardest time planning our meals. Printing this for sure.
[…] As I mentioned, we prefer to have a kitchen at the beach so that we can make our own meals. For our family of four, I spent $250 for a week’s worth of groceries (yes, even food at the beach grocery store is more expensive). Compare this to our lunch out in Seaside, which cost us $70+ and there were no leftovers. Not to say that you shouldn’t eat out, but not eating out for every meal will save you a LOT of money (and you can make sure your kids are getting some healthy food that they will actually eat). You can save even more money by bringing dry goods from home, if you have room. I have put together a separate post with our vacation meal plan and grocery shopping list. […]
Thanks for the ideas! Love this.
Thanks Heidi! Hope it helps make your next vacay less stressful.
Woo Hoo! Glad to be of help, Karen. Have a great trip, and let me know if you have any additional ideas/tweaks after you’ve tried it out.
This is REALLY smart. I’m going to pin this so others can find it too! I’m trying to remember what my mother made during our vacations when we stayed in a condo.
That’s so much more organized than I was this year. There has been a lot of cereal consumption. But I did pack a bunch of stuff from home so we wouldn’t have to buy it here.
This is really fantastic! And not just for if you have kids btw… it’s just a great planning guide. Thanks so much!
Awesome! There’s just two of us right now, but I can see where this would be a lifesaver. 😀
This is awesome! I’m sharing this on my friend’s facebook page. This will come in handy for the Beach House!
This is a great idea! No vacation plans for me in the immediate future, but we usually take a lengthy lake trip to Hot Springs every year and this will make for VERY easy grocery shopping. Great post!
I definitely agree that you should go simple. While you want to eat good food, it’s not the main focus when you’re on vacation (at least in my family). For us, food is just the fuel that keeps us going for the next activity. If you’re traveling with another group of people, making a cooking rotation is a great way to share the load. These are some great meal suggestions, thanks for sharing!
http://www.sandsresorts.com
These are great ideas! Simple is key, I tend to be a foodie, but I don’t like to be on vacation. We will be traveling later this year, and this will come in handy for sure!
Love this idea. Going simple is a great idea. We love to use local ingredients, find a farmer’s market and enjoy their produce. Printing the chart for my next vacation!
Thanks for posting. Like you had said, this kind of information was harder to find online (all my searches led me to food/snacks to eat in the car while driving, LOL). We’ve always taken food on our trips. We even went to Hawaii with a cooler of food (I worked for the airlines at the time, so flights were cheap, got a great deal on a 1 bedroom condo (w/sleeper sofa in livingroom for the 2 kids) for under $300 for the WEEK, and along with bringing a lot of our food as opposed to buying there ($7 for a gallon of milk, YIKES!), it was a great trip. We’re going to a friends beach house next week and I’ve already started planning my lists. Thanks to your post, I have a few new ideas.
I am so glad that other people plan ahead an make lists just like me! I am 22 and I have been planning my family’s beach menu for the last 5 or so years so that my mom wouldn’t have to and everyone always says my planning is overboard! Ha! Joke is on them, I am not the only one!
Great menu!! Super Walmart is a great place to shop as it is significantly cheaper than the 30A Publix or local grocery stores. We drive there and stock up, and then go to closer groceries as needed through the week.
Thank you for sharing this and WOW on how organized and easy to read your lists and tables are!
Thanks so much for posting this – saved me loads of time and inspired my menu!! I’m certain the shopping list will save me from “Oh no!!” 🙂
How much did this cost you
We usually spend around $300-$350 for groceries for our week at the beach.