5/2 Menu Plan Monday (vacation version)

This weeks menu will be a little different as we are on a mini vacation for for the first 4 days of the week!  Yay – loving the sand, sun and water!

But my frugality never takes a vacation! ;)  So here is how we will be saving money on food even while on vacation.

We usually try to get a hotel room that has some sort of small kitchen or kitchenette so we can do some meals in the hotel.  Then I shop for and stock up on snack foods and other food in the weeks leading up to vacation using coupons and buying at the lowest price possible.  And we pack a cooler and bags of food and take it with us.

So here is our vacation menu: Breakfasts Cereal, yogurt (gotten for FREE), toast, bagels, bananas, OJ Lunches Grilled cheese sandwiches, Ham and salami sandwiches, chips and dip (gotten for FREE), Homemade pimento cheese and crackers, PB and Jelly Snacks granola bars,  Teddy Grahams, chips/dip, peanuts (from CVS! ;) Dinners We will eat out for dinner each night.  BUT we have a Cracker Barrel gift card, a Chili’s gift card,  Longhorn’s/Red Lobster gift cards + coupons, O’Charley’s coupons, an Applebee’s gift card, and a coupon for Red Robin so most of our dinners will be at one of those places. We have been saved extra from our April out-to-eat budget to splurge one night at a local seafood restaurant (hopefully with a coupon if I can find one in the tourist coupon books.)

As for the 3 days we are home when we get back, I haven’t really gotten that far in my planning. ;)   But we have plenty of food at home so will probably opt for some fast, simple-to-prepare meals such as:

• Frozen Steamfresh veggie pasta sides (that we eat as a meal)
• Homemade basil tomato pizza w/ Italian cooking creme
• baked potatoes and salad