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Do you cook when on holiday?? 🧐

(44 Posts)
Babs03 Sat 20-Sept-25 13:16:35

One of the criteria for a relaxing holiday in my book is that I don’t have to cook. We don’t always go to a hotel that provides all the meals though, quite often we go B&B then eat out, or self catering and just grab cereal and a yogurt in our accommodation in the morning before eating out for the rest of the day.
Have been cooking for the family and DH all my life and have enjoyed it at times, but it can be a chore and holidays are supposed to be chore free.
How do you feel about it?

NotSpaghetti Sat 20-Sept-25 18:21:07

Yes.
Happy to cook.
Went on holiday recently with 4 of my adult children and their families.
We each cooked one huge dinner for all 17 of us.
That left 2 days when we did something else.

If it's just the two of us we would mainly eat out.
I'm happy to cook in Italy as the vegetables are so fresh and fabulous that so little effort is required.

kittylester Sat 20-Sept-25 18:22:05

It's called a holiday.

I am a good cook and love cooking but need a break.

kittylester Sat 20-Sept-25 18:25:33

The ingredients (herbs, seasonings etc are never freely available on holiday unless one preplans and writes - that's not what a holiday is about in my view.

pably15 Sat 20-Sept-25 18:35:35

no ,if we're self catering, we,ll have breakfast before going out for the day, but that's it, don't cook lunch or dinner,
when one of my husband's brothers and his wife went on self catering holidays, she had to cook his dinner most days, just like at home, that wasn't much of a holiday for her...

lixy Sat 20-Sept-25 18:39:20

Yes, but only when I choose to.
Camping and self-catering holidays with small children weren’t proper downtime as shopping and cooking still needed to be done albeit differently from usual.
Now we buy bread, cheese and fruit locally for lunch and eat out in the evenings.

Best meal ever though was when camping on Guernsey and we bought fruit and veg from the honesty stalls as we cycled round. Blackberry and apple cooked on a primos cost next to nothing and tasted fabulous!

M0nica Sat 20-Sept-25 19:30:28

It all depends, when the children were young, we would eat on holiday all those ready foods I never served at home. A Fray bentos steak pie remains an essential for any holiday.

Now we holiday alone, we do generally eat out, but might have a salad for one of our meals and eat that in our accommodation.

Oldnproud Sat 20-Sept-25 19:30:58

It can depend on finances, can't it.

If you prefer not to cook when on holiday, and can afford the alternatives, fine.

Having any sort of holiday at all was a luxury for us when our children were young, so still having to cook most of the meals didn't seem that bad.

valdavi Sat 20-Sept-25 19:36:44

No.
We don't have much holiday and when we do, I don't cook. If someone else wants to, fine.

AmberGran Sat 20-Sept-25 20:08:41

Yes. We nearly always stay in self catering places and cook at least part of the time.

Depends though on what we are doing and where we are going. Sometimes we are up at the crack of dawn and out so will have breakfast somewhere on the road or a brunch where we are going and if we get home at a reasonable time we will cook dinner. Sometimes we have a late start we cook breakfast but eat out in the evening.

We always look for a place with a dishwasher, but that doesn't always work 😁

Primrose53 Sat 20-Sept-25 20:25:46

No thanks. Did enough of that when the kids were small and we did tents, caravans and much later, holiday cottages.

LOUISA1523 Sat 20-Sept-25 21:15:58

Yes but nothing complicated...we currently island hopping in Croatiaand slovenia for 3 weeks...staying in air bnbs.....wouldn't want to eat out for 21 nights ....could afford it...but would have so many hols if we did ......we made cheese and tomato toasties tonight

TillyTrotter Sat 20-Sept-25 21:32:18

I’m happy to cook some of the meals on holiday when self-catering.
A change is as good as a rest they say, and some of the kitchens have been better equipped than my own. We always have a dishwasher.

Tenko Sat 20-Sept-25 21:50:36

Very rarely do I cook on holiday . I do breakfast, toast, croissants and yogurt . If in a villa with our AC we do a bbq a few times during our holiday as it’s nice to chill and not get dressed up to go out to dinner . If it’s just DH and I in an apartment, we sometimes get a takeaway pizza or gyros and eat on our balcony with a bottle of wine.

Visgir1 Sat 20-Sept-25 21:51:09

I'm reading this on an All Inclusive in Mexico.. So my answer is.
Not on your Nellie.

dragonfly46 Sat 20-Sept-25 21:57:03

We used to camp in France so meals were either a take away from the camp shop, barbecues or the odd meal out in the local town. Part of the fun was shopping for exotic food in the local supermarkets and the town markets.

Jaxjacky Sat 20-Sept-25 22:04:37

No, we’ve just been to Cornwall for a few days, MrJ made himself toast in the B&B, I pressed a button on the coffee machine šŸ™‚

srn63 Sat 20-Sept-25 23:51:18

My husband does the majority of the cooking our house. He is an excellent cook. We stay in cottages and lodges due to having dogs and he would rather cook an evening meal for us both. His cooking is so good that whenever we do eat out we both always think that if he had cooked the meal it would have been far better and consequently not worth the money, eating out isn't cheap now. Not wasting our money on mediocre meals out means that we can go away far more often.

SusieB50 Sun 21-Sept-25 00:15:52

We always self catered we couldn’t afford hotels and we nearly always cooked in the holiday home.,I didn’t mind as I enjoyed shopping in markets and different supermarkets. Nowadays I generally holiday with siblings or with AC and GC and we mix and match but have very simple meals that need little preparation.