Posted in Frugality-Simplicity

Simple Journey Ministries Presents

Can I Have Some More, Please!

Food for When You are Away from Home

Did you guess what today's post would be? I bet you were at least thinking about the fact that our family is away from home AND food is a HUGE cost when away.

A great way to cut costs when your family is away on vacation is to prepare some of the meals yourself. One of the ways to do that, is to use a handy little appliance like a snack maker.  These little beauties are easy to pack and are light weight. But don't let their size fool you, they can supply your family with a LOT of food at little cost. As you can see in this picture, this snack maker can handle 2 "sandwiches" at a time. There are several meals you can make in here with little more than bread. Any type of grilled sandwich is the obvious meal, but consider some other options. Add a little scrambled egg mixed with vanilla and sugar and you have french toast. If you are in a hotel, you can use the ice bucket for a bowl to mix the eggs and dip the toast and cook, or you can pour a bit of the egg on top of the bread and cook. Pancake batter works exceptionally well, as does biscuit and muffin batter. As you well know biscuits and muffins can be either sweet or savory opening you up to a WIDE variety of options for meals.

There are other snack cookers that work equally well. Some have deep wells that are perfect for cooking small meals that will hold a wider variety of foods. These are equally portable and light weight. However, you can make belly filling omelets, stuffed sandwiches, hot pockets, biscuits, pancakes, biscuits, and just about anything you can think of.

When staying in a hotel, many have at least a small fridge available, but even when they don't, it is less expensive to shop each day for a few simple items to assemble in these little cookers to provide filling meals at little expense to your wallet.

Let's say you are spending 4 days in a hotel and you have the typical family of 4 to feed. If you served breakfast each day and two night time meals. When the midday comes, consider stopping in a grocery for some fruit, a loaf of crusty bread and small block of cheese. Your lunch meals will cost approximately $7 (not including drinks, but you can easily grab cold drinks for around $3 or less). So lunch for 4 days would total $40. Breakfasts cost you around $5 each, totalling $20 for the length of your stay. Ok, so far you wil have spent $60 on 8 meals. Now, the two of your snack maker dinners will come in around $8-10 dollars for supplies for a maximum total of $20. That brings your total meal costs to $80 for 10 meals. That only leaves the last two meals for your dinners eaten out. Just for balance we will say that one meal will be pizza and the other a nice sit down joint. The pizza dinner will be 2 pies at $15 each, water to drink at no cost. after tax and tip the total pizza meal's cost will $38.10. The nicer meal will run around $10 per plate with water to drink at no cost. After tax and tip this meal will cost $50.80. This brings the total for the 2 dinners eaten out to $88.90. AMAZING that the cost of the 2 meals eaten out is more than the cost 10 meals prepared in your hotel room! The total for your 4 days with 3 meals per day is $168.90. Not bad! But to really see the savings this can provide, the avg cost of a family of 4 eating out 3 meals per day is $140. This means that you would have spent $560. Using a little snack maker will have saved you....are you ready?  $391.10! Now THAT is a savings!

You all know that this week we are camping. You likely know that we also aren't the most rustic of campers, in that we have an RV. However, I do not cook inside unless the weather is inclement. We use a grill, hot plate, and 2 little snack makers. These little snack makers can be used anywhere you have electricity available to you. 3/4 of the food we have used on this trip came from our home, so I would have to look at the price book to figure out how much I originally spent on the groceries. BUT, I know for certain that our total food cost is under $200 for our family for 8 days. It is a bit higher than our normal costs, because I love those little treats, like s'mores when we are camping.

When traveling, consider the best way to cut costs on food that fits your family and your budget!

These are my thoughts.