Post-Vacation Meal Planning: Simplify With These Easy Tips

The Post-Vacation Reality: From Relaxation to Real Life

We’ve been home from a Hawaiian vacation for less than 24 hours, and the relaxation is already a distant memory! Sound familiar? So much fun, sun, sand, water, and wonderful family memories were made this spring break, but back to dreary, cloudy skies is enough to suck that pineapple brain and tanned skin right from you!

The Dreaded Post-Vacation To-Do List: Laundry and an Empty Fridge

The other part of returning home from vacation usually means piles of laundry and, most annoyingly, an empty refrigerator. Life filled with hours on the beach or in the pool can quickly be forgotten when you get bombarded with immediate downers such as laundry and grocery shopping. While I don’t have any great solutions to the laundry situation, except for the fact that I’m happy to say my kids are old enough to tackle their own laundry now, I do have a great solution for never coming home to an empty refrigerator again.

How to Avoid Coming Home to an Empty Fridge

For the past few years, I’ve gotten into the habit of spending 30 minutes on the last day or two of our trip to make a meal plan and grocery list for the first few days home. The last thing you want to do is grocery shop to restock milk, eggs, and other essentials. Or worse yet, have to go out to eat at one more restaurant or get takeout. Indulging on vacation is one thing, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t come home from a fun vacation wanting to “reset” their food and alcohol intake. No Mai Tai’s and onion rings with banana ketchup on my meal plan!

Good Eggs Food Delivery: A Game-Changer

Enter Good Eggs food delivery! Years ago, I used other delivery services such as Instacart and Safeway, but I have to say I am most happy with Good Eggs. They deliver all the staples that I need—milk, eggs, veggies, fruit, chicken—and most are local brands that I’d buy at my local grocery store or farmer’s market and FOR THE SAME PRICE! I’ve done some cost comparisons with a few items just to see what the markup is, and I cannot really find much difference. My 32 oz container of Straus Organic Whole Greek Yogurt is $7.99—the same as two local grocery stores. And, a half gallon of Clover 2% milk is actually a dollar cheaper than I can find locally.

The Convenience of Good Eggs Delivery

Anyhow, I would actually pay a small premium to have my groceries sitting on my front porch when I arrive home from a trip. They have been packed perfectly with reusable, returnable, and recyclable materials and can sit outside for hours in case our arrival is a bit delayed. Happy camper, to say the least!

My Post-Vacation Meal Planning Strategy

And for the meal planning strategy: I take a few minutes and scroll through my saved collection of Instagram recipes (because my cherished cookbook collection is at home!) and select three to make a grocery list from. This week, I decided on one vegetarian Buddha bowl, one hearty salad, and one soup. This gives us three dinners that I don’t have to think about when we return home. The rest of the grocery list is filled in with fresh fruit, veggies, yogurt for smoothies, bread, cheese, milk for coffee, etc. It definitely doesn’t fill in all the holes but buys us enough time for me to make my weekly or bi-weekly trip to Trader Joe’s or Costco.

Our Family’s Post-Vacation Dinner Plan

The following recipes are the ones I selected to make for dinner for the next three days. I haven’t made any of them yet, but all are super simple, healthy, and I know my family will enjoy them. I’ll report back on any that we deem keepers!

Sweet Potato Budha Bowl

BBQ Chicken Salad with Creamy Avocado Ranch

Chicken and Rice Soup with Garlicky Chile Oil

Cheers,

Christina