We just got back from spending a week with my grandparents. While we were there, we all worked together on meal preparation. One of the ways we simplified cooking for so many people was to declare that each day, we were having leftovers for lunch.
This meant that every day we prepared a big breakfast. My grandmother spoiled us with bacon or sausage and eggs in the morning. For lunch, we pulled all of the leftovers out of the refrigerator and people could choose among them for what they would enjoy for lunch (this always included a plate of raw, cut up vegetables, to make sure everyone got plenty of veggies). And each night we would make a big dinner, which we prepared and enjoyed together.
This saved us from the work of preparing three meals a day. It made sure we didn’t waste food by making sure that all of our leftovers got eaten (read more about the problem of food waste HERE). It allowed people to choose what they wanted to eat for lunch without making those of us in the kitchen feel like short order cooks. And it allowed us to spend more time simply hanging out together instead of spending all of our time cooking meals followed by cleaning up the kitchen.
The wonderful thing about this is, this idea will work in your day to day life as well as on vacation. In fact, it’s how we do most of our meals at home. Several nights a week we will prepare a big dinner, with the intent of eating the leftovers throughout the following days.
We almost always eat leftovers for lunch. They’re quick and easy, they’re very portable (if you need to pack lunches for eating on the go), and they’re a great way to avoid food waste (for other ways to avoid food waste, see HERE). You can eat them cold, you can re-heat them using your devise of choice (we use our stove top), or you can use them as a base to make something new with only a little bit of extra work.
No matter what you choose to do with them, I’m guessing you’ll find that your work load will reduce considerably if you choose to eliminate cooking from scratch and instead utilize your real food leftovers for one of your meals.