Week 16 & 17 - Hotel Kitchenette Meals

Just returned from an awesome week in Florida!  We stayed at the Guy Harvey Outpost in St. Pete Beach and overall we were very happy with our stay.  The Guy Harvey is nice and quiet and guests have access to all the amenities at the larger Tradewinds Island Grand, just a short walk down the beach.  The beach was beautiful, water warm, weather hot and sunny... what more can you ask for?

View from our room at Guy Harvey Outpost, St. Pete Beach

Typically when we travel I'm most excited about the food, even when we go to an All Inclusive where you eat at the same buffet for 7 days straight.  Hey - if I'm not cooking, or more importantly cleaning, I'm not complaining!  However, this is our third sun destination vacation since Marin has come along and I'm now finding things go much smoother if we get accommodations with a kitchen.  With a child this age (4), who is off schedule and tired from being outside in the sun, restaurants are not necessarily a pleasant experience (lesson learned at Downtown Disney's Rainforest Café last year!).  But this was my vacation too, elaborate meals were definitely not on the menu.  We had a full-sized fridge, stovetop and microwave - all we needed.  An added bonus this year, there was daily housekeeping and they did the dishes!  Yippee!!  And we might not have eaten out much, much I made sure I totally enjoyed my morning coffee! 



We were travelling with my brother-in-law's family as well (kids aged 2 & 5).  Between us here's a list of some the meals and snacks that got us through:

Easy Meal Ideas:

• Breakfast - alternated between cereal and toast
• Wraps - filled with pre-sliced cheese, pre-chopped mixed peppers, black beans, salsa, sour cream and guacamole (option: substitute deli chicken for black beans)
• Kraft Dinner
• Grilled Cheese (using pre-sliced real cheddar)
• Spaghetti (pasta with jarred pasta sauce)
• Deli chicken with raw veggies or salad
• Ham & Cheese Sandwiches
• PB&J Sandwiches
• Omelettes

Snacks:

• Nuts
• Fruit (bananas, apples, berries)
• Dried Fruit (apricots and raisins)
• Vegetables (cherry tomatoes, sliced peppers, mushrooms, green beans, sugar snap peas, mini carrots - anything prewashed and prepped is a bonus!)
• Pretzels
• Cheese and Crackers
• Hard boiled eggs
• Yogurt (my sister-in-law buys the tubes and freezes them, makes an easy grab and go treat)
• Goldfish crackers (I've stopped buying these at home so Marin was devouring this treat!)
• Chips (for me Vacation = Chips)
• Apple sauce

I didn't buy ice-cream for the room since I figured we'd make it an occasional outing to go get a cone.  Surprisingly, this only happened twice! 

This is Marin taking charge of snack time.  Slice of bread with diced peppers, juice from cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of ranch dressing.  Not bad at all!

  

Take-Out:

• Room Service Pizza (ordered enough for supper and leftovers for lunch)
• Chipotle - this is a must have whenever we're close to one!  We ordered enough for 2 lunches.  Chipotle folks - if you're listening... I know you've found you're way to Canada but could you please, please, please make your way East!!
• St. Pete Beach Produce & Deli - not sure if this place has a name, the sign just says 'Produce & Deli.  It's on Gulf Blvd, roughly across from the Howard Johnson.  They have an awesome Greek menu.  We found this place the first time we were in St. Pete Beach 3 years ago and loved it!  We were so sad it was no longer there but mid-week realized it had just relocated - yippee!!  For our last night I bought a variety of food from the deli counter - grape leaves, spanakopita, tzatziki, tabouli, pita, baklava... mmmm... If you're in the area you should definitely check it out!

We travelled Wednesday to Wednesday.  Before going I made a tuna casserole on Sunday to get us through Monday and Tuesday lunches.  Suppers were... well... creative.  I was on a mission to clean out the fridge!  On our way home from the airport I popped into the grocery store for milk and stuff to make nachos for supper (Marin's request). Thursday was our first full day back... luckily I had 2 pieces of lasagna frozen that we used up for lunch.  Supper was salmon (frozen fillets), basmati rice made with coconut milk instead of water and asparagus (from the freezer).  Supper tonight is chicken, corn (both from the freezer) and red pepper slices leftover from the nachos. 

Tomorrow I'll break down and get a grocery order and finally admit that vacation is over... sigh...