CT FM 014: Frugal Holidays Part 2

CT FM 014:

Frugal Holidays Part 2 Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our fourteenth Podcast from CT FM. In this Podcast it is all about following on from where we left off in the CTFM Podcast 13 and showing you how to enjoy a nice family holiday by saving money but enjoying yourself at the same time.

Some of you are probably wondering what this has got to do with cooking tips. Well it is simple. We all love food, we want to be frugal with our cooking and at the same time we don’t want to cook everyday either.

I love to save money so that it can be spent on the important things and I hate the idea of throwing away money.

I learnt the hard way from an earlier family holiday and this time around I was going to see how I could cut back the costs.

So here goes. Keep listening or reading my transcript to see how we cut the costs and had an amazing holiday in the Spanish sun at the same time.

The Holiday Clothes Well we didn’t want to go nuts but we still needed clothes. Sofia is a growing baby and has no clothes that fit her, I am in my final trimester with my third pregnancy and nothing fits unless you count leggings and tshirts as my only wardrobe. Plus Kyle is a growing teenager and seems to think it is okay when it comes to summer and the super heat to walk around in jeans all the time.

So I went shopping. I spent about 150€ on clothes and not only will the clothes do the holiday in Spain but they will do the rest of the summer too. Compared to what we have spent in the past I don’t think I did bad.

Holiday Extras There is also this urge to get all the extras for the holiday but we have kept this to a minimum and just done the things we need to. A haircut for me and Sofia and this came in at 12€.

The dog is now at the kennels and for 15 nights this is costing us 120€ and our cats are being looked after for free.

Our old suitcases have come out and can be used. We have also gone through our pantry and we are bringing quite a bit of food things with us so that we can cut back on costs.

Also over the last day or so we have been eating our leftovers in the fridge so that we will have very little or NO food waste. So for lunch the day before Dominic is on a mission to use old eggs and some half used tinned tomatoes!!!

The Actual Holiday Cost It is the morning before we are going and the first thing I am doing is checking out the latest last minute prices for hotels only in Spain. I am comparing between Trivago.co.uk and Bookings.com. I did look at Hotels.com but their website is very complicated and is doing my nut in. On first glance I am not too much of a fan of Bookings.com because when you click through the price for what it says on the first page doesn’t match and is rather annoying!

I check back at lunch time to see if any of them have dropped in price and end up spending a couple of hours looking and getting lost in the moment. In the end I find a nice apartment in the region of Vera for 987€ for two weeks bed and breakfast. It is a long drive there though so I better brace myself for a long car journey!

It is a great deal and we have excellent self catering facilities for when we are cooking. So it is exciting stuff.

Eating Out On Holiday We were on a mission to eat out less and less and cook in the self catering accommodation more and more. When we actually arrived the self catering facilities was a lot more limited than what you would expect. For example there was no oven shelf inside the oven, no knives for cutting vegetables with and the things you take for granted at home were not there.

So we had to buy extra knives from the local Chinese shop which added another 10€ to our holiday costs and then we got into the cooking.

Here is how our holiday went: On our first night we ate at the restaurant onsite and paid the upgrade for the evening meal for our first night. We didn’t have much food in and wanted to eat and then go to bed. It was a great mix of food (mainly healthy) and had a Spanish feel. Lots of salad, lots of meat and fish and the biggest supply of olive oil I have seen in my life. The Spanish have the olive oil like gravy so there were plenty of different versions. We filled ourselves up for 12€ each which was a bargain.

Then between Saturday morning (the day after we arrived) and Wednesday we cooked everything in our apartment. Of course breakfast was included in the price so we tried to fill ourselves up on this and then did lots of cooking.

Saturday = We end up having a lovely salad and loads of sandwiches on Saturday due to us driving around and getting lost for ages and then not getting back until late.

Sunday = For lunch we have macaroni cheese with lots of bacon, four different cheeses and loads of salad. For dinner we have a traybake of chicken pieces with tomatoes and vegetables with jacket potatoes. It is the same Spanish chicken recipe that we have on our blog and we have all the time.

Monday = For lunch we have pizza with garlic potatoes and a salad. It is a lovely quick lunch for us all thanks to having a fun filled morning by the swimming pool. For dinner we have the rest of our pieces of chicken with steamed potatoes and a lovely coconut cheese sauce. It was delicious and a great use of leftovers. It is also very similar to my coconut chicken recipe that I have on recipe this.

Tuesday = For lunch we have a delicious burger with salad and local garlic mayonnaise. Dominic makes the best burgers ever and they are always super sized and remind of man food! Then in the evening we have a big pan of one pot beans with bacon, homemade tomato sauce and garlic.

Oh and I add soft cheese just before serving to give it that incredible creamy taste.

Wednesday = For lunch we are on for another eat out experience. For today we are going to a tapas bar and enjoy loads of tapas, lots of cold drinks by the Mediterranean Sea and some burgers and chips. This is what I call “our push the boat out mealâ€? you know that ONE special meal you have on holiday that costs a small fortune. Well this one comes in at just over 60â‚Ź for the four of us. But it will keep us full for ages so I am

sure it will be worth it. My favourite business woman from Apprentice once said that we should all blow all our money in our 20’s that way we wont mind saving at a later date. Well if you are going frugal make sure you have a treat once in a while (like this) so that it doesn’t feel like you are constantly on a money saving drive.

Then in the evening we just have a sandwich because we are still rather full from our lunch!

Thursday = For lunch we have Dominic’s delicious homemade cheeseburgers.

They taste amazing and remind me of being at home, well minus the Airfryer for cooking them in! Then in the evening it is a quick salad.

Friday = For lunch we have a lovely cheese and tomato sandwich along with chocolate and a lolly because we are on holiday and deserve a treat. Then in the evening I made a vegetable bake made with coconut milk, coconut oil, cheese and loads of fresh vegetables.

Are we really on week two? Yes a week of our holiday is already over and we are heading into week two. Though expect a lot more eating out this week as we still haven’t been to all the places that we had planned to go to!

Saturday = For today the plan of action is to go the market as we have not checked it out yet, then take Sofia to a nice soft play centre and then this will be followed up with a trip to a Chinese Buffet. I love the idea of a Chinese buffet because you can get whatever you want and then pay just a small price. You also fill yourself up and then you hardly eat anything for the rest of the day. So in the evening this results in a small portion of avocado and a chocolate biscuit.

Sunday = Today we planned to head down the beach and then have lunch at a Brazilian restaurant that we have found by the seafront. Going to a Brazilian is like the buffet option as they feed you until you beg them to stop. It is where they carve different meats at the table and it is served with rice, chips, black beans, bread and garlic mayonnaise. It is excellent value for money as you get a lot of red meat and you always leave feeling like you have binged. Again you don’t want to eat anything in the evening though my cravings make me have a black pudding sandwich!

Monday = I have sunstroke so I don’t feel like eating anything today. So for the first time ever I skip the breakfast buffet. OMG don’t tell anyone.

How could a frugal person not go and eat a breakfast they have paid for?

Well I did and I have. Then for lunch I have a mix of leftovers from the fridge including black pudding, sausages and cheese. Then for dinner I have salad with some cheese and the boys have beans and sausages.

Tuesday = For today I wanted to achieve the ultimate frugal holiday experience. And that is a picnic on the beach. Where I can enjoy the warm weather of the Mediterranean without spending money at a local restaurant or bar. I don’t have the usual supplies that I have at home so I can’t go at my pantry. But I will make do with what I have. We have loads of tuna pasta, egg mayonnaise wraps and a few sides.

Wednesday = For today we have egg mayonnaise wraps for lunch and then for dinner I take the kids on a tapas bar crawl and we spend 30€ at 5 different tapas bars. Nearly all of it is amazing food and offers us unbelievable value for money.

Thursday = For today as our last

day we head back out to the same Chinese buffet that we went to last weekend. It is a lovely place for great food at an amazing price and leaves you full for hours. Then in the evening we used up the rest of the fridge food and has a mini buffet due to all the little bits and pieces we had left over.

In the end for leftovers we were only left with some white wine as we are not big drinkers and a tiny bit of pate that we didn’t quite manage to finish!

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 14 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention to Bookings.com it is who we eventually booked our holiday with and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

So I am dedicating this section to them. We were also booking for a time when everything was booking up so it proved there was still great deals to be had. I would suggest you pay by credit card with them though as you are still booking online.

Holiday Cost Breakdown So what did we spend to have a fortnight in Spain?

Holiday Clothes = 150€ Holiday Extras = 23.50€ Holiday Accommodation = 987€ Petrol = 155€ Travelling Food & Drink = 44€ First Night Half Board Upgrade = 40€ Tapas By The Beach = 62,50€ Chinese Buffet = 36,00€ Brazilian = 63,00€ Tapas Evening = 50,00€ 2nd Chinese Buffet = 36,00€

Grocery Shopping = 190€ Total = 1837€ Costs that we saved by not being at home Day to day petrol costs = 20€ Utilities = 40€ Groceries = 200€ Grand Total = 1577€ If we had booked two weeks in a touristy Spanish resort the minimum price would have been 2500€ for half board including petrol to get us there. By going self catering and then enjoying a few meals out we have managed to save ourselves close to 1000€. We could of course saved more by not eating out at all or renting an apartment away from hotels but we still wanted to enjoy ourselves. This is certainly a holiday break we would be happy to do again and again.

And the beauty of the petrol is that it is cheaper in Spain so we filled it up ready for our trip home as well as using it while we were there.

We also avoided expensive day outs and questioned whether they were worth spending money on or not. We came across a waterpark but it didn’t have great reviews so we decided not to go and go to our favourite one when we got back to Portugal instead. In the same way we stuck to days out that were free such as days at the beach or by the pool.

For travelling with food it was a disaster going. We ended up wanting breakfast on the way down and stopping at motorway services with no café and ended up on processed sandwiches. They were overpriced and then so awful that I couldn’t finish it. But after this we stopped for lunch at a lovely Spanish café and had the most amazing couple of platters of

food including a Spanish omelette, sausages in olive oil and Dominic had some bacon and eggs. We also had some sweets and some lollies with it being so hot and extra water as it was 32 degrees in the car and we were melting.

On the way home with food we had learnt our lesson and have a filling hotel breakfast before we go with plenty of eggs for our protein. Then for lunch we had a complete disaster.

In the end I finally got my lunch at 6pm near the Portuguese border at McDonalds. We tried three different motorway stops and all three of them had awful food that was either overpriced or looked disgusting. In fact with the 3rd for the first time in about 10 years we walked out when the food came as it was that awful.

But you are probably wondering if we would do anything differently?

Well for starters for the hotel we booked we were not happy with the breakfast. It was Spanish processed foods meets American junk food and as someone that likes to be healthy the majority of the time I ended up absolutely hating it and even skipped the breakfast twice. If I had known how bad the food was before I booked I would have booked room only instead.

We also found that it was too far for us to travel and spent the first week recovering from the drive rather than enjoying ourselves. So next time we will stick to a drive with a maximum distance of 500km.

We should have gone out for more tapas. Sometimes it can be cheaper to eat out rather than cook in a self catering establishment. When you can feed yourself lunch for 3â‚Ź you realise this could be better for us.

Also with food on the motorway being so hit and miss, in future we would bring our own food with us.

I know I have said this a lot in this Podcast but I would highly recommend a driving holiday with a last minute hotel with lots of home cooking. It is a great way to spend time together as a family and save a small fortune along the way.

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast        

TripAdvisor.com Trivago Bookings.com Hotels.com Cheesy Coconut Chicken Recipe Spanish Chicken Traybake Flourless Cheese Sauce Tuna Pasta (perfect for the beach)

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