What We Ate at the Beach | Still Playing School

What We Ate at the Beach

By Devany | Labels:
We just returned from our 5th annual week long vacation to Avalon, New Jersey.  We share an adorable little cottage with my husband's mother, sister, and her husband.

As always, we ate very well!  We cook at home for the majority of our meals, but we go out a few times.  This year we visited The Mad Batter, Bobby Dee's Rock N Chair, Kudos American Grille, and Springer's for ice cream, of course!   We all unanimously loved their Almond Amaretto flavor (well, except for E who stuck to her cotton candy ice cream).  We ate at the Ocean City, NJ boardwalk one evening, too.  E had some actual cotton candy there!


My sister-in-law had a brilliant idea to create a Google Drive spreadsheet of the foods (and other household supplies) that we would be bringing.  We divided the shopping and accessed the list as we packed to check items off.  She now wants us to add a few lines of summary regarding what changes we should make for next year.  If you travel with other families, I highly recommend this!  It really appeals to my organizational side, so it made me fall in love my sister-in-law all over again!

For breakfasts, my mother-in-law bakes crumb buns and blueberry coffee cake.  I added our favorite peanut butter coconut oil cookies into the mix this year.  My sister-in-law frequently travels for her (awesome) career as a marketing manager for a chocolate company, so she had a plethora of Pepperidge Farm cookies for us to taste test.  We also had scrambled eggs, fruit smoothies, and coffee, of course. (D continued his 5 am wake up time even on vacation!)

My brother-in-law is in charge of the grill.  Being Turkish, he always makes the most amazing meatballs, grilled veggies, pineapple, and rice for one evening's dinner.  This year for various meals he also grilled steaks, vegetables, hot dogs, sausages, and veggie burgers.


One night we had a spread of crackers, toasted baguette, cheeses, my favorite hummus, and several Trader Joe's antipasto dips.  E helped prep the caprese salad!


She had her first s'more...


and shared a tropical drink served in a pineapple with Cowie!


I made guacamole, a southwestern inspired black bean quinoa salad, but the winner was this tomato and zucchini "pasta" salad.  I'm not usually a fan of zucchini, but I LOVED this recipe.  I am certain that I will have this salad on stand by all summer long!  I may need a kitchen gadget to streamline the slicing prep.

What have you been eating lately?  How do you plan meals when you travel?

2 comments :

  1. We go to the beach with my family each year. We, too, need to plan our meals ahead of time, but we have a different method.

    The first night down, we usually do some grab-n-go/take-out to make it quick and easy as we unpack. My parents always give us a date night, and we usually spend one night with our families on the boardwalk (We go to DE). This usually allows for three nights of cooking and one night of left-overs. Each of the three families takes a night to prepare a meal and hang out at the house while the kids nap in the afternoon.

    Throughout the week, we go to the store a produce market frequently. My mom pays for everything, then we split the bill at the end of the week. This method has worked out well for us. No one is responsible for all the cooking, we don't have to compare multiple receipts, and we get a variety of foods.

    I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation--and ate well.

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    Replies
    1. Oh, date night sounds lovely! Grocery shopping together at the beach is one of our favorite traditions!

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