Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

This likely won't help now but I thought I'd tell you about it. When I travel I take "The Ultimate RV Cookbook, Recipes for the Traveling Chef" with me. The book is sectioned into three days worth of meals with shopping lists. It makes creating meals much easier when I'm traveling by RV or in a hotel with a mini kitchen.

Hot dogs or Italian sausage w/ peppers & onion?

We always make different pastas when we stay at a condo when we go skiing... these are a few of my nieces favorites:
Shrek's "Spaghetti"
Shrek's Pasta 2
Mac and Cheese
Pita Pizzas with Arugula Salad - the salad pasrt was more for the adults
Fettuccini Alfredo

Madelyn
KarmaFreeCooking

I was just in Florida last month renting a house with some friends. We had a grill though, that helped a lot.

As someone who once lived in Fl, I would suggest that you check the local Publix supermarket for some deals. Most of the prepared deli food is exceptional, breads and pastries are always fresh, I dont know if all of the stores have fried chicken, but I remember the fried chicken being cheaper and tastier than KFC. Also don't hesitate to buy any items that are Publix brand over brand name, there were a few items we got, frozen food, snacks, canned good, etc. and we all thought they were just as good as the name brand products.

From our experience just make easy meals, your on vacation, no one cares what they are eating as long as there is a meal being served. If your kids have sandwiches for lunch every day at school they really wont care, they are used to it. Stock sandwich bread, meats, and cheeses. Buy lettuce, tomatoes, and whatever else your family normally puts on their sandwiches, but make sure to cut everything up right away, so when someone wants a sandwich it will be very easy to put together. Also buy snacks and leave them out if possible, if everyone has access to snacks all day, they wont be so hungry at every meal.

Our main thing was that we didn't want to spend more than 30 minutes in the kitchen making any meal. All meat that we brought was very thinly pounded so it cooked fast, if you want to do fish just buy one long fillet and bake up with lemon and some seasoning. 1 day we peeled and cut enough potatoes for 2 breakfasts, we put the portion for day 2 in a bowl with water and put in the fridge for day 2, that worked really well. Bagels are great for breakfast because you can just put everything on the table and everyone helps themselves. Even though we had a grill one night, we just boiled up some hot dogs and ate them at the table outside (were just all to lazy to fire up the grill), just having the opportunity to eat the hot dogs outside was nice. Rice is good too, we made one big pot, had it with beans one night, and with some sauted veggies second night.

Hope you can enjoy the rest of your vacation!

We always had a ham at the beach. Hot one night and then sanwiches and potato salad. To simplify the potato salad you could cook the potatos in the microwave. I've done it before in a pinch.

I'm always a fan of oven-braising a giant pork shoulder roast in some water and cider vinegar, shredding it, and serving it (with our without BBQ sauce) as sandwiches w/coleslaw, or an entree with some mac n' cheese and a salad (or both on seprarate days). It's old school, so the elderly folks love it, and kids go gaga for it.

Do you have a casserole dish? I bet you could make a nice lasagna that will please everyone!

Hillary
Chew on That

I would try salad using fresh florida produce, good loaf of garlic/Italian bread and insert protein
pan fried steaks, grouper, salmon, chicken piccata.
Pasta bakes are great too, if you don' t have pans, oick up the aluminum ones hefy an glad make, this will allow you to make suffed shells, lasagna, baked ziti, mac and cheese, tuna noodle casserole and roast meats and veggies.
Also a breakfast for dinner may be fun eggs/omlettes, pancakes french toast. Have fun

Pasta salad, orzo salads, Potato salads, omeletes, fish. You can buy rotisseri chicken and make sandwiches. I'd just use a lot of fresh produce.

roasted asparagus with toasted parmigiano reggiano OR olive oil and black pepper OR pureed blanched walnuts and carmelized red onions ... my three favs

Oh please don't waste fresh asparagus by boiling it! I made it this way for years until my sister taught me the way Jerzee makes hers. Plus we shave a little reggiano on top when it's almost finished. Oh my.. sooo good.

I slice, like Nursie, along a natural break.

I did just see Jacques Pepin cooking asparagus on his new PBS show, though, and he peeled. He said it looked better that way. However, he did say that if in a kitchen he had asked the cooks to peel rather than leave as is, they would have staged a revolt.