Disney Food for Families columnist Erin Foster is back with the fourth segment in her series about making and enjoying food in the Disney Vacation Club villa kitchens. See post #1 here, post #2 here, and post #3 here!
In the previous installments of the Disney Vacation Club Villa Kitchens series, I discussed the cooking supplies available, the food available for sale at the Villa resorts, and alternate places to buy groceries around WDW. In this last post, I’m going to do a little hypothetical menu planning and try to give you some ideas for meals created using only foods sold at the DVC resort hotels. What can you actually cook using the limited food supplies available at DVC Resorts?
Refrigerated dairy and protein
Breakfast Ideas
There are easy fixes for breakfast, with both light and more substantial options among the obvious choices.
- Cold cereal with sliced banana and milk. Orange juice chaser.
- Toast with jam or peanut butter.
- Scrambled eggs with bacon.
- Omelettes with ham and cheese.
- Pop Tarts and coffee. My personal breakfast of champions 🙂
Cereal
Lunch and Dinner
There are also some readily apparent options for lunch/dinner:
- Hot dogs, buns, with chips or fries.
- Spaghetti with red sauce.
- Grilled cheese and soup.
- Frozen pizza or lasagna.
- Tuna melts.
- Cold or toasted sandwiches.
Packaged goods
These are all serviceable, but not inspired. Sure you can make pasta with jarred sauce and no one will starve, but without spices, salad, and garlic bread, it’s not really a meal.
Because of the serious lack of veggies available in the resort shops, my suggestion is to make a trip every other day or so to the resort quick service restaurant and pick up a salad or two to supplement your main course. For example, at my home resort, the Villas at Wilderness Lodge, Roaring Fork quick serve offers two delish salads that can be split among three or four people as a side dish.
Salads
Whip Up a Real Meal!
Ignoring the paucity of sides, what creative cuisine can be had from just the basics? Here are some ideas:
- Tuna casserole: You’ve got noodles, tuna, milk and cheese. Mix ’em together for some old school comfort food.
- Hash brown quiche: Smash up the DVC frozen tater tots and you’ve got hash browns. And OK, you’re missing the green onions, but your kids didn’t really want to eat them anyway.
- Chocolate bread pudding: Substitute a Mickey milk chocolate bar for the unsweetened chocolate and use DVC Nestle Quick chocolate milk instead of regular milk. Extra yum.
- Cheesy pizza fondue: Why have just pizza when you can make it fun and interactive? Use chopped up DVC cheese sticks for the mozzarella and toasted English muffins instead of pitas.
- Chicken and waffles: Use the frozen fried chicken and the frozen toaster waffles to make your own version of this Trail’s End staple.
Make Your Version of the Chicken and Waffles at Trail's End
Tips For Being Creative in Your Villa Kitchen
Use Your Imagination:
If you’re going to be cooking in your Villa kitchen, use your imagination and have fun. Don’t be afraid to improvise or make substitutions in your favorite recipe from home. Or use the search feature in a recipe aggregator such as AllRecipes.com and plug in the ingredients available at the DVC resorts for some quick ideas.
Frozen savories
Travel With A Few Extras
Your cooking options will also expand exponentially if you are willing to travel with a few food extras. Try putting a few teaspoons of spices in some zip top bags. All of a sudden your boring jarred sauce will have some hot pepper zing. Or if you own at a DVC resort, perhaps look into renting an Owners Locker where you can store shelf-stable items like spices that will enhance your cooking over several trips.
Good luck cooking in your villa kitchen. Let me know what you come up with on your next trip. I can’t wait to hear!
What’s the best meal you’ve made in your villa kitchen? Let us know in the comments section below!
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While we are DVC, we have never ventured beyond donuts and frozen pizza for our in room dining. Thanks for the ideas!
Erin, I have loved this series, excellent work. Lots of great info, very creative and insightful. While I love to cook, my Disney vacations have never included cooking (other than hot dogs on the grill at a friends FW Cabin.) There are too many great restaurants in the world and never enough vacation time to enjoy them all.
Being DVC, we utilize the kitchen regularly in our villa. We prefer to eat a good breakfast in the room, have a light snack in the afternoon and splurge on dinner at one of the more upscale restaurants. Often, we are traveling with a group (7-12 people) and making breakfast in the room can be a huge cost savings – especially for those who are on a budget. We usually hit Publix and pick up the basics: eggs, sausage, fruit, milk, cheese, bread, etc. These items along with the spices, etc. that we keep in our Owner’s Locker allows us to make some basic recipes such as Egg Casserole and Baked French Toast that we can reheat the next day. We also get some snack items as well – to have on hand for the kids. This has been a great series – thanks for the time and effort you put into this!!
Thanks so much for doing this series! On our first trip we had the DDP – which was totally great for us. This time, we’ll have a DVC kitchen and ordering food from Garden Grocer to cook meals. I REALLY don’t want to cook on vacation, but it doesn’t make sense to pay for a kitchen if we aren’t going to use it. I’m going to be trying to make some things that we might find in the parks, like tacos, pizza, spaghetti, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs and salads. We are throwing in ‘Ohana, Hollywood Brown Derby, and Sanaa, just so I feel like I’m at a Disney resort 🙂
Great ideas here that I never thought of. Like Jenny P, we always have breakfast in our room, whether its instant oatmeal brought from home or eggs and toast bought at the resort store. Like Jenny P we then can splurge on a sit down meal but we usually do a late lunch and then snacks for later in the evening. I love the idea of packing spices etc. to help with meals and will definitely be doing that on our next trip.
Thanks for this great series! We were doing some cost analysis of our trip, and this really helps me see the value in having a few in-room meals while in the BCV. Thanks!
I have really enjoyed these articles, however, I’d love to see a 5th one with ideas for cooking in a studio. We will be spending 2 weeks in a studio this summer, and we will need to eat in at least a few times.
So far, I’ve thought of toaster bags for grilled cheese and soup, and I think we could make pasta in the microwave and add some sauce.
But I’m in need of a bit more inspiration.
Bev — I’ll pass this comment on to Erin! Thanks for the idea!
Crockpot! I do simple meat dish such as pulled pork,ribs,or beef tips…I usually turn my crockpot on before we go to bed and unplug it before we leave for the park..I even brought a small rice cooker….