Monday Mix-up - How to keep it real when you're on holiday

After a week on holiday, and therefore no blogging, we are back in business today! I dropped my parents off at the airport a short while ago and the holiday is now, sadly, officially over. We had the most awesome time, first in Crystal Springs, Mpumalanga, and then in the Kruger National Park for 2 days. If you haven't been to the Kruger I highly recommend it for a holiday. It's really affordable and just an amazing experience all round. My parents had never been before so it was wonderful to be able to show it to them:)

Couldn't resist putting up a picture of some of the animals
we saw there;)

This guy was grazing about 4 metres from our car!

We heard that the weather was pretty bad all over South Africa last week and Crystal Springs was NO different. We packed all our summer clothes, suncream, flip flops and swimming costumes and ended up all wearing pretty much the same warm clothes all week due to freezing cold temperatures, mist and rain! Some of us didn't even pack jackets so you can imagine how cold we were! Trips into town involved purchases of socks and warm jackets;)

However, despite the weather, my dad and I managed to fit in two 10 kilometre mountain bike rides and GLM and I also did one together. Yup, I did 30kms for the week! I felt very proud of all my exercising on holiday;)

It was pretty cold though, I can't lie. I felt like I had no fingers for the entire ride!

Bundled up warmly in my Sharks jacket. A PROUD fan;)

Thankfully, by the third cycle with GLM, the weather had improved enough to take my jacket off!

Once we got the Kruger, the temperatures soared up to the late 20s, and with the dryness, we were boiling hot! Talk about contrasts;)

Since we were staying in self-catering chalets, the most complicated part of the trip was the food! For me it gets even more complicated because we only eat organic and free-range and I can tell you that NONE of the shops near Crystal Springs cater for that. I find it ironic that we are close to lots of farms and yet the shops don't even stock free-range eggs! I didn't know that beforehand but I suspected it would be the case and so I planned for that eventuality.

Some of you are probably thinking it's hard enough to plan real food meals when you're at home and near enough to shops, why on earth would you try and do it when you're on holiday? Well, for me, a holiday isn't about eating badly and letting go of yourself. You're supposed to feel more relaxed and healthier by the time you get home, not feeling sick from all the bad food you ate and regretting all those desserts. Maybe that's just me!

So how DO you prepare yourself in advance for a holiday that includes meals that will feed 8 adults and be nutrient dense and real AND within your budget? Well it was actually surprisingly easy. Here's what I took with:

• Since I KNEW someone would be baking plenty of sugar-laden desserts that I didn't want to, and couldn't eat, I pre-empted that by baking two gluten-free banana breads. I also bought at least 30 bananas that I could freeze and use to make banana ice-cream for dessert for everyone. The bananas not used for the ice-cream were also frozen in a ziplock bag in the freezer to use in our morning smoothies.
• I visited the local farmer's market and also asked my mom to visit hers in Durban and together we stocked up on all the organic fruits we could find like pineapples, oranges and apples and paw paw to use in our morning smoothies.
• Between each of our shopping sessions we also stocked up on organic veggies like baby marrows, carrots, patty pans, spinach and salad stuff like lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, sugar snap peas and avos. My mom has found a guy in Durban who sells those HUGE avos for R5 each and they are DELICIOUS so she came up with 2 packets of them. You may be thinking that salad stuff doesn't travel well. It actually can, provided you keep it cool in the car and put it straight into the fridge on arrival. It's also better to only wash it as you need it. Once it comes into contact with water it will start to spoil. I made sure I took along some white vinegar and some fresh lemons to wash all the fruits and veggies with as we used them.
• Meat-wise, we had to plan exactly what we were going to make for every meal. Since my mom and I were handling 5 of the meals we first decided on the actual dish and then planned the meat around that. We decided on a chicken curry, a lamb casserole, a bobotie, a fish braai and roast chickens. I placed an order for all the free-range meat and eggs we would need from Terra Madre and arranged for her to deliver it on the morning we were leaving so it would be as fresh as possible.
• We also discussed, and planned, all the accompaniments to the meals. We decided on things like brown rice, mashed potato, sweet potatoes, butternut soup and roasted vegetables. My mom decided she wanted to add some beans to the lamb casserole as well.
• Rice and beans are not something you can simply eat straight out of the bag. In case you are wondering what I mean by that, read this blog. That meant that I had to take along some apple cider vinegar to soak them with and I needed to know in advance when we were going to be cooking what so that I could soak the rice and beans at least 24 hours before cooking them.
• Bone broth was also going to be necessary for the curry, casserole and soup so I made sure to prepare some of that beforehand and freeze it.
• I made a tub of goat's milk yogurt for me and a tub of cow's milk yogurt for everyone else and kept them frozen.
• I ordered and picked up a few litres of raw cow and goat's milk from my local supplier.
• I visited the Byranston Organic Market and bought a few odds and ends like farm butter, goat's and cow's milk cheese and a loaf of gluten-free, sprouted bread for the days when making a salad wasn't an option (like driving around in the kruger)
• All the other extras like organic tomato sauce, mineral salt, herbs and spices, teas and honey were already in my cupboard at home so that was easy enough to organise.
• The day before we were going to leave, I started decanting all of the above things into smaller containers or ziplock bags.
• The food we left right up until an hour before we were scheduled to leave and then we bought 2 bags of ice and loaded up all the perishable things into cooler boxes and poured ice in between everything. We ended up with 4 cooler boxes filled with all the stuff and, believe it or not, we fitted that, PLUS our suitcases and many bags of fruits and veggies into my little Getz;) We even managed to fit in my guitar!

My poor parents were surrounded by bags and cooler
boxes in the back of Tally (my car)
but they still remained cheerful regardless;)  Who wouldn't
be in the Kruger!

• Upon arrival in Crystal Springs we immediately unpacked everything and refrigerated what needed to be refrigerated and froze what needed to be frozen and EVERYTHING kept for the whole week. On the Friday morning we packed it ALL back into my car and headed to the Kruger National Park where we drove around in boiling hot temperatures for two full days and managed to continue to feed ourselves on the food we had brought up a week before. We ended up coming home with some of it and we're STILL eating it so nothing was wasted.

We probably spent about R1 200 on food at the most. It sounds like a lot but bear in mind, that that fed 8 adults for 8 days and nights and it was ALL organic, real food so it actually wasn't a lot at all. And, since we didn't finish it all, we're still benefiting from spending that money.

Had we eaten OUT for lunch and supper instead, we would have spent more than R100 per person, per day for sure. We would have eaten food that wasn't nutritious or good for us in any way and would probably have been tempted to eat a lot more desserts simply because they were on the menu. The LEAST it would have cost us would have been R6 400 and that's optimistic. By going this route we not only saved money, but stayed healthy and came home feeling GOOD health-wise AND without breaking the bank;)

It IS doable. Most people just don't allow themselves the option because it seems like hard work. I guess it is a bit more work but, to me, it's so worth it. And if you can manage this on holiday, just imagine how much easier it will be at home!