Vacations are a great time to kick back and indulge yourself, but don’t let your vacation completely derail your diet. Instead, look for ways to build your holiday around fresh, healthful, locally sourced food. Here are five ideas for eating fresh during your vacation.
Choose a Cottage In Lieu of a Hotel
Cottages offer a lot of advantages over hotels. They tend to be secluded so that you can enjoy more privacy, and they often offer access to lakes or private beach areas. Cottages are also usually equipped with kitchens, which means that you can store food and prepare your own meals. Some inns offer both a main building and individual cottages on their grounds. In other cases, you can rent a cottage from a vacation rentals website or from Airbnb.com.
Before paying for your cottage, make sure to ask about the following issues:
- How is the kitchen stocked? Some cottage owners leave dishes as well as pots and pans, giving you everything you need to prepare your own food. Others expect you to bring your own supplies, so make sure you know what to expect before you book.
- Where can you buy food locally? Secluded locations are excellent for privacy, but they can also be inconveniently far away from the market. Find a cottage that’s within easy biking distance from a small town, or ask whether the local village offers a farmer’s market.
- What local restaurants would the owners recommend? It’s great to plan to cook every night, but you also deserve a break. Make sure that your cottage is near some good local dining so that you can skip the cooking — and the washing of dishes — at least once during your stay.
Pick a Vacation Spot Near an Excellent Farm or Farmer’s Market
Many public health experts and MPH students from universities that offer graduate degrees recommend focusing your diet on locally sourced foods in season. Some organic farms and farmer’s markets, which offer the freshest local foods around, are so outstanding that they’ve become destinations in their own rights. If you’re looking for inspiration, start by searching the USDA Farmer’s Markets Directory (for an American vacation) or look for a similar resource in the country you want to visit. Also, ask for information from friends who might be familiar with the market, or check out Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other review sites. For best results, pick a vacation site with a cluster of nearby farms and markets. If one of them doesn’t meet your needs, you’ll have additional options.
Research Restaurants That Use Organic, Locally Sourced Ingredients
For trips in the U.S. and Canada, the Eat Well Guide offers a searchable list of sustainable restaurants and eateries. Individual states also have guides to organic restaurants, so if you have a vacation spot in mind already, use a local guide to research the restaurants that you’d like to sample. Make sure to write down a list of names and addresses before you leave so that you’re not struggling to remember which local restaurants are healthy.
Try a Local Food Tour
Many cities offer food tours that let you sample the local cuisine. In the northwestern U.S., Portland, Oregon, offers a series of memorable food tours for foodies who are vacationing in the city. You can tour local restaurants focused on serving sustainable ingredients, and you can even take Portland’s famous food truck tour. Don’t forget to tour local vineyards, breweries, and distilleries so that you can sample the local libations during your vacation.
Take a Cooking Class
Many vacation destinations are hosts to cooking schools and culinary institutes. For example, if you take a vacation to Duchess County, New York, you can tour the home of President Franklin Roosevelt and the Vanderbilt Mansion by day, and eat an outstanding meal at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) by night. On weekends, the CIA offers cooking classes along with wine explorations. You’ll expand your cooking repertoire while enjoying the finest and freshest cuisine.
Great Vacations That Affirm Your Culinary Values
To pack as much fresh food as possible into your vacation, make sure that you don’t leave home without researching a sizable list of eating options. At the same time, leave some room for spontaneity. You never know what gastronomical adventures might await you.
