My dad and I hitting the slopes

This past weekend, my family rented a small cottage in West Dover, Vermont and hit the slopes. With 10 people (including 2 of my kids), dining out can get expensive and long waits during a holiday weekend is not my style. We did go out for one family meal which turned out to be a festival of fried food and heavy butter sauces. Instead of indulging in high calorie cuisine the entire trip, we opted to bring our own food.

Our Rental
Our rental house had a small kitchen with simple equipment available (we asked in advance) and it was less than a mile from the mountain so we were able to take a quick ski break and make it home for a quick lunch. This saved us lots of moo-lah and made sure were energized for our afternoon skiing. Although my brother-in-law tried to assign out foods for everyone to bring, we each brought a few healthy snacks and my mom brought the bulk of the meals for the 4 days. I drove up with my older two kiddos, so many of the snacks I brought were kid-friendly.

Lodge Food
We did visit the ski lodge and quickly learned the prices were ridiculously expensive and food was sub-par. I don’t need to spend money getting a fantastic ski workout only to eat thousands of tasteless calories during my lunch hour. I did find a “make your own salad” station for 10 dollars, but opted to eat at our rental. I also stuck a few granola and KIND bars in my ski jacket for me and my 2 kids as snacks.

Healthy Snacks
What’d we stock up on? Lots of goodies! Fresh fruit like clementine’s, bananas, apples, and dried papaya (my sister’s favorite).

Ski snacks

Unsalted crackers, popcorn, unsalted almonds, KIND Bars, LUNA Bars, low fat chocolate milk, and fruit bars. Of course, we brought a bar of dark chocolate from Trader Joe’s—we all need our dark chocolate antioxidants!

Healthy Meals
For our meals, we kept it very simple and healthy. Our breakfast choices consisted of:

• Eggs cooked scrambled or easy over.
• Rye bread with peanut butter.
• Oatmeal made with raisins and bananas.
• Puffins cereal and skim milk.

For our lunch and dinner options:

• Pre-washed salad greens topped with sliced veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes with a light vinaigrette dressing.
• Cold cut platter with mustard on rye bread.
  

  Quick & easy salad

• Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches with hot cocoa.
• Grilled cheese sandwiches.
• Wine and light beer.

There was plenty to go around and leftovers were used to make sandwiches for the trip home. The remainder of the food was taken home by my bachelor brother, of course.

Not Renting?
You can still bring healthy options. Call in advance and ask if your hotel or motel has a refrigerator, microwave, and coffee maker (for hot water). If there is no fridge, you can bring the following:

• Pouches of unsweetened oatmeal with raisins and banana.
• Peanut butter sandwiches.
• Whole fresh fruit like apples, clementine’s and bananas.
• Dried fruit like papaya and apricots.
• Nuts like almonds and pistachios.
• Stable shelf low fat milk (like these from Horizon).
• Granola bars and fruit or breakfast bars.

LET’S DISCUSS: What do you eat when you go skiing?