Nothing spoils home vacations more than fighting Saturday shopping crowds. Meal planning is one of the most important parts of a successful vacation at home; the more specific you are here, the better. Peter and I both like to cook and we like to cook together — in fact it’s something we’ve done together since our first dates.

Cooking is an integral part of our vacations at home, but our rule is that the preparations must be simple and, most importantly, don’t create huge messes. On other occasions, we enjoy collaborating on an elaborate meal like the Asian menu we recently made that took three entire days to prepare (we finally sat down to eat late Sunday night) and literally used every pot and pan we have — and we have a lot of pots and pans. We had fun, but preparing it and cleaning up the resultant mess was far from relaxing. For our home vacation meals we try to make some elements ahead, and keep last-minute prep and cleanup to a minimum. Write out menus, make a shopping list, and be sure you have everything you need before your vacation begins.

Breakfast might be an omelette, or we may pre-buy and freeze some of the fabulous croissants and breakfast pastries from Incredibly Delicious (they’ll be happy to tell you the best way to reheat them). Lunch might be a soup such as French Onion that we’d frozen earlier in the year, or sandwiches made with special ingredients. Dinner can be as simple and luxurious as a good steak, baked potato and salad — easy even if you don’t like to cook. Or how about lobsters? — both Schnuck’s and Meijer’s will steam them perfectly, so all you have to do is warm them; or king crab legs. Melt a little garlic butter and you have a feast. If you don’t want to cook at all, consider ordering carryout. Even upscale restaurants not normally associated with carryout are happy to prepare a meal you can take home.

Splurges: With the money we’ve saved on transportation and hotel, we always indulge in some luxury foods not in our normal budget. Prime dry-aged steaks, shell oysters or other seafood, fresh wild mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest and caviar, are some of the things we’ve mail-ordered for various home vacations. We also stock wines that are usually only for special occasions, always including at least one bottle of Amarone, a rich, warming, unctuous red that just begs to be sipped in front of that warming fire. Once our pantry and wine cellar is stocked, the house clean, advance preparations made, firewood stacked and ready and books, magazines, and DVDs lay waiting, we’re ready to slip into something comfortable, sit back, relax, and enjoy our home — and each other.

Contact Juilianne Glatz at [email protected]