One of our goals on the shakedown trip was to learn to develop healthy roadfood eating habits. We also hoped to keep our food budget manageable, our kitchen simple, and find affordable ways to splurge now and again. Can’t say we are 100% there, but we are on our way. In this post, I’ll share what we learned about healthy eating on the road.
Bad Habits Bite Back
Back in the day, our family roadfood consisted of a bag of chips, a block of cheese, an ungodly amount of gummy bears, cheese dip with Ritz Crackers, Wintergreen Lifesavers and Sourpatch Kids. Restaurant meals were all breakfast and burgers. We stopped for milkshakes at every small town ice cream stand we passed. We packed Clif bars, fruit leather and beef jerky of all varieties, fritos and so, so MUCH food.
No longer. Now that we are firmly “middle aged” we don’t take our health for granted. We have minimized saturated fats, milk and red meat in our diet. Adapting our healthy home kitchen to the road is a fun challenge. Here’s what our shakedown trip taught us:
Snacks
While we tried to keep our driving time down to less than four hours a day, there were some looong stretches in there, and some hours stuck in traffic (I’m looking at you, Chicago). Snacking while driving is our long standing habit. Here are some awesome and healthy snacks that worked for us:
–-Mixed Nuts, low salt no peanuts (This is not a budget friendly option) but nuts are healthy and filling Dan has a little bowl in his cup holder and when we drive, I fill it with nuts for him to snack on.
—Dried Figs (So very healthy! Dan loooves figs. Perri does not.)
—Fresh snap peas & carrot sticks
—Hummus dip with a variety of veggies & whole wheat pita (… a bit messy but not too bad. We velcroed a square basket to the top of our fridge to hold snacks like this easily)
—Fresh local fruit (Cherries have been a go-to in Michigan)
—Corn Nuts and Low Fat Triscuit Crackers (Okay, not the healthiest, but sometimes you have to splurge on your salt intake?)
—Cinnamon Altoids (Perri finds these to be a pretty awesome pick-me up snack. Dan, not so much.)
Breakfast:
We aren’t fancy breakfast folks. Cereal with oat/almond milk or fruit with low fat yogurt and Grapenuts or granola works for us. This may change when the weather gets colder.
Lunch
We don’t often eat lunch on the road. Between breakfast and our (many) driving snacks, we pare down the cooking to one meal (usually dinner) a day. But there are times that lunch makes sense. For us, lunch is mostly sandwiches. But what sandwiches! We stuff healthy bread with homemade tuna salad or turkey and cheese and add a variety of veggies such as sprouts, spinach, pickles, red-onion, and jalapeno. We collect mustard and mayo packets at gas stations when we fill up and these are perfect for easy prep and clean up.
Dinner
We have been working on adapting our favorite healthy dishes from home to life in a van. The goal is to eat well with as little clean up as possible. We know it’s less likely that we’ll blow our budget eating out if we are happy with the meals we prep in the van.
For the most part, this part of the transition has been pretty easy. The key is fresh ingredients and satisfying “full” meals. I will definitely post some recipes here as we get up and running. But for now, here’s a quick list of our favorite shakedown meals:
Chicken tacos with homemade lime/cilantro slaw
Bean, rice and veggie burritos
Veggie Curry with tofu and rice
Tofu/Chicken Stir Fry
Ramen noodles with grilled chicken Rice sausage, eggs and greens
Tomato, Feta and Chickpea Couscous
Veggie & egg scramble with smoked fish
Kale and black bean salad
Whole wheat noodle pesto
All of these dishes use minimal cooking equipment and ingredients that are easy to keep in a van with a small fridge and minimal shelf space.
Local Foods
While we are definitely on a budget, we are also out to enjoy and experience as much as we can of the places we visit. This includes interesting local foods. Not great for the budget but it feels pretty essential to “splurge” now and again. So far, we have tried smoked fish in Northern Wisconsin (AWESOME), Rice Sausage in Northern Minnesota (Eh), and Pasties in Northern Michigan (Not our fave). We also had “The World’s Best Donuts” in Grand Marais, MN because, “world’s best donuts” (and they were).
Eating Out
As mentioned above, we are on a pretty tight budget, made more so by our van’s gas guzzlin’ ways. In this crazy/brave version of van-life, we rarely eat out.
In our three week shakedown, we went out for breakfast once (to celebrate Dan’s birthday), Had one medium pizza (when we were in Two Harbors, MN trying to figure out where to stealth camp), and once to try the famous Michigan Specialty, Pasties, in Mackinaw City, MI. That’s not so different from our life at home, and aside from the momentous and ill-advised choice of buying THREE pasties to share (beef, chicken & veggie), we have been relatively thrifty.
We also stopped at two local microbreweries: Castle Danger Brewery in Two Harbors, Minnesota and at Sylvan Brewery in Lanesville, Wisconsin.
When we hop back onto the road in September, we will have to be a little more careful about eating out as we’ll have just one income (Dan’s).
We’d love to hear from you: What healthy meals do you prepare? What’s a worthy road-food splurge you’d recommend?