Meals on the Road

The Plan
Because we are going across the country in our RV, we are expecting to save quite a bit of money on dining by preparing and eating the majority of our meals in the camper.

We have a full kitchen with 3-burner gas stove, microwave, sink and a large refrigerator/freezer. I plan to have the pantry and fridge stocked with 3-4 days worth of food and ingredients for various meals. Of course, we will see how things go as the trip progresses-I am sure we will be flexible, but the goal is to continue to eat relatively healthy meals for the duration of the trip. Will we have an occasional night out for pizza or stop for ice-cream every once in awhile? Of course, but the goal will be to stay on track with healthy foods for the most part. 

Here are our meal/snack options for the trip- I will adjust this page as we go along

Breakfasts: 

Pancakes/syrup (mix)

Cereal/milk

Eggs/cheese

Muffins (mix)

Grapefruit, grapes, peaches, strawberries

Oatmeal (instant)

Bacon/sausage

yogurt

Lunches: (we will be bringing a small cooler along so that if we go off hiking for the day, we can carry the cooler with our picnic lunches with us)

Yogurt (chobani, stoneyfield tubes)

Lunchables

Bread & lunchmeat

Peanut butter & jelly

Veggies & hummus (carrots, peppers, cucumber)

Instant mac&cheese

Instant ramen noodles

Tuna fish

Chicken salad

Dinners:

Taco Salad 

Chicken Caesar Salad 

Chicken Cobb Salad 

Spinach salad 

Hot Dogs/baked beans/carrot sticks

Sloppy Joes/Applesauce/broccoli

Cheeseburgers/Salad

Chicken/Turkey Burgers/Green Bean Salad or green beans

Grilled marinated Chicken or rotisserie chicken/green beans

Grilled Steak/sweet potato

Grilled Kebabs-chicken or steak & veggie

Beef Stew 

Chili  & cornbread

Chicken Noodle Soup 

Lasagna/salad 

Spaghetti/Salad 

Macaroni & cheese/peas/chicken nuggets 

Baked potatoes/broccoli 

Snacks:

Cliff bars

Fruit

Veggies

Pretzels/cream cheese

Popcorn (microwave)

Cheese & crackers/pepperoni slices

Granola bars

The Execution of the Plan

Before we left for our trip, I had a basic list of meals and staple foods that we would keep on hand or be ready to prepare. Because there was a fire ban for the majority of our trip, and we did not get the table-top charcoal grill until towards the end of the trip, all of the grilling out I had planned didn’t work out as  expected. But, we adjusted, and I want to share how most of our meals worked on the trip.

At home, before leaving, I made a large batch of chili and beef stew and froze both in quart sized freezer bags, laying them flat so they would stack well in the freezer in the RV. It ended up being 2 meals’ worth of each, without having leftovers. I also cooked up 2 lbs. of ground beef and froze that flat in quart size bags, to be used for either taco salad or sloppy joe. Lastly, I marinated, grilled, and froze 4 servings of chicken breasts to be used in a variety of things-chicken Caesar salad, chicken with rice, etc.

All of this proved to be very helpful-although I couldn’t depend on this frozen meat and meals for the whole time, it was a great saver when we did not have much time to prepare dinner and it helped prevent having to go out to eat.

The only other meal that I had ready to go was a frozen grocery store lasagna. I could have prepared one ahead of time at home, but just didn’t get to it, so bought one to take.

Basically, our dinnertime meal was dependent on what we were doing during the day. The days that we were off exploring in a park or other destination, I planned on us having one of the quick fix meals-something I could take out of the freezer and put together in about 30 minutes. That meant stew (with which I baked some refrigerated biscuits), chili (I baked some quick mix corn muffins to go with), pre-grilled chicken breasts (reheated in the microwave) and salad. On other evenings that we were either driving most of the day, or when we were not quite so busy, I would take a little more time with dinner. We had the lasagna (which takes about 1 hour to cook in the oven), frozen chicken strips and mac and cheese (from the box) and some veggie, baked potatoes and frozen veggies (the steamables in the microwave worked very well), sloppy joes and sweet potato fries in the oven (just reheated the frozen ground beef and added ketchup and bbq sauce), taco salad (reheated ground beef with taco seasoning) with all of the salad fixin’s, and spaghetti (just boiled pasta and sauce with French bread-no meat).  We did end up grilling out a few times-brats and hot dogs, and steaks. Those were both evenings that we had a little extra time as well.

Of course, we ate out a few times, and when we visited Dennis’ sister, she cooked for us! The meals we ate out were the first night (Cracker Barrel), pizza (on Dennis’ birthday) and near Zion (out for burgers), and on the way through Missouri at Lamberts (home of the thrown rolls). Towards the end of our trip, we seemed to eat out a little bit more-especially the last couple of days. We did not feel too badly about this-plus it was a nice break for me from time in the kitchen! I wasn’t complaining! Also, when we visited friends, we ate at their houses, so that took care of a few meals also. Lastly, there were a couple of times that we did not have any dinner at all, and just snacked on either crackers and cheese or some chips and salsa because we had gotten in so late from a big day and didn’t want to have a big dinner. All of the meals ended up working out really well-I always felt prepared to have something- and usually we had a few choices.

Lunch was almost always a packed lunch in a backpack-usually sandwiches and fruit. When we were at the RV for lunch, or when traveling we either had leftovers, yogurt, or the kids had easy-mac or ramen noodles. A couple of times I got them lunchables as a treat after a grocery trip run.

Breakfast depended on what we were doing for the day as much as dinner depended on that same thing. When we were heading out super early to drive, I usually tried to have a batch of muffins made so the kids could wake up and have something easy to eat. They also alternated between cereal and instant oatmeal. Dennis and I usually had either eggs or yogurt. On a few lazy mornings I made a bigger breakfast-we had pancakes and sausage, scrambled eggs and hasbrowns (leftover French fries diced and fried!). The other breakfast we had  a few times to give us a good start to a day was making and packing egg and cheese sandwiches to go-either on a whole wheat English muffin or just on bread.

We always had lots of snacks on hand-while driving the kids always seem to be hungry, and of course while doing hiking we kept snacks in the backpack. Before we left, I had gotten and frozen 3 boxes of Cliff Bars on 50% discount from our food co-op. We used those for hiking. We also had a supply of goldfish, pretzels, cut up veggies and hummus or ranch, applesauce, fresh fruit and nuts that we snacked on as needed.

We drank lots of water-especially in the west-we were constantly trying to make sure that everyone got enough water in them; it was so easy to dehydrate. Our on-board water tank holds 40 gallons, and we use this primarily for washing dishes and flushing. We don’t really drink this water (though we could) just because it’s been in the tank for a couple of days. What we did for drinking water was buy a 2 gallon refillable water dispenser and refill it at Wal-mart at the Culligan water station for like $0.57. It was economical, and the water tasted great. There were so many places we went to where the city water was nasty-either heavy on the chlorine taste or very hard water.