Summer Food For Travel
Hi Steph,
Hope you are great.
Just wondering if you have any travel food ideas. We will be on the road a lot this summer (Lucky) and have turned to a meatless eggmc muffin once too many times in our effort to keep the feet moving and the wheels turning. Being non animal eaters in a land where everything has meat in it (even things like mac salad!) and people are not sure what vegan means, there are not many options. Also unhelpful is my husband’s inability to eat tree nuts, the side effect would be death. Going to try your coconut sweet potato cookies but wondered if you had any easy road food hints.
Thanks! Kate
Ps I used to make and freeze your roasted butternut squash soup to keep so the caregivers always had it to feed my mom. She loved it.
Hi Kate! I’m glad you guys are getting to travel a lot this summer: I hear you, being in the “food desert” areas can be really tricky for those of us who don’t want to consume animal products, bleached grains and sugar. I am guessing you travel with a good cooler setup so you can bring some things with you when you are out and about? I love freezing Platypus bottles and using those in my cooler bag for summer days or in the big cooler on a trip. I have a few portable food ideas for you, some refrigerated and some non.
My on-the-go staples right now are dates (Medjool are my favorite), and dried apples, dried bananas and figs for food on the go (hiking, climbing, etc.), and these don’t need to be refrigerated and can be left in your pack between outings.
My daily go-to (both at home and on the road) are wraps. They are delicious, easy and quick, and you can put anything in them, including leftovers. Generally I have a wrap with me anytime I leave in the morning, so I can eat it for lunch/snack/peckish-time in the day–perfect food for hiking, climbing, biking, driving, airport travel, anything really!
I use fresh whole wheat tortillas and 9 times out of 10, I fill them with simply a quinoa salad mix (more on that in a minute!) and hummus (I usually make a batch every week and keep it in the fridge/cooler). Depending on supplies and time, I can jazz that up with mustard, homemade pesto, other vegetables or leftover stirfry, and some fresh arugula, spinach, chard or kale. If you really want to get fancy, you can add in some cilantro or fresh basil. I keep a big box of foil sheets
You can make several wraps the night before and keep them in the fridge, to grab in the morning, or make a bunch of them to take in your cooler on a trip. If it’s a multi day trip, I’ll just bring the tortillas and quinoa salad (and anything else) in the cooler, and make them during the trip. You can also bring dried quinoa with you and cook it up during the trip, if it’s that kind of trip.
If you start with 2 cups of dry quinoa (either white or red, the red is a little more firm, so I like that better–you can also mix white and red), and cook it in 4 cups of water, you will end up with quite a bit of quinoa. You can keep some of it plain, or you can make it all into a big quinoa salad mix. Sometimes I even make this for dinner, and then keep the leftovers in the fridge for wraps over the next day or two. Now, if you look up how to cook quinoa on the internet, everyone wants you to rinse it first. Well, if you don’t rinse it first, it turns out just fine 😉
To make the quinoa into quinoa salad, just chop up some onion, red bell pepper, zucchini, carrots and sometimes fresh basil, chard or spinach. Mix all of that into the cooked quinoa, and then pour in some olive oil, lemon juice and/or apple cider vinegar along with some salt and pepper, and mix it together. If pumpkin seeds are ok for your husband, you can add some of those too. Now you have a great protein/veggie mix–even this on its own is great in a wrap. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do any cooking but you want your wraps to be a little more substantial, you can buy hummus and a bag of spinach or arugula, and just simmer up the quinoa and put it into a container, without turning it into a salad, and use that for the wraps. This is about as easy as it gets!
Another great travel staple for you is couscous. If you have a small glass tupperware container, you can add some hot water at any gas station stop and let it cook itself covered in the container. You can add literally anything to couscous–whether sweet or savory, so it’s a perfect base. I always make up lots of fresh pesto in the summer from my basil plants by throwing basil leaves, chard, garlic, walnuts (or any other type of nut you like/that your husband can eat), olive oil and salt into the food processor and store that in jars in the fridge. Fresh pesto is really good mixed in with couscous.
Hope some of these ideas will work for you!
Steph
