Eating on the Road, a Family Road Trip Survival Plan
Going on a family road trip over the holidays? Boy, do I have some great tips for you for keeping your food budget under control!
A long road trip, a couple thousand miles in our case, really takes a lot out of you. What is exhausting about sitting for hours at a time in a rolling vehicle? I haven’t figured that out yet, but now, a week after coming home, I’m pretty well adjusted back to normal life, and the laundry is nearly caught up.
To save money on this trip, I was determined to eat as many meals as possible from food that I had packed. Now that our kids are bigger with appetites to match, restaurant bills loom in the $40-50 range at even budget friendly restaurants. So, like any good SurvivalMom, I searched the internet for ideas of foods and meals that would be easy to pack, easy to prepare, and easy to clean up.
First on the menu, sandwiches. These turned out to be not so cheap since I splurged on Boar’s Head sandwich meat, but I figured that if the sandwich tasted really good, we’d be more willing to eat them a couple times a day. Instead of a loaf of bread, I bought sandwich rolls, which turned out to be a much better choice, mostly because they didn’t get squished among all the luggage in the back of the Tahoe.
Thinking that mayo in a squeeze bottle would be a good idea, that’s the route I went, but it turned out to be not so smart. I still had to spread the mayo around with a plastic knife, which we quickly lost, and then had to shake, shake, shake the bottle to get the mayo down to the bottom of the container. Here’s a better idea. Before you leave, spoon enough mayo into a zip-loc bag for the number of sandwiches you’ll make for one meal. Put the mayo-filled bags into a water-proof container so water in the ice chest doesn’t seep in. When it’s time to make your sandwiches, snip off, or in my case, bite off one corner of the zip-lock and use it as a decorator bag to swirl mayo over the bread. You won’t need a knife, and the emptied zip-loc can be thrown away.
Just like this. Except you'll be using mayonnaise. And standing on the side of the road.
To add variety to our sandwich diet, I packed cans of ravioli and spaghetti-o’s for the kids. I know, I know. Sugar, preservatives, and additives, but they were quick meals I could warm up in no time using either the microwave in the hotel room, when there was one, or the coffee pot in the coffee maker. I discovered that our favorite Hebrew National hot dogs stay frozen for a long time, and one night we had those on our sandwich buns. At another meal, I sliced them up and added them to the spaghetti-o’s.
I think I gained a couple of pounds on this trip because we were constantly snacking. Apparently, food is a good cure for boredom, because we were never bored ! Here’s what I packed for those snacks:
- dry cereal in zip-locs
- dehydrated peaches (Read this for instructions to make your own.)
- cubed cheese and crackers
- baby carrots
- apples, oranges, bananas
- applesauce and pudding cups
- energy bars (Only because I found them on sale.)
- granola bars
- Pringles brand chips (Those handy tubular cans keep the chips from being crushed and are handy as small trash receptacles later.)
Every once in a while, during those long, long hours of highway travel, I pulled out a special snack as a surprise. Just outside Gallop, New Mexico, it was Oreos. Upon reaching Abilene, it was M&M’s. I hadn’t packed any sugary treats in our snack bag, so these were more than welcomed by hubby and the kids.
Once we got to our hotel, I heated up water in the coffee maker and we had oatmeal in the mornings, along with the cereal and milk I had packed in the ice chest. We had breakfast pretty well covered, and delighted in free hotel breakfasts whenever they were available.
Now, I feel a little sheepish at this point because this is where my helpful road trip food ideas end. Once we reached Texas, my husband’s aunt and uncle treated us to very nice restaurant meals during our entire stay! Chinese! Italian! Mexican! Texan! Oh, how we gloried in each meal!
On the trip home, we resumed our diet of sandwiches, Pringles, and hotel breakfasts.
I did stock up on more fresh fruit since, as my Nana said, “You need it to stay regular.” My 7 year-old son began calling it, “poop fruit.” Charming.
So, there you have it. We survived our family road trip by keeping ourselves entertained in various ways that you can read about here and here, keeping our budget down by eating meals we prepared ourselves, and maintaining a sense of humor, no matter what speedbumps we hit.
© 2009, thesurvivalmom. All rights reserved.
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Great ideas!
We freeze water in juice bottles, pop bottles, etc. and use that for our ice in the cooler. It's like having an ice block that doesn't leak all over the place and you can drink it when it's melted
Keeps the food cold and the mess in the cooler to a minimum. Of course it only lasts so long (over a week this last trip–weather was unseasonably cool). So if we don't meet a freezer along the trip to refreeze them, then we're back to buying messy sacks of ice . . .
We've also done canned veggies when the kids were little as a healthy addition to the snack pile–open up canned carrot slices or green beans, drain on the roadside, and let the kids eat them cold–especially good for real little ones. Teenagers–probably not so much.
Great post, one observation. The squeeze bottle is not so much of the issue as the method of application. Another alternative, and the one we use, is to put all of the 'juicy' stuff on first and then we slap the bread together and move it around to spread the items around on both slices. It is a no waste solution.
Angela, my only hesitation with juice boxes is that my kids tend to squeeze too hard! Yes, it's interesting to watch all that juice erupt through the little straw, but in the car?? LOL Thankfully, they've outgrown doing that for fun, but still, in our case, accidents happen. Using frozen drinks to keep foods cool, is a brilliant idea, and you're right, melted ice gets extremely messy.
Joey, I'm glad you found my site. It sounds like we've both discovered that you make the sandwiches as you need them rather than make a whole bunch ahead of time for the trip. I remember those soggy, squished "things" my mom used to serve up! LOL Thanks for your suggestion.
We've done the take your own food with you, too. We would cook up and slice a roast or chicken or turkey breast for sandwiches. Since we have to be careful for some of ours about certain ingredients, we would make up chili, stew, taco meat or stirfry, store in ziploc bags and then we would carry an old electric wok, that we heated everything up in. (in warmer weather, the wok serves well as a salad bowl too!) We can't do the 'hotel breakfast bars' so we would bring homemade yogurt or put eggs in a ziploc bag and scramble them up in the wok and add shredded cheese, salsa and maybe sour cream in a tortilla. You are so right about having the portions all figure out at home, as best you can.
In our case, we couldn't afford to take the trip with out packing our own food (financially or healthwise). We don't have any problems getting everyone on board.
Stephanie, I love your ideas!! Before our next road trip, I'm going to have to track down your comment (I know I won't remember it otherwise!). Thanks so much!
Don't forget the car engine can be used to cook food. Warm up pies or even stews, soups, veg, meat etc. You only have to attach a suitable food container (foil tray; pan etc) to the exhaust manifold (the hot pipes out of the engine block) with some wire. Cook time you have to estimate.