Eating on the Road

Imagine you have 1 bar fridge and 3 shelves for food and these shelves have to include your snacks (no more storing snacks in the centre console of your van because you don’t want to be hanging out with the mouse again). It’s doable but it definitely means eating very similar foods every day.

Breakfast

Usually oatmeal. The Yummy Life (www.yummylife.com) has good recipes for camping oatmeal which we have used on our multi day hiking/backpacking trips so I usually use some version of it depending on what we have in stock.

1/3 cup oats
1 tbsp flax
1 tbsp oat bran
1 tbsp protein powder
dried fruit or a banana mixed in

Lunch

Usually a wrap. Lettuce, tomato, cucumber and avocado are the staples. To add some flavour/variety, we got some delicious homemade pickles at the Terrace Farmer’s Market and recently picked up some home made “sea asparagus” from friends in Haida Gwaii.

Suppers

Usually soup. Amy’s Soups are quite good (I think they are all vegetarian) and available at most grocery stores and health food stores we’ve been to in BC. Then Mike will add extra water, vegetables or noodles to thicken them up. Mike has also fried up veggie burgers and veggie sausages with veggies.

Snacks.
Trail mix. It is just easy when you are hiking or driving.
Sunflower seeds. This is Mike’s night time snack.
Cliff bars. Usually if we are on a long bike ride or hike.
Energy Balls I started making these after one of my friends brought her energy balls to our hockey game. This is the recipe I’ve been using on the trip:
1.5 cups oats
1/3 cup flax
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp protein powder
½ cup honey
½ cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla (I haven’t been using the vanilla as I didn’t bring any with me)

Loaf
I have pretty much used this same recipe this whole time but I do need to find another one as I have some baking powder that is not getting any use.

½ cup oil (I started with canola oil but now we have olive oil – it works too)
½ cup brown sugar
2 tbsp flax + 6 tbsp water (this is my substitution for eggs which we thought would be too hard to find from a local farm, too hard to keep the egg shells for composting and takes up too much space in the fridge)
1 ¼ cup flour
¾ cup oat bran (or you can use oats)
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup bananas (or when I don’t have bananas I just add 1/3 to ½ cup milk)

The recipe calls for 350 degrees for 40 minutes but in the lunch box I usually “cook” it for 75-90 minutes and then let it sit with the lunch box unplugged for another 20 minutes.

In BC we were shopping mostly at Bulk Zone and Save on Foods (which has a great bulk selection as well). We just entered the Yukon so Whitehorse will probably be our stock up city and then not sure what the groceries stores are like when we hit Alaska.