Overland Meal Planning
Overland Meal Planning
Meals can be tricky! Either you go super basic and feel like your starving or you go big and find yourself spending too much time prepping/cooking and you end up with too much food resulting in a waste of money, especially if your planning meals for a family while camping or on the trails.
So, to find that sweet spot of good eats and little waste, you must start with “creating a meal plan”.
When creating a meal plan you must consider a few things:
· How many people
· Dietary restrictions
· Cooking methods
· Keeping things cold
In our case we travel with 3 people, my wife is a vegetarian and my son is picky, our cooking method is a camp stove and a “Skottle”, and we travel with a cooler.
You could easily go the dehydrated meals route; this solves many issues. Takes up little space, super easy to make, and all you need is a way to boil water. We prefer the fresh ingredients route.
Going with fresh ingredients is what we prefer if you have a cooler or an onboard refrigerator. The downside of fresh is, on longer extended trips you will have to find a way to replenish your supply. But in most cases with a 45 quart cooler or refrigerator (with proper meal planning) you can easily prepare for 3 to 4 days.
A solution for wanting to cook fresh with limited “cold” space is prepping your food, most items can be pre-made, and others can be pre-cooked. When doing this also cuts down on time once in camp.
Adding canned foods in combination with fresh ingredients will help in meal variety (i.e. sides”) and frees up room in your “cold” space or can be substituted for those times you want a quick hot meal with little fuss.
When planning your menu look for items that can be prepped and or frozen, additionally the frozen items will help keep items in your “cold” space cooler longer.
So again, in our case we travel with 3 people, my wife is a vegetarian and my son is a picky eater. Our preferred cooking method is a camp stove and a “Skottle”. We travel with a 45 quart cooler and a bin of equal size for our dry goods. We like to use a combination of fresh ingredients, canned and dry goods.
Once you have those items identified you are ready to plan out your meals and begin your prep.
We like to pre-cut and pre-season all our meats then place them in gallon sized Ziplock bags and freeze them flat. Vegetables are also pre-cut, placed in Ziplock bags/containers. Doing this saves us space as well as prep time once in camp. Additionally, any pre-packaged snacks are removed from the bulky packaging and put into Ziplock bags, makes for less space and less clutter.
Below is a simple example of one day of meals:
Breakfast
· Bacon and Cheese Egg wraps and Pancakes
o Pre-seasoned & pre-cut bacon cooked on the “Skottle”.
o Bag of shredded cheese.
o 6 eggs.
o Tortilla wraps.
o Pancakes with syrup.
o Coffee
Lunch
o Simple peanut butter sandwiches.
o Fresh Veggies (for the wife).
o Fresh Fruit (banana or apple).
Dinner
o Pre-seasoned & pre-cut steak cubes cooked on the “Skottle”.
o Box of spiral noodles and butter.
o Loaf of French Bread cut into slices and toasted with butter.
o Pre-cut cucumber slices.
o Canned corn.
Veggie Stir Fry
o Pre-seasoned & pre-cut assorted vegetables cooked on the “Skottle”.
We also keep a gallon Ziplock bag of some random snacks & drinks in the vehicle.
Hope this gives you a starting point when planning your next vehicle-based adventure.
