A Healthier Road Trip?
After my last post about traveling with your baby an toddler I am on the road with my daughters who are 5 yrs and 7 yrs so no need for the stroller, playpen and other baby paraphernalia.
This trip needed minimal packing compared to years gone by, but trying to figure out how to keep to our diet of gluten, sugar and dairy-free left me standing in the kitchen wondering what to take on our 2 1/2 day road trip. I thought that if I could start us off with a big breakfast, pack a lunch and then wing it for dinner the plan would have worked out well… had I actually remembered the cooler bag. It contained hard-boiled eggs with cereal for breakfast and sandwiches and salads for lunch.
It was still in the fridge back home.
It hit me just as we where around Burlington and at 5:00am and with 10 hours of driving ahead of us we made the gutsy call to forge ahead and figure it out as we go. We did have some other food items with us anyways such as goat cheese, rice milk, cereal, bars, muffins, fruit and some other items (don’t shoot me cause it’s all healthy!).
I thought dinner might be tricky and with our first stop in West Virginia, we searched for local restaurants and came across one called, “Logan’s Roadhouse”. Logan (our 7 year old) was over-the-moon about the idea of going to a restaurant named after her (love how she thinks!). Honestly, the best thing about the restaurant was its name. Somewhere between the out-of-a-can sautéed salty mushrooms, sweet potato fries laden with cinnamon sugar, and the ice cream scoop of butter on the baked potato for the girls I vowed that once I was within WiFi range I’d be Googling the nearest Whole Foods for tomorrow.
Some might think that taking along any kitchen appliance is a bit OTT (over-the-top) but I really wanted to keep our breakfast quick and easy, so I packed my Cuisinart compact blender as it really lives up to its name – compact! It has drinking cups with travel lids so we can blend our morning smoothies in the same cup we drink them out of – brilliant! I did remember the frozen mango and ripe bananas (in another bag to the one left in the fridge) so I threw them in the blender along with the rice milk, hemp protein powder whizzed it all up so we all had a quick, healthy breakfast and we were good to go.
I get that what I think is a convenient way of feeding the family doesn’t fit with most, but it works for us and I hope that it teaches our daughters that you can eat healthy no matter where you go! We all survived the rest of the week, and are back in one piece, all the better for some sun, food that mom doesn’t make and a new appreciation for a home cooked meal!
What’s your experience with eating while on the road? Do you pack and go, or wing it?
