These travel tips are good no matter what type of food plan you follow. By taking a cooler filled with food on your vacation not only do you eat healthier but you save a ton of money! Every time we ate a meal from the cooler hubby Tom would say “We just saved $35!” That’s a lot of savings when you are on the road for a week or two. Today I will recap some of the meals we pulled together from the cooler.
Nutmeg Notebook
Lentil salad with baby greens and oven roasted Kobocha squash. Lentil salads hold up well for days and are so filling.
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Baked potato with Donna’s Cheeze Sauce, oven roasted brussels sprouts, oven roasted squash and a veggie burger. All heated up in the microwave in our hotel room.
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I would set up a little buffet in our hotel rooms and hubby and I would load up our plates with some of this bounty!
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A baked potato topped with black beans, salsa and a Nacheez vegan cheeze packet. This room had a kitchen with dishes and a microwave. It was so nice.
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Here is a whole days worth of food including snacks of fruit and veggies that I put together in the morning in the hotel room to have ready while we were driving.
Hotel Food Prep
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We ran out of food that we brought with us so we stopped at a very nice grocery store and stocked up. As luck would have it our hotel that night was the smallest one we had stayed in and it didn’t have a kitchen, microwave or fridge. It had the smallest little counter top but you know what – I made it work! I used the ironing board as a table – it was crazy.
Hotel Food Prep
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This was all the counter space I had! That’s my pressure cooker – it came in so handy. We got all the fruits and vegetables washed and laid out to dry. Then we put everything in zip lock bags.
Hotel Food Prep
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The potatoes and corn were cooked in the pressure cooker at different times of course. It worked well.
Hotel Food Prep
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I cut up some potatoes and seasoned them with no salt seasoning and bagged them. These get popped into my purse and then can be added to a restaurant salad or steamed veggies to make them more filling. Or it works as a great snack on the road.
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These already cooked little packs of Minsley Steel Cut Oats came in handy for second breakfast and snacks! I bought them at Costco but they are also available on Amazon.
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I like to heat them up with a little almond milk, banana and some hemp hearts. So filling and delicious.
Hotel Food Prep
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It doesn’t get an easier than this. Precooked brown rice topped with black beans, white beans and salsa.
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Here is another day of delicious whole food plant based eating on vacation.
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Every morning I would make up snack packs of fruit and veggies for the day. They were so easy and it was nice to have healthy snacks with us.
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Trader Joe’s Cruciferous Crunch topped with lentil salad, zucchini spears and tomatoes. We stopped at a park in a town we traveled through and enjoyed lunch at a picnic table.
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A veggie burger, baby greens, lentil salad and roasted squash. This was eaten at room temperature and was yummy.
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This was our hot meal – Mexican Potato Casserole made in the RoadPro Stove while we were driving. Your can read about the RoadPro Stove here.
It does take some extra time and effort to eat healthy while on vacation but it’s so worth it. I actually lost 3 pounds while we were on vacation. Healthy eating and lots of hiking and walking kept me on track! Be sure to see A Whole Food Plant Based Road Trip Part One and A Whole Food Plant Based Road Trip Part Two.
Happy healthy traveling!
Tami
Feel free to leave your own healthy travel tips and ideas in the comments!
 
This series was great! Thanks for all the info. We eat as you do and eating out is usually an exercise in expensive disappointment.
Some years ago I was dealing with an aggressive cancer and part of my treatment was eating a whole foods raw vegan diet. We stayed in hotels and only found one with a kitchenette in the five weeks we were on the road. Most did have microwaves, coffee makers and small refrigerators. I took my Vitamix and a cooler and made hearty smoothies for breakfast. Somehow we managed, but you’re a much better planner than I was.
Another year I was on a medication that had to be kept frozen, so we spent a bundle and bought an ARB Fridge Freezer for our travels. It can be set as a freezer OR a fridge, not both at the same time. It ran on the car’s cigarette lighter or on house power. I bought it from Amazon and it worked great for our long trip. That time I also bought a Berkey travel size water filter, and each night we took it into our room and I filtered enough water for the following day. I didn’t fill it as full as I do at home, and it rode well in the floor of the back seat, wedged tightly. If someone asked what it was he would tell them I made my own whiskey and it was my, still!
Now that I have an Instant Pot I’d take that on any long trip as well. My poor husband is pulling his hair out, but I think he appreciates my taking good care of us both, and his carotid that was 80% blocked has reversed considerably.
Hi Rebecca,
I enjoyed reading about your journey and how you made traveling work with your requirements. Where there is a will there is a way! If we want to do something bad enough we will find a way! What a blessing that your husbands health issues reversed. That is the power of plants!
Eat Plants – Live Well.
Tami