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.
Lentil salad with baby greens and oven roasted Kobocha squash. Lentil salads hold up well for days and are so filling.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The potatoes and corn were cooked in the pressure cooker at different times of course. It worked well.
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.
These already cooked little packs of steel cut oats came in handy for second breakfast and snacks! I bought them at Costco but they are also available on Amazon.
I like to heat them up with a little almond milk, banana and some hemp hearts. So filling and delicious.
It doesn’t get an easier than this. Precooked brown rice topped with black beans, white beans and salsa.
Here is another day of delicious whole food plant based eating on vacation.
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.
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.
A veggie burger, baby greens, lentil salad and roasted squash. This was eaten at room temperature and was yummy.
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!
Caroline
Hi Tami
A late note of thanks for your marvelous posts on eating plant based while on a road trip. We recently headed off on an RV trip and I used your extremely useful posts as a basis for planning our meals. No small feat living with an omnivore! We enjoyed the ‘cheese’ sauce, BBQ muffins and Mexican burgers. The post on how to shape them was a great help. I loved the texture of the burgers, simply the best recipe I have tried. I made the black lentil chili and have to admit that I wasn’t initially impressed by the flavor but loved it the next day. I had it easier than you, cooking in an RV, but still juggled prep space. It seems that RVs these days are designed for people who eat out rather than cook! BTW thanks for the hints on the shelf hummus (great for snacking on the road) and the Nacheez sauce; the spicy version is delish! Many thanks for your efforts in posting these three blog posts Tami
Tami
Hi Caroline, Thank you so much for your feedback! You have made my day. I am beyond thrilled that you were able to use my suggested recipes, hints and tips and have success with eating whole food plant based while traveling. It does take some work, prep and determination but in the end it is worth the effort. I love ending a vacation with no regrets about how I ate! Bravo to you on your success even though you have the extra challenge of living with a omnivore! I appreciate that you took the time to come back and leave me a comment. It makes all the time I spent on these posts worth while!
Happy Healthy Travels,
Tami
Karen
Thank you, Tami, for the informative post! We travel quite a bit by car and need the help! Are you pre-roasting the squash, Brussels sprouts, and burgers before you leave home? I assume everything else but the Mex. Casserole is cold from the cooler. I haven’t yet traveled with my IP. I am a little intimidated by the size, washing, and trying to cool and pack up the leftovers. I will definitely try your veggie snacks and potato cube ideas next trip. I am guessing you cooked the potatoes and corn, ate a meal from it, and put the rest in the cooler for another meal. We do travel with oatmeal and granola and fruit.
Thanks so much,
Karen
Tami
Hi Karen,
I precooked the squash, Brussels sprouts and burgers and loaded them into the cooler the morning we left. We cooked the potatoes and corn in the hotel room, ate some and then packed the rest into the cooler to eat at later meals. Its really quite easy. If you have a microwave in your hotel rooms you can get buy without the pressure cooker but it sure was nice to have it along! Its a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to cook everything in a hotel room but once you have done it you realize how doable it really is.
Happy plant based travels!
Tami