#111 – Prep and Pack Travel Meals: How to Vacation Like a Peasant

Traveling and vacation is so much fun until you get the bill for all the meals you ate out, and you get a tummy ache for all those weird ingredients your body just didn’t like. If you have allergies and food sensitivities it’s even more difficult, finding somewhere safe to eat is just about impossible. We have both found that when we travel we just do better if we bring a lot of our own food with us. In this episode we are going to talk about our best tips for preparing, what kinds of food we bring, how to pack tools and what tools to bring, how to keep food cold on the trip, and just some of the things we have learned traveling over the years – traveling with kids, and with food and with special diet considerations. This episode is a really fun one for getting ready for big trips, but also great for just thinking about going out and about for the day, if you’re looking for things and ideas for taking picnics on the go just for an afternoon.

We also included seven tips from Bob Jordan, Andrea’s dad, who does catastrophic damage restoration in homes for water, fire and mold. He has some great tips for travelers to set you on your way and ensure you come home to a safe and happy home. Those tips are available for download for all listeners at ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/downloads. For supporters of the podcast there is an additional download as well; you will get Andrea’s menu from her most recent week-long trip, with 6 family members. Thanks for listening!

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One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here.

For US listeners, we recommend Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They sell regenerative, organic flours and berries that can satisfy all your baking needs. Stock up and get free shipping at AncientGrains.com

Resources:

Traveler’s Tips downloads from Bob Jordan

The Mitigation Handbook by Bob Jordan

Sign up for Plan to Eat – get a free trial period and a discount using the podcast link!

Backcountry Scones from Wilderness Ranger Cookbook

Oatmeal Breakfast Bars

Sandwich Bread, Bun Bread

Pressure-Canned Beans

I saved our dishes packing list in a Plan to Eat item that I can add to/adjust over time – so when I go to pack for another trip, the list is already there for me!

 

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Transcript:

Andrea:
Hello, Alison. Good morning. Good afternoon.

Alison:
Thank you. Thank you. Good morning to you. It’s rainy and horrible here today, I’m guessing, because I saw you had a blanket around you. So I’m guessing it’s not very warm there either.

Andrea:
No, it’s pretty chilly, but that’s normal for this time of year here. And it will actually warm up quite a bit. So it’ll be up to 70 Fahrenheit this week. Oh, what would that be for you? I have no idea.

Alison:
Not warm enough, I think. Not warm enough is the answer to that question.

Andrea:
Warm enough that you can go outside and, you know, lay out in the sun a little bit.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
But it’s always cold down here. So, yeah.

Alison:
Yeah. And because we either record, basically, we record really early your time. So, usually it’s dark where you are, light where I am. But then in winter, it’s dark where you are and dark where I am. People have often said to us, why don’t you go on YouTube? And I think, well, you wouldn’t actually be able to see us unless we got thousands of pounds worth of lighting equipment and also in the corner rooms, you know, in some studio set up. So we looked really kind of snazzy. Otherwise, you just have this kind of pair of eyes in the dark.

Andrea:
Maybe people want to see your like half the face by flickering candlelight.

Alison:
You know, in the dark.

Andrea:
Maybe they like that vibe. As we talk about, what’s your summer menu? Yeah.

Alison:
Oh dear so have you had some breakfast this morning or not i.

Andrea:
Did have a little bite of breakfast and it was actually what i had for dinner last night because it.

Alison:
Was convenient and it was already made and.

Andrea:
That was just a spelt pizza.

Alison:
Oh piece of just a spelt pizza a spelt pizza is never just a spelt pizza now simply.

Andrea:
Simply a spelt pizza.

Alison:
Savor likes to have our leftover spelt pizza for breakfast in the morning we usually have one slice left and um he always bagsies it for breakfast yeah so i think what’s he’s it bagsy do you not say that uh nope no but i’d be like when when you’re like um when there’s you know something left that you want or something that you want you can say oh i bagsy that means we would.

Andrea:
Say or at least a phrase that i’ve used or heard is i’ve got dibs on that as.

Alison:
I would say oh i think I think I’ve heard that, but maybe I’ve only heard that from films and stuff.

Andrea:
Yeah, American slang.

Alison:
We say first dibs. I think we say first dibs on it, which means I’ve got the first call, you know?

Andrea:
Yeah, yeah. Now, dibs, that feels like it should come from some Latin word or something, you know, like…

Alison:
Dibobulation or some sort of… Etymology goes backwards. Dibbitum or something. Maybe.

Andrea:
Who knows?

Alison:
I don’t know. Anyway, I have had some lunch. Would you like to hear what I had?

Andrea:
I do want to hear because I bet it was more interesting than my breakfast.

Alison:
Well, it was leftovers. So it’s kind of like yours in a way. Yesterday we cooked some ground beef, beef mince in English, from Albert, our farmer. And I’m trying to think what was in it. Onions, mushrooms, garlic, and then the mince. And, oh, the greens from beetroot. Bought some new beetroot and obviously got the beetroot, but the greens were in a nice state as well. So I chopped those up, put them in with it. Some stock, some herbs, some tomato paste.

Alison:
I think that’s about it. And had it fresh yesterday. And then leftovers today. So I just heated it up with a bit more stock. And we have a rice sourdough bread, which I spread with the fat leftover from cooking some sausages a couple of days ago. And the boys had sauerkraut as well. And yeah, it was very, very nice. And, oh, I made chocolate for the first time in the UK. Since i’ve been back in the uk so i’ve so missed my own chocolate and um we finished all the cacao beans in italy because i don’t want to be carrying you know 10 kilos of cacao beans back from italy to the uk um and i just haven’t got around to buying any here mainly because it’s a different supplier because we’re not you know on continental europe anymore and also because buying cacao beans in in bulk costs quite a lot of money i was just like can’t quite do it this month can’t quite to do it this month um but then for my birthday well bought me a kilo of cacao beans so um that’s a good present with them um last night and i had a chocolate as well which had it was had a hazelnut inside put some hazelnuts in the mold poured the chocolate in it and they were just about set so one of those two was lovely oh.

Andrea:
That sounds really good.

Alison:
It was really really nice so we are in june believe it or not as you’re listening to this if you’re listening to this um as it’s just come out and what we do need to mention to you is that our our supporter community which um was previously on patreon is now successfully on our website being managed by us and looked after by us and supported by us and all the other things by us which is a wonderful move because it means that we’re in control and if something goes wrong we don’t have to ask patreon for support which kind of never materialized really wait.

Andrea:
In the ether.

Alison:
Forever exactly no help send a support request and that’s the end of that then and just have rob try.

Andrea:
To figure it out anyways.

Alison:
Yeah so now rob’s unfortunately figuring it out but that’s a much better um but he has the power there he can he can fix.

Andrea:
Things and write new things and as he did.

Alison:
And it means we can have it work the way we want um and it also means that all of the money that our supporters pledge to us our generous supporters pledge to us um comes into what we’re doing so it can all of it can help pay for the costs that we have to keep this going which is wonderful really wonderful so in order um to celebrate that this is happening for june this month june 2025 we’re offering.

Alison:
Um a discount which is 20 off our yearly memberships so when you join you can join monthly and pay monthly or if you like usually for a 10 discount you can join for a year so you pay everything up front and then you don’t have to worry about any more money coming out or doing anything else for a whole year you get all of the benefits for a year and both of those options monthly and yearly are available on all of our levels so we have four levels we have a sponsor we have a sponsorship level which means you get access to the discord forum and support us that’s five dollars we have companionship which is our most popular level which is twelve dollars a month and there you get not only access to the discord forum and support us but you also get a big stash of pdf downloads recipes helpful cheat sheets and things plus access to our private podcast which comes out once a month and.

Alison:
The after shows that we record you often hear us talk about after shows um you get that as a companion the companionship level then we have our stewardship level which is for those who have more money to send our way and that’s 50 a month and then we have a mentorship level which we don’t talk about very much that’s 120 a month and with that you have basically access to andrew and I once a month on a one-to-one call along with lots of other benefits like money, money off courses, money off going and staying with Andrea, lots of other things. And all of the 20% yearly discount that we’ve got for June is available on all of those levels. So you can go onto our site. The website is now ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash join.

Alison:
And that will tell you everything you need to know answer your questions and you can sign up from there the code that you need to use to get 20 off in june on a yearly membership at any level is june 20 so j-u-n-e-2-0 and that will give you 20 off rather than the standard 10 off, and you’ll come and join us for a year which would be wonderful we are so grateful and um we feel so connected to everyone who comes and joins us whether they you know just interact a little bit or they interact a lot it’s wonderful to to feel you all kind of around us and and having watched you this whole community kind of grown up since we started this and Andrew do you want to add something to that no.

Andrea:
I think that you cover all the details it’s really fun and super super grateful for everybody who’s already switched over and everybody who’s been a patron all along because that is how we were able to fund.

Alison:
Yeah building.

Andrea:
And writing everything rob needed to do for this so it’s very very awesome.

Alison:
Having all the participation supporters we really appreciate it um we have a review here um do you want me to read it andrea or do you want to read it.

Andrea:
Yeah i want you to read it okay.

Alison:
So this is a five-star review you can leave us a five-star review on apple if you’re on apple um and it’s always nice if you type something in as well and let us know you know why particularly you like us or how you found us or what we’ve helped you with this is from earlier in the year and it’s from someone called m258 it says as i’ve learned more about ancestral cooking and nutrition, this podcast has been a great source of information and Alison and Andrea truly are delightful to listen to. Thank you.

Andrea:
Oh, so kind.

Alison:
That’s very kind. Thank you for taking the time to do that. Makes a difference to us. It really does. There is one other kind of housekeeping thing I want to talk about, which is if listeners have heard our last few episodes, they will know that we did a giveaway for three months supply of liver capsules with One Earth Health, who are one of our sponsors. And a lovely lady called Serena in the States won that. Um so there are three bottles of one earth health liver capsules going to her um do remember that you have a discount available if you go if you want to buy um supplements there’s not just liver there’s kidney there’s heart there’s mixed um supplements on the one earth health website um if you either go to our website there’s a section there that is called support us and you can find the links there if you go to our show notes there’s a link in the show notes to one earth health site and that link will give you a discount on your purchase so well done serena and um yeah thank you one earth health definitely wow okay so what are we talking about today andrea well.

Andrea:
Today i wanted to talk about travel food you and i.

Alison:
Have both.

Andrea:
Alluded to packing food when we travel or cooking when we travel and i i do get asked about this quite a bit so i thought the time Time was ripe for us to sit down and talk about what we actually pack, what we actually make, all of that. So, how do you feel about that?

Alison:
That’s good. And I think that you have prepared some special files, which will be in our library for supporters. Can you just let them know what those are?

Andrea:
Yeah. So, right off the bat, I’m going to start with some traveler PSAs from my dad, actually. And… He actually wrote a document for this episode. I called him and asked him if he would just give us some tips. And then he said, oh, I’ll write you a whole – I was like, okay. So, he made a whole document. And that is available for everybody in the download section of our website. So, it’s AncestralKitchenPodcast.com slash downloads. And then there’s also a document which is an extra thank you for supporters, which I put the menu that I had made for our last trip. I just turned it into a PDF and put that in the download section. So you can, yeah, so people can see those.

Alison:
Wonderful. Okay, I shall let you get on with it then.

Andrea:
Yeah. And the food that I’ll be talking about is more specific to road trips and hotels and camping, things like that. It’s probably, well, some of it would still apply to flying. Allison, the tips you have are more, I would say, would work better with flying.

Alison:
Yeah, I agree.

Andrea:
Because you’ve got the smaller situation. And then, like you said, Rob has to carry everything.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Whereas we were able to pack things into the back of a car, so we didn’t have quite so much of a concern for weight. But we’re kind of going to cover the spectrum of traveling, I think, during this.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
All right, let’s go to an ad break and then come back and start with travel tips. So, the reason why I have travel tips from my dad is because, well, one, if we wanted some travel tips, he’s traveled quite a lot. He’s been to more countries than I can name, and he’s very serious about taking all of me and my seven siblings. He took us all to all 48 of the lower U.S. States by RV. So, we traveled quite a bit in that fashion. and he had successfully taken us to all of the states, some of them many times. And then seven years later, he and my mom had another baby and they said, I guess we’ve got to start over. So, they did. They did all of them again.

Alison:
Oh, my gosh.

Andrea:
So, it’s pretty remarkable. But my dad now owns a Pure Clean franchise, which if anybody in the U.S. Is familiar with that, they do mold, fire, and water damage restoration projects. So, they’ll come into homes and business places and even travel to locations where there were catastrophes. And they, you know, if your home floods with water, for instance, you know, there’s things you can do to repair the home. I’ve, in fact, even seen them take a house that was saturated and without ripping out walls or anything, completely restore it, you know, so that it doesn’t mold. It’s just remarkable what they can do with their technology and their tools and all of that.

Andrea:
But one thing my dad started telling everybody when he was doing this job was he said, when you travel, do these things, please. Because a lot of the homes he goes to were homes of people who were on a trip and they came home and for three weeks, you know, water had been pouring from the third floor all the way down through the house and things like that. And that’s just real devastating to return to and a real problem. So, he made a list of seven tips, and he also had more detailed explanation as to why each of these tips he wrote. And I’m not going to read all of the detailed explanation on air, but it is all in the document you can download. So, the first thing which he says all the time is turn off your water supply if you’re going to be gone for over a day. Even just for 24 hours, he says to turn it off. Um overnight or longer he said you can get a water key I don’t know how this works in the UK but in the US you can get a water key to turn off your water supply near the street if you don’t have a shut off in your garage and he said these are very cheap and he’s even given them out to people yeah I know so.

Alison:
In the UK usually we can turn off our water under the sink.

Andrea:
Oh yeah true as i learned.

Alison:
The hard way we don’t have that available in our house.

Andrea:
As we learned when.

Alison:
When a tap came apart and we couldn’t turn the water off so you have to get a universal stopcock which you can then go outside and put it.

Andrea:
Into the.

Alison:
Water thing outside so i went and bought one from a plumbing supplier about two months ago i think it cost 30 pound or 25 pound it’s the same thing.

Andrea:
That would be where he would be recommending you to turn it off if you were leaving was outside yeah so that it wasn’t in the house yeah um because there’s various places a pipe can fail and he said uh as an example a broken toilet supply line if you know just something happened to the toilet it’s pumping out two to three gallons per minute and if you imagine that 60 gallons an hour oh my gosh and then and then you’ll buy that by a day, Not only the water bill, but then your floors and all your furniture.

Andrea:
And he said, in one day, a broken toilet supply line can dump over 3,000 gallons of water into your house. So, it, you know, it doesn’t, you know, you can picture a water main bursting or something, but just a broken toilet supply line can cause such devastation. So, he had some more great tips on that, and those are all in the document. So, please do download it and save yourself a lot of money right there. He said, keep your heat set to 60 degrees. That’s tip number two. And the reason was, he said, a lot of people turn the heat off or way low when they’re gone, and then the mold begins to grow very quickly because the temperature goes down, relative humidity goes up, and the mold begins to proliferate. And that is something you don’t want. Number three is vinyl framed, double-paned windows are preferred. And this is, again, preventing moisture and sweating inside of the windows.

Andrea:
He said, number four, in basements, have luxury vinyl plank flooring. And I’m guessing that as somebody who has replaced or had to rip out flooring many times, this is part of why he said that. He said, number five, do not stack or store cardboard boxes. They just light up like tinder, which is what they are, and they burn very hot and very fast, and that’s also a huge problem.

Alison:
Yeah, I’ve seen putting those on my stove. I know how fast it goes up.

Andrea:
Whoops. Yeah, he said six. Oh, you mean in the wood stove?

Alison:
Yeah, I mean in the wood stove. I mean, just put one of those on. And I think if you’ve got tens of those in a space somewhere, then that’s going to be huge.

Andrea:
I think I read somewhere when I was reading about houses and fires and stats and things, they said in under five minutes, the house could be engulfed. And so it doesn’t take long. We picture… Having all kinds of time, but there’s no time.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Number six, he said, check the warranty date on your hot water heater. If they fail, they just leak all over, and that’s also a huge problem. He said, check the warranty date and replace it before you hit the warranty. And then a bonus tip that he threw in, because this is something that he’s seen hurt people deeply, is check your insurance policy and talk to your agent about your coverage. And he said two out of the three catastrophic fire jobs they go on, the homeowner is underinsured, so they don’t have enough coverage to rebuild their home. And he said, make sure you have guaranteed coverage, and you want the word guaranteed in the policy. And he said, policy limits, actual cost value, replacement cost value are not sufficient for catastrophic fire losses. You need guaranteed replacement language. And so, what he was explaining to me that that means is you say, I’m guaranteed that I can rebuild and recoup everything I lost. Otherwise, somebody starts coming in and estimating things that, and you might not actually get to rebuild your home. And we actually have a supporter who shared with all of us, if you remember, Jacey, when she joined, she talked about their house fire, and they had good coverage, and they actually came out okay.

Andrea:
And that’s a big difference between other really tragic situations I’ve known, I can think of two immediately off the top of my head, where their house burned, and they were out of the money. They just had a home no more, and they had to start over, and that’s quite a bit. So, those are Traveler Tips and More by my dad, Bob Jordan. And I don’t know if you know this, Allison, but my dad actually wrote a book.

Alison:
No, I didn’t.

Andrea:
Yeah, I know. He just, he’s prolific. And it’s called The Mitigation Handbook. And he uses it to train people to start their own Pure Clean franchises. So, there’s all this technical information in it. And he sells it at themitigationhandbook.com, which I did put that link in the show notes. And he told me, well, if any of your listeners, wherever they live in the U.S., have any interest in starting a PureClean, he can either….

Andrea:
Start one where they’re at and they can run it or he can you know give them the book and they can start or they can buy the book and he can give them some advice on starting it but it is a great generous it’s a family business type thing you know where the whole family can can work it together so it’s a really great it’s a really great deal and it’s been awesome to see how, much he’s been able to help people with it so because you do come into his life in a very sad time yeah exactly yeah you’re showing up on their worst day you know he said he said you know when you go to people’s houses and it’s like flooded you’re coming into their like very high stress moments and and how you how you act with them can have a big impact on how they can recover and emotionally it’s a big yeah big problem so yeah super grateful that he made that document for us because those things, I have just heard endless horrible stories from him of people who went on trips and something happened. So, yeah, so go ahead and download that document before you go on your trip and make it a priority to go through those items.

Alison:
Listen to the man who knows because he’s seen it go wrong.

Andrea:
Yeah, true story. All right, so let’s talk. What I did, Alison, was I kind of divided this into sections so.

Alison:
Okay we’ll.

Andrea:
Take a we’ll take a few breaks here and there but um we the first section i wanted to say was reasons to pack food for travel and i actually want you to.

Alison:
Share your.

Andrea:
Reasons why you pack food i know your and my reasons are very similar so i’m.

Alison:
Just gonna have.

Andrea:
You show yours.

Alison:
Yeah okay so really the the first reason is cost which is food costs so much more when you buy it out and it has to be obviously edible you can’t go and buy necessarily ingredients, so um because of the value add it just costs the earth absolutely the earth and particularly when you’re in travel situations like you know airports or train stations or garages they know that you’re just sitting there and you can’t really get any food anywhere else so it costs three times as much so cost is is a huge reason the second reason really is that just eating normal food makes us ill you know besides you know the fact that rob can’t eat wheat and gabriel can’t eat eggs or potatoes. And, you know, I can’t have any sugar. Besides that, even if you get foods without those things in. It’s just, it’s a minefield and there’s all these ingredients in them that you don’t know what they are. And we always feel bad afterwards. And then compare that to our food, which costs a fraction and tastes amazing, far better than that food and doesn’t make us feel ill. It’s just, there’s just no, there’s no question. When we’re travelling, you know, we’re often on a train where you can’t really buy any food apart from, you know, little trolley that comes by with sort of chocolate bars on it um or an.

Andrea:
Airplane chocolate frogs and well yeah you’ve been watching too much Harry Potter haven’t you no they um they.

Alison:
Sell more than chocolate frogs.

Andrea:
But not much more um so.

Alison:
You can’t necessarily buy food there um and you know the choices on an airplane are pretty bad so it’s just it’s a no-brainer for us cost and because our food doesn’t make us feel rubbish afterwards so.

Andrea:
Yeah I’m.

Alison:
And I think they’re similar for you aren’t they those.

Andrea:
Reasons and I’d vote the same also I honestly find it so much more convenient especially the more kids we have you know if you’re staying someplace and you have four kids and then it’s like what are you gonna all pack up and go out for dinner which we did do one night on our trip and it was really fun because it was one time, you know yeah but if you did it every day yeah yeah you know the kids they want to go swimming they want to play on the beach or whatever and then everybody has to get clean and put clean clothes on and it’s like yeah why would i do that to myself yeah so let’s talk then first about the tools you’re going to need some tools when you’re if you’re kind of cooking when i travel.

Andrea:
By road when we travel by road which is typically the way that we are traveling not always, but typically, then, I try to make, like, as much of the food as prepared as possible so that I’m not, you know, really cooking and cleaning. I’m more, like, assembling things and heating things. So, the tools that I need then are reflected in that. They’re more limited. And on different trips, I’ve kind of themed it differently. But when we went on this last trip, it was a week. We packed every single meal. We had six people. And in the hotel we were staying at had a mini kitchen, but everything we needed, we could have done if it wouldn’t have made any difference. All we would have needed was our one burner Coleman stove, which we do have, but we didn’t have to bring it. So that was convenient. But the kitchen was essentially a sink.

Alison:
Yeah, I just saw that on the picture that you shared on Discord of the kitchen. It was a tiny thing, wasn’t it?

Andrea:
You saw they had a microwave on the counter when we got there.

Alison:
You saw that as a cupboard then.

Andrea:
You shoved that in the closet. Yeah. I just got it out of the way. I wanted the counter space and I knew we weren’t going to use it. So we brought three coolers of food, which poor Rob, if he had to haul that.

Alison:
He already has to haul too much stuff, let alone three coolers.

Andrea:
I understand. So we brought very few dishes, but we did bring a few. So before I say mine, Alison, then why don’t you say, since you travel even lighter, how how what tools do you guys bring.

Alison:
Yeah so we don’t really bring many tools um as you’ve explained and listeners to the podcast for a while know we don’t have a car and we really never travel by car at all so we can’t do what you did and carry three coolers with with the meals but despite the fact that we can’t bring meals like that our suitcases do always have a large percentage of food in you know if you kind of take the shoes out and the and the clothes out well there’s still a lot of food in there we don’t take so many clothes um and you know the reason we can’t take so much is because rob has to carry it and he has to carry everything you know um he has to carry all the suitcases and it’s good for him you know it is good for him he’s he’s our snail carrying everything yeah it keeps him it keeps him moving and fit you know and i know that.

Andrea:
Rob seeks out physical.

Alison:
Adversity so he does he does and and I feel like we’re such a good team basically because I really can’t carry anything because of my hypermobility in my shoulders and so he really has been the carrier in in our partnership um so in our case really we just have a few tools um I always take my knife with me, Because I just like my knife, my little knife. I don’t, just one knife. Exactly.

Andrea:
I’ve heard about Robin Hood. I know what you guys have out there.

Alison:
Exactly. You never know. It’d be like a stagecoach thing going on on the road. I wrap it, you know, in some kitchen roll. And usually I put it in cardboard. And just because I just, I like my knife. And you go to these places and you don’t know what knife you’re going to get. And it’s probably going to be blunt. And you just you get used to the rhythm of the own knife it’s literally like.

Andrea:
Using someone else’s shoes.

Alison:
It’s not.

Andrea:
The greatest i.

Alison:
Love i’ve never forgotten it i’ve never left it in a place you know i’ve still got the same knife i always remember because it just it’s always there it’s always with me so because i always take it i always remember to pack it and pack it at the other end as well um we take rob’s manual coffee grinder he’s got a coffee grinder that you you know turn the handle yourself because his grains he roasts his grains himself and we will be having an episode on that soon i cannot wait i cannot wait.

Andrea:
For that one i’ve.

Alison:
Been i’ve been waiting for this for years and um he just can’t really hack normal coffee that you get you know um from a coffee bar sometimes he can he’s a connoisseur on which one’s this and which one’s that but we take usually take beans that he’s um ground so we take the manual coffee grinder so he can ground the grind them that morning you know so he doesn’t have to leave them and they’re not so does.

Andrea:
He roast them before the trip.

Alison:
Yeah he usually roast them for the trip batch them takes them with us and then every morning when he makes his coffee he grinds it fresh and then makes it immediately um on my side we take small sieves for loose tea because i drink a lot of tea and it’s usually loose leaf and so we’ve got these tiny sieves that just sit on the top of a mug and then I’ll do my tea and pour it through there and we always take containers you never have enough containers you know we’ve got food in the case which we’ll talk about in a bit you know what food I take um but no matter that I’ve got food in the case which is in containers we always need more containers so um I make sure that I’ve got containers with me so that’s it knife coffee grinder sieves and containers I don’t really take anything else other than those.

Andrea:
Oh, that’s perfect.

Alison:
How about you?

Andrea:
What does Rob brew the coffee in?

Alison:
Whatever comes to hand. So often there’s like a French press in the places that we stay. If there’s not, he will do it in a cup, and cover that cup while it’s brewing and then use my small sieve for the tea and pour that brew through my sieve into another mug so that’s kind of the emergency situation for brewing the coffee but most often there’s some sort of um you know cafetiere as we would call it in the place okay.

Andrea:
So we brought a french press actually we.

Alison:
Called the.

Andrea:
Hotel because i wanted to know what we would have.

Alison:
And what.

Andrea:
I didn’t need to bring so they have a stainless steel french press so that worked out for us.

Alison:
Okay and.

Andrea:
I gary was actually planning to buy coffee there there’s a couple places down there where we were going that are kind of famous for their coffee beans and he wanted to try them, um i brought a cast iron the flat cast iron skillet kind of like a crepe type skillet.

Alison:
Imagine if I asked Rob to carry that you know once I have to tell you I love you but once when we came back from Italy to the UK way before Gabriel was born we bought a juicer with us like a proper single auger juicer not like one of those light ones literally so my case had a juicer inside it wrapped in a coat and it’s heavy heavy heavy single auger juicer I was just like we brought a juicer back on the plane you know we’re crazy anyway so the cast iron skillet i think he’s got too many trauma memories of carrying that juicer so i can’t i can’t bring up the cast iron skillet.

Andrea:
Somebody just says do you want a juice don’t talk to me about juice.

Alison:
I don’t want to hear about juice.

Andrea:
Well we brought a cast iron skillet uh because we didn’t have to carry it.

Alison:
Yeah and.

Andrea:
I brought I think you call it a fish slice, but it’s like a tilted metal flipper. Each of the kids brought their own metal water bottle. And then I had a bigger one that Gary and I use. Both drink out of it i brought a milk pan i don’t know what you guys call them i call it a milk pan because that’s a technical name but nobody here knows what a milk pan is so i don’t know what it’s.

Alison:
Called a small saucepan you mean.

Andrea:
Tiny pan yeah yeah with a lid.

Alison:
Or without lid.

Andrea:
Um i did not bring the lid.

Alison:
Because if you buy milk pans in italy you’d never get a lid and i always want a lid so i have to buy them from somewhere other than italy so we’ve got two small saucepans with lids which i would call milk.

Andrea:
I i’ve i’ve got all mine at like thrift stores or charity shops as you call them and um i just find a lid i just look you know they usually have a pile of lids i just find something that fits um but all of mine have different lids so i brought the baby’s bottle because he drinks warmed raw milk and a few kitchen utensils. I brought my whisk and, oh, I can’t, I think I brought two tools and I can’t remember what the other one was. I didn’t really do much cooking, as I said before. I was all prepped and I forgot to bring a knife, Allison. I did have a knife on the list and I forgot to bring it.

Alison:
Ever rookie era.

Andrea:
I know. It actually came out okay. I also forgot to bring my apron. And I thought about it and I thought, will I miss it that much? Yes, I missed it that much. I wish I had brought my apron. And I brought two kitchen towels for such a trip with so many kids and so many spilling things. I wish I had brought maybe five.

Alison:
You were away for a week, weren’t you?

Andrea:
Yeah, it was a week.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
And I kept like dabbing things up and hanging them. And I know hotels have towels, but I didn’t really want to use those towels with my food. And then I also should have brought a pair of scissors but I didn’t but that would have been very handy so those are the things we brought well.

Alison:
You just need to go on holiday again now don’t.

Andrea:
You yeah I just need to try this again even.

Alison:
Better next time.

Andrea:
More beach please I’ll go listen to this podcast episode and remember everything I forgot okay so for the next section special treats yeah i wanted to talk about special treats so um because we were bringing all of our food we knew we would then we actually planned to be able to enjoy a couple things that the area was kind of famous for like gary got the coffee and um just things that you know if you were if we were buying all of our meals out we’d probably have said i don’t want to spend money on this expensive you know high-end locavore version of something but because we weren’t buying our meals out we were able to plan for that so if you’re going somewhere that’s famous for something or known for something you can build that into your menu so allison do you when you eat out do you ever go to special places um.

Alison:
I would say not not normally when we travel so um, usually when we travel we go into a new place where we haven’t been before and if that’s the case we don’t know what the food’s going to be like and it could be terrible and I just I hate the true the experience which I’ve had more than once of spending a lot of money on a meal and it just being rubbish you know or feeling terrible afterwards you know and spending the next day recovering and feeling like I’ve got a hangover so if we don’t know that something’s kind of particularly nice we don’t and we often spend a lot of money on our trips so then we just like well we spent money on this experience or being together and I’m taking the time out and therefore we don’t really have much money to eat out I think um if I went back to Florence as a visitor um I would definitely go to our favorite restaurant there because I know Florence And there’s a restaurant called Davina Pizza in Florence, which does ancient grain, long ferments and amazing toppings. Just the best pizza. If anyone ever goes to Florence and Italy, you have to go to the little restaurant Davina Pizza, which is just out the centre. And if I went back there, I would go to Davina Pizza because I love it. And all of us love their food. But that’s because I know it. Otherwise, we don’t usually eat out, I’d say.

Andrea:
Yeah, it’s tough when you don’t know the place. The advantage we had here was that we’ve both been there multiple times.

Alison:
Right, okay.

Andrea:
And we actually went there on our honeymoon, so we kind of knew some places.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And Gary grew up camping there his whole life, and I’d camped there many times as a kid also. So… I will say, when I camped there, I had never eaten out anywhere, because we never ate out when we were camping as a kid. But we also, also, our neighbors who live on our street had moved there a couple years ago. So, and they, they like a lot of the same things we do. So, we knew that we could ask them, you know, where would you go eat?

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
That’s that’s a handy tip special so yeah yeah if you are planning so well if you are planning an a meal out like we actually planned one full meal that would be at a place um, i would suggest what i did was i leveraged it towards the end of the trip so you might be running out of some of the food you packed or you might be sort of craving like something fresh that wasn’t packed in a cooler all week. And so, I pushed that towards, I think it was the day before we left, we ate that meal out. And then we got a special treat each day that we were there. One day, there’s this place that Gary loved the clam chowder when he was growing up, and so, we got a big bowl of the clam chowder.

Alison:
Nice.

Andrea:
Yeah, it was actually pretty good. We were kind of worried, but it was good. Another day, we all got an ice cream cone at the beach. But honestly, we had actually planned, there was two other things we wanted to buy out, but we had brought so much good food, and we just liked it better. And we just never went and got it because we were just happy with what we had. So, also, the first day we left, this wouldn’t be accessible to everyone. I don’t even know how it would work for you, Allison. I think it would be impossible. But we planned that the day we left, like, we packed up and left here, and we were out around 7 a.m., and we did not stop to make breakfast. I didn’t get any dishes out in the morning before we left. You know, we didn’t wait for any kids to eat. We basically woke them up and told them to get in the car. And that was because I planned that our first stop on the way out, there’s a coffee shop that I knew we were going to pass on the way that we all really like. And so we stopped there, got everybody a sandwich.

Alison:
Nice.

Andrea:
Gary and I brought our own, like, we had brought beverages. We didn’t have to get any beverages or anything like that, but everybody just got a sandwich.

Alison:
Can I ask you something about your coolers?

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
It’s just come to me. So you had three coolers. were they electric coolers or did you have cool packs in them to keep them cold.

Andrea:
No they’re not electric and i’ll explain how he kept them cold oh yeah that’s coming is it yeah i’m actually actually put that in okay yeah okay that’s good because that was a question you see okay i’m waiting i’m waiting so allison let’s take an ad break okay and then come right back.

Andrea:
Okay so the first uh section i want to talk about here is planning so planning the food for your trip is i well allison you you have a different take on this i would say the more people you bring probably the more you need to plan because i needed to know and plus i was bringing all the food, so I needed to know in advance.

Andrea:
How much food am I, yeah, like, what am I making? Is there things I can make and put in the freezer that I could do, you know, not two days before the trip, but I could do, like, two weeks before the trip. There was some stuff I did, like, a month before the trip. And then I needed to know, you know, how should I, like, I tried to put everything in the serving that I was going to be taking out, you know what I mean? So, like, if there’s a pack of something, it was packed, like, I packed enough for one dinner so that then I’m not opening multiple packs at a meal. And I also wanted to make sure that I was bringing enough, which I was. I brought too much, as usual. And i wanted to know that it would be uh food that we liked and good food which i’ll talk about what i mean by that a little farther ahead um i used the plan to eat actually to help me.

Andrea:
Prepare because i knew you mean about i don’t know some people might not have heard us talk about it before yeah if you know me in real life you’ve probably heard me talk about it Yeah. Apparently I go on about it quite a bit. But I think it’s because with my, I don’t know, ADHD type personality, I have just found that it takes a lot of the executive functioning off my plate and I’m able to, you know, do things like get dressed.

Alison:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
I actually scheduled, I didn’t put our trip menu in there, although I think I’ll go back and plug it in because you can go back over time and look at things and so it’d be handy to have that to reference. But what I scheduled was all the food I was prepping. So I wrote out the menu by hand on a tablet and then I kind of arranged the food, how it made sense. And then I got to work in the kitchen because I knew, okay, we need 18 hot dog buns or whatever. And then I made as much of that as I could to freeze. The menu that I wrote out is what I have for the podcast supporters to download. It’s just a very simple menu typed out. And so, you can kind of get a feel for how I was scoping out the meals. I kind of got this menu idea from my mom because whenever we went on road trips in the in the rv or the camper or the camper van depending on what country you’re listening to this from then she would print out this menu and she would actually tape it to the kitchen cupboard so everybody knew what the meals were and she didn’t do like sunday morning breakfast is this she did here’s five breakfasts here’s the five lunches and here’s the five dinners and then as the trip evolved we would kind of shift around with that because you know Maybe we’d be out late one day or go to the pool one day. And so, she’d go to the meal. That worked for that.

Alison:
I see.

Andrea:
But everybody could see it and contribute as well, because I could just walk in the little RV and be like, oh, it looks like we’re having lunch could be peanut butter sandwiches. I’ll just start making those for everybody. And that works out great when you have eight kids. Yeah. So, we did not stick to my menu exactly, but it was so handy because I enjoyed the vacation more. I felt like I didn’t have to think every day, okay, what are we going to eat? I just looked, oh, look, the luxury of having it all written out and planned for me was right there. Alison, you do it a little bit differently. What do you do for your menu when you’re traveling?

Alison:
Yeah, so, I mean, we literally can’t take the stuff that you took on your trip. But having said that, I mean, I don’t plan. I mean, I know that you like to menu plan generally. I don’t menu plan and I never have menu plan I think sometimes I think it’s easier for me because obviously I’ve only got three mouths to feed but then I think you know if I had six mouths to feed I think I’d probably just do what I do but double it I actually quite like the idea of.

Alison:
Coming up with what we’re going to eat you know I do plan in the sense you know in a normal, situation that I will go to the um to the market on a Saturday and I’ll think okay what roughly do we need this week and I’ll look at what’s available and I’ll decide what I’m going to choose or perhaps I’ll say to to Albert or have you got any kidneys because I’ve got sort of in my head that I think I might do this dish um but I I feel better not being constrained by having a planned menu, I know it means I have to use more of my executive function on that, but I kind of like it. I like thinking, oh, what do I fancy doing tomorrow? What’s in the freezer? What’s, you know, and so it’s something that’s just part of my personality. You know, we have our staples, which kind of take that executive functioning off me.

Alison:
And those generally continue when we go on a trip. And those are the foods that are in that case that I said earlier on. So we always take pre-made sourdough bread with us so you know sometimes it’s a long trip I will actually make a sourdough bread while we’re there but generally if it’s a shorter trip I will take one or two sourdough loaves in the case with us and we generally have that for lunch you know just like everyone hears me talking about what I have for lunch here it’s always big bread really isn’t it um we generally have oats for breakfast when we’re at home and we often have oats for breakfast when we go traveling as well and because i’ve been spoiled with oats i know that shop-bought oats porridge oats kind of taste a bit like cardboard so we generally take our oats with us just like rob roasts his coffee before we go we get our naked oats and we roll them in the macato marga before we go and then take them in a bag with us so that’s usually in the case we take lard with us and.

Alison:
Usually I just put it in the case from frozen and then often in the evening we’ll have a lighter grain so we’ll have millet or something a bit lighter a gluten-free grain and often I will take a bag of that with me in the case so you know if I know we’re going away for five days we’ve got five day supply of millet there that I can just cook up in the evening yeah so I’m not writing a menu but I’ve got that structure that’s kind of the same as the structure that I would have for us in our routines of eating every day and what I don’t have I’ll then go out and look for so if there’s a market in the place that we’re going I’ll go to it that day and and one of the joys actually I think of traveling is if there’s a regular market um then I can get stuff that day you know so I’m not just buying once a week more like I do here I can go and see what’s good that day um if I can’t if there’s no market then I’ll go to a shop and I’ll buy a few days of the kind know the protein stuff and the veggie stuff in and then.

Alison:
I’ll just go about my usual thing oh what do I fancy well I’ve got I’ve got ground mints or I’ve got these sausages or I the chicken was was a better deal so I bought chicken well we’re roasted chicken we’ll have that leftovers you know for the next few days um so yeah I don’t have a written menu and I do keep it in my head but I do have a routine that I kind of fall onto which gives me um kind of a structure and helps me know what I have to choose and what I can just forget about because it’s done and there kind of thing yeah.

Andrea:
That works out great.

Alison:
Yep.

Andrea:
And a word to, there’s people listening to this who I know have to pack because they have severe allergies. And sometimes I know that that feels very constraining because you don’t have a choice.

Alison:
Really.

Andrea:
And so, but I just want to tell you, I promise that you’re getting better food. Gosh, yes. It is so sad. It is so sad. I look like when Gary and I were on this most recent trip down the Oregon coast, and I just kept telling him, every restaurant I see, I just know everything in there came off the same frozen food truck from the same factory. And they just heated it up. And they’re microwaving it. They’re putting it in toaster ovens. They’re frying it in rancid oil. And it’s all the same thing. And and in fact we spent quite a bit of time just to see what there was if there was places that we could eat yeah and and there wasn’t anything we even that’s depressing.

Alison:
Doing that yeah.

Andrea:
Oh i know rob and i just give up exercise in futility yeah don’t yeah just i get excited yeah i.

Alison:
Look at this menu and rob’s like don’t do it and.

Andrea:
Then i don’t realize what he said oh i’m going to this place and i told gary it’s so discouraging actually the one place we wanted to find and we couldn’t find And I don’t know if they’re still in existence, if anybody in Newport, Oregon knows where this is, if it still exists, please tell me. But when we were on our honeymoon, we went to this restaurant, which was the bottom level of a house. So it was just like… You walk up to a house and the bottom level was the restaurant and it’s just a woman and her husband. And he was a French pastry chef. And I don’t know exactly what her specialty was, but we went there and we just kind of said, make us whatever is good. And she told us all the places around here, cause you’re at the beach, everybody sells seafood and it’s all frozen and shipped in seafood. And she said, we actually are serving you seafood. That’s local from local fisherman and then her husband makes all their pastries from scratch and and everything was wonderful it was wonderful and you just felt like you’re sitting in a cozy little home setting you know there’s just a few tables and and it was you know a nice comfortable low light and it was it was wonderful if that place exists we drove around we tried to find it we couldn’t find it but if anybody knows where that is if they’re still around 15 years later please tell me that.

Alison:
Would It’ll be like a pot of gold.

Andrea:
At the end of the rainbow.

Alison:
One listener comes in and says, I know where it is. And you go back there.

Andrea:
But it just is discouraging because if you just sit outside a restaurant long enough, you see the big in the U.S. It’s called U.S. Foods or Us Foods or Cisco, depending on where it is or chef’s choice or something. And it’s the trucks back up and they just unload pallets of frozen food. And it’s all the same thing.

Alison:
Yeah you know um you know um in in Florence there are still um cafes who make their pastries there and then I think maybe I’ve talked about this you know on site but but most of the little pastry shops that sell coffee and all the Italians have their breakfast that I remember listening to Katie Parler once on her podcast and she just said all of those croissants all of those panes chocolates they all come from a factory just outside Rome and they’re delivered to the to the cafes every day by by vans and they’ve all got goodness knows what vegetables in them you know they’re not made with all butter kind of things anymore it’s just it’s the same pastry from the same place that’s come on a refrigerated truck.

Andrea:
Well, you think, oh, I’m going to a place, I want to experience something of that place. And then you’re going and you’re getting, like, you’re in Florence and you’re getting food from Rome, you know. You’re getting all the food from the same big industrial region in Kansas or something for us here. And it’s just getting, I told Gary, I feel so discouraged because if I go on a trip here in Oregon, i’m gonna see the same restaurants and the same food as if i go on a trip in new york and i i said why like what’s the point what’s what’s the what’s the fun but people want we’ve been trained with the processed food to expect the exact same thing all the places all the time and the same texture and sour cream looks like this and you know a tortilla looks like this and then if you go somewhere else god forbid it’s different because oh that’s weird well.

Alison:
Yeah and those companies have the buying power to be able to produce that food at.

Andrea:
A lower price.

Alison:
And so they can.

Andrea:
Now price the other people you.

Alison:
Know well obviously if it’s cheaper i’ve got to have it there so you.

Andrea:
Know that’s the end of that restaurants margins are like four percent or something so it’s like they you know and if you you know the thing is with with eating mostly our own made food we can then choose to go eat at a place that is far more expensive than if we were trying to feed everybody a bunch of, you know…, I don’t know, processed food meals every single day. Anyways, I just wanted to give that encouragement to those of you that I know don’t really have much of a choice. I suppose technically I do have a choice because technically I’m not allergic to things, but I also feel sick when I eat them and I don’t want to. I don’t have as big of a reaction as somebody with a true allergy or sensitivity, so I have that luxury of knowing that I have the choice. But honestly, I don’t feel like I have the choice because everything’s so gross.

Andrea:
Okay, so work ahead and freeze is a tip. This is great for camping as well. If you’re going tent camping, this is a really good tip. So we made as much food as we could, some of it several weeks in advance, and we froze it. And freezing food is not only a convenient way to spread the workout over time, so you don’t have this massive rush right before the trip. But it’s a great idea for even things like the hot dogs that you’re packing to bring, because since they’re frozen, they’re going to stay colder longer in your case. So, we froze, we made and froze packets of cookies, sausages, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, sloppy joe filling, and pre-sliced bread. I sliced the bread. Sorry, Allison. I made the bread and I sliced it I know how dare I it was spelt bread and it held up tolerably well but I sliced it and then I used bags to package it, an amount that we would use for so like you know this makes six sandwiches or whatever.

Alison:
Okay yeah.

Andrea:
I froze it in those sets and I did six even though the baby doesn’t eat a sandwich because sometimes Gary and Jacob will eat another half so.

Alison:
Yeah do you freeze yeah stuff yeah we do yeah okay so um I do kind of the same as you you know a couple of weeks before I’m thinking right what do I need to have made to make this work so usually you know a couple of times before in the weeks leading up to the trip I’ll make two sourdough loaves instead of one and then the freezer will sort of stock up and I find that’s helpful not only to take you know sourdough loaves with me but also because you know when you come back from a trip it takes quite a lot of energy to unpack do all the washing get back to your normal life and trying to fit making a bread in there is quite hard so I usually try to leave a couple of loaves in the freezer for when I come back as well so I’m kind of thinking about it you know two or three weeks before and making extra double so I’m not using any extra energy on the oven you know and it’s efficient in my making.

Alison:
And then often we will put those loaves in the case frozen and then you know they’re slowly defrosting we do that with lard like I said the lard that we put in a case is usually frozen when it goes in and so if we’ve got a journey that’s taking 18 hours for example the lard’s kind of cold still when we get there there’s no problem with it with it heating up so I’m making extra of lard making sure there’s a container that is about the right size for the amount of lard we’ll use when we’re away so i know that though that that container’s for when we’re going i’m not going to touch that one yet, um the same with kraut i will make extra kraut to kind of bump up the routine so i can have one to take with me so yeah we kind of do the same thing just on a smaller scale um thinking about it two or three weeks beforehand putting things in the freezer and then making sure that that just fits into the routine and it’s ready to pack when you’re so busy when you’re leaving you know have we got this have we got this turning off your water turning off the water yeah exactly and then you can just get them out the freezer and that’s that’s really great you know so yeah with a sign.

Andrea:
Another tip would be for to be realistic. So when you go on your trip, you’re not going to suddenly be a new person and want to eat different food that you never eat that you don’t like usually, or that you’ve been storing in the back of the cupboard and hoping one day you’ll be so hungry, you’ll actually eat it. You’re probably not. So my advice would be plan for food that you actually like and want to eat. And I also intentionally chose to plan special and kind of interesting food that we don’t always make all the time so that it was interesting and fun for the kids and it felt like a special event and you yeah you you don’t want to be discouraged on your trip and just you know i just i’m so tired of eating peanut butter three times a day let’s just go out somewhere you know so it’s a fun trip so plan something fun and interesting and maybe not just have the same soup reheated every single day yeah yeah, A small cooler. I actually brought a really small cooler. Well, small compared to the other coolers, I’ll say that. I brought a small cooler that wasn’t actually…

Alison:
Could I get inside one of your coolers? I’m just wondering.

Andrea:
Yeah, probably.

Alison:
Isn’t that big?

Andrea:
No, let’s see. The biggest one holds eight gallon jars of milk.

Alison:
Okay, maybe Gabriel could get in it.

Andrea:
Yeah, Gabriel could get in it for sure. But don’t kids, it’s not safe. But we brought um a small cooler that wasn’t for packing food so that each day when we left on our adventures we could bring along a convenient container of lunch and not have like yeah you know lug out a giant thing um this during the trip the way we loaded the car this was the only cooler that was accessible and that was by my design i told gary we don’t need to get into any of the other coolers everything we need for the drive the day down is in this little cooler um and you don’t need snacks and things constantly on.

Andrea:
A road trip although i know that that’s kind of the mentality at least in the u.s you know but you don’t really you can get hungry in between your meals and wait till you stop at a park or something to eat so sorry um and then um depending on your situation this was something that my sister who camps quite a bit told me she said i plan a hot breakfast and a hot lunch or a hot dinner but for lunch i plan something we don’t need to cook because then it’s always portable yeah okay so cooler economy uh this one shout out to cara who bought elsie the cow from me and angel the heifer and she threw this advice at me she said um freeze some jugs of water to put in your coolers because we were bringing five gallons of raw milk and.

Andrea:
We also don’t like drinking we’ve really boxed herself into a corner Alison we don’t like drinking water anywhere we go I know that feeling yeah so the kids won’t drink water if we go somewhere they just think it’s gross and they say it tastes like chemicals and And it does. So I was thinking, well, I want to bring water, but how? And Kara said, freeze it. So those frozen jugs actually stayed cold all the way until the very end, because there was several of them and we just took them out, you know, and poured water. Poured what we needed into our bottles, and then it gradually melted by the end. Also, Kara made us a ton of fruit leather from berries and grapes and things that she has grown. And that was such a fun treat. Everybody was so excited about it. The kids could not wait to go on the trip so they could tear into it. Oh, that’s funny. And so that’s a great tip. Have a friend who will make you something yummy to take on the road.

Alison:
Yeah, that’s nice.

Andrea:
How about your bag, Allison?

Alison:
Yeah, so usually we have a call bag with us because, you know, we’re going to need it on the trip. We’re going to need it when we go out on the trip. And it’s kind of medium sized. It has to be, you know, a reasonable size so it can be balanced on top of one of the suitcases. And that it’s not so big that it’s not too big when we’re going out for the day. Because we just usually take one with us. And I have to say, every single time we go, it’s completely and totally stuffed. And Rob doesn’t really go near packing it anymore because he packs it. And he says it’s full i’m like oh that’s not full come on take it all out put it all back in again no there’s loads of room and then i put a load more stuff in on the top of it and then i can’t quite zip it shut and so it is stuffed every single time often we’ll do things so usually we put you know the food that we’re taking with us that we want to um keep lower down in the call bag and then we will often put our lunches at the top and very often to avoid taking a cool pack I will put something like you know the frozen container of lard, And then that’s our cool pack is the lard melting. So we don’t have to use a cool pack because that just takes up tons of room. And I want to put some house in there.

Andrea:
You want food in there.

Alison:
Exactly. And then our sandwiches and that, if there’s room, go on the top. So then when we’re on a journey, we can just unzip it, reach in for the stuff of the road. And sometimes it doesn’t fit. Sometimes we have to put them in a separate container. But our cool bag is soft. So it’s a foldable one. So if there’s less in it which doesn’t happen very often and we can squash it down a little bit and it also is not so weighty if it’s soft as well so you know it doesn’t add to the carrying by being a great big hard thing yeah so yeah it’s interesting the kind of um the the parallel, parallels but differences between us we’ve got a parallel kind of on each of these but they’re slightly different and yet they work for both of us you know we kind of figured them out as we’ve gone along for our particular situations I find that really interesting yeah.

Andrea:
And it’s interesting how kind of the same driving principles working in the different situations.

Alison:
And with.

Andrea:
The different allowances you know we have you know a weight tolerance far beyond.

Alison:
Yeah well.

Andrea:
I don’t know maybe we’re.

Alison:
On a test you want to test um.

Andrea:
But uh it you you know it is something that reminds me when you say, oh, I can’t, you know, I have four kids or like, there is just up to the creativity of the individual to find how things can be negotiated. Okay, so road packs. This is the last thing I’ll say here. And then Allison, let’s take a quick break after this and then just come back with some just just a list of menu items. Um so road packs um you’ll see this noted on the menu if you download my printed menu and this is something that i did for one of the trips when we went to the young living convention and the kids were still talking about it three years later so i decided to do it again they’re like do you remember could you think remember when you went on that trip it was so fun like dreaming about it so So, this was the only place we had processed food treats that I didn’t make. They were store-bought, and thank goodness this is unusual because they were really expensive. So, if you’re buying organic, you know, slightly better treats, good gracious, they’re expensive. So, the kids are really, really excited. It’s really novel and fun.

Andrea:
I made a bag for each kid. I wrote their name on it and I wrote the date because there’s actually two bags, one for the trip out and one for the trip home. And I just kind of hid the other bags in the bottom of one of the boxes. And so nobody knew it was there. And I also made one for the dog, Jacob’s dog, who came with us. Jacob cracked up.

Alison:
He was really excited.

Andrea:
He was. Well, because I handed each kid their bag and he reads the name and passes it. And then I handed him one for Charlie. He was like, what?

Andrea:
Um but i put them in the console of the car i don’t know what you call it in the uk but it’s like the little box in between the driver and passenger i don’t know what we call that either yeah the thing i put them in there and then when we were a few hours into the drive you know a lot of the newness has worn off everybody’s kind of read through some books and they’re kind of getting glazed eyed and the picnic stop was still a ways away I handed those bags back and ah it was very exciting oh it’s like Christmas everybody’s thrilled yeah I also put a bag of trail mix and a bag of jerky in the console but we never used it honestly when you have really good meal meals you just don’t feel like you want to snack as much because your body is staying sated and full and you’re getting all the nutrients you need. I’m telling myself all these things because when I’m at home, I do a less good job of making sure I eat meals on time. But yeah, we never used the snacks that we packed, but for Gary and I, but they were there. Allison, when you go on your long train rides, you did say other than chocolate frogs and the burning spots. Butter beans or whatever the heck they’re called um what do you guys eat.

Alison:
Or do you bring things we do bring things and you know often we’re on trains for for a long time a long time for uk residents you know so when we when we lived in cornwall the train ride from rob’s mom to cornwall was nine hours and you know we took the train once from florence all the way back to kent in the uk so we’ve done long train drives and how long was that that was i think it’s two days actually we stopped in geneva overnight a long time um often we take the slow train because they’re cheaper than the fast train so we’re kind of used to that we’re completely at home with being on a long train journey and like i said i pack the stuff we need on the top of the cool pack or if i can’t fit it in a separate accessible bag if if we have to go to a separate bag then i’ve got no way of calling it necessarily so i’ll do stuff that you know like um your friend.

Alison:
Was saying you know the the stuff that is not hot so I will choose something that specifically I know does not need cooling so I’ll do sandwiches with cheese in them yeah if I know I’ve got a way to cool it then I know I can put fish or egg in those you know instead um sometimes we’ve got things left in the fridge that we just haven’t managed to eat before the trip you know you always have we always have leftovers in the fridge all the time I try and manage it you know but sometimes there are some left and those basically maybe there’s a bit of rice or some salad or some roasted veg you know a bit of chicken or something and those I will just put in a.

Alison:
Container and then we’ll take wooden forks with us. And like I said, that container always comes in handy later on the trip. We often have water kefir left over. And so then rather than have it in a glass swing top bottle, we decant that into a plastic bottle. And then that becomes the drink for the trip for the boys. So we’re just carrying around that until they finish the water kefir. Um sometimes i will pack some nuts and a bit of chocolate so that kind of is the equivalent of your snack packs you know um and we’ll get to some place where we’re changing or we’re on a particularly long leg of the journey and you know we’re flagging a little bit and then i’ll put my hand in some secret pocket in the case and pull out some everybody’s.

Andrea:
Eyes light up.

Alison:
Hazelnuts and a bit of chocolate and everyone’s like yeah and so we’ll have that um that’s that’s why does it.

Andrea:
It’s such an odd boost like.

Alison:
It’s yes and i think it’s i think it’s.

Andrea:
I think it’s fun because it’s not been perpetual you know it’s not.

Alison:
Like you’ve been just eating.

Andrea:
Chocolate the whole way it’s like now you get this burst of something so yeah.

Alison:
Exactly exactly oh.

Andrea:
I love it i’m gonna go on a two-day train.

Alison:
Ride from Italy to Kent.

Andrea:
Sounds so romantic. Well, let’s go to an ad break and come right back. Okay, so this is where I want to talk a little bit about the actual food we pack, and then this will just, this will wrap us up. So this is shorter section. But if you’ve ever heard of a capsule wardrobe, I realized that when we travel, we kind of make a capsule menu or a capsule pantry. In fact, Allison, I was thinking of your pantry as written out in our cookbook, Meals at the Ancestral Hearth. Please buy it. It’s on our website. And your pantry is actually the direction that my pantry has been moving as a lot of my variety, little bits of things I’ve used up. I’m not replacing them. I’m actually getting a little bit more focused on fewer ingredients. But using those fewer ingredients in diverse ways, of course, is something you and I both enjoy.

Andrea:
And when I looked at the food for the trip, I thought, what things could be layered or mixed and matched? For instance um i and i also was keeping in mind the fact that well gary eats anything that i throw at him and i can literally him and rob they’re two of a kind i could really just throw like five different leftovers in a container and put a lid on it and he’ll take it to work and eat it without complaining yeah and he’s like i don’t know or if like the kids have a little leftover on all the plates he’s like just put it all in a container and i’ll take it for work tomorrow yeah okay you know how it is yeah so while that is true i didn’t want to push the limits of that patience and make the same thing every single day and i wanted it to feel like a fun trip so so we had different sandwiches on different days and but the the the thing being that there’s a lot of overlap that you can put there. So, you know, bread works and all of those or buns. So, whichever, if I had one or the other leftover, I could still use it to make the next day sandwiches.

Andrea:
And it wasn’t like every meal needed all this exclusive equipment and ingredients. It was all very much layered over. Like, I made a couple salads that we just divided up over different days and they, you know, kind of mixed and matched, and it was whatever was left in one container we finished off or what have you. If you… My sister also suggested, she said when they travel, instead of sandwiches, she actually almost always does wraps because she can flatten tortillas down or flatbreads. And, you know, they don’t lose their joy by being flattened. So, Alison, first, why don’t you, you’ve already said actually quite a few things, but what are some of your favorite food items to pack just so we get it catalogued nicely at the end here?

Alison:
Yeah, I just feel like I have to have that bread because, you know, it’s a loaf and I’ve got a knife that I’m cutting it with. And that is just a staple for us. And it travels so well, you know, it’s just a loaf of bread. It’s not going to get squished, really. It’s not one of those ones that’s like massively like a big balloon thing. It’s not going to get squished. And, you know, then I can make sandwiches with it for the whole week. I don’t have to worry about that at all. And the same with the lard. I don’t have to worry about, oh, what can I get butter? Where can I get butter from? What fat can I get? You know, there’s all these just horrible fats and everything. If I’ve got my bread and I’ve got my lard, I feel like I can do anything, I think.

Andrea:
Well, that’s true. And if you are traveling very lightly with bread and lard, depending on the time and where you’re going, you could look in advance and see. There was no market where we went. I did look. Or at the time we were there, there wasn’t anyways. But if there’s a good market, you could buy a piece of meat and you could buy some vegetables and have fresh food. Yeah. Okay, so meat, freeze your meat, pack it on the bottom of the cooler. This is good for camping. This is good for road trips. Whether the meat’s cooked or not. I cooked all our meat before we left, but I still froze it after I cooked it.

Andrea:
Hot dogs and buns. I’m just going to list a few things, Allison. And when I was working on the trip, I wrote out a bunch of things that I thought would be packable, and then I pulled from there based on what we actually had to make. And some of these things we’ve taken on trips and some…, Some my sister contributed because she also helped me with this list. So hot dogs or sausages and buns, canned pork and beans, and canned refried beans. I put the recipes for those in the show notes because I made those for the trip. Fish and veg packets. If you’re cooking over a fire, you can pre-parboil the potatoes before you go on your trip. And you could do sausages, too. Um chicken salad tuna mackerel sardine salad egg salad turkey salad um egg salad I don’t know if I just heard in Australia they call it something different but it’s like the chopped chopped up eggs with mayonnaise and mustard and lemon juice and relish and stuff like that um any kind of a meat salad uh chopped veggie salad broccoli salad pasta salads smoked salmon salad um oatmeal breakfast oatmeal scones my sister shared a recipe with me which is in the show notes thank.

Alison:
You that’s nice.

Andrea:
Where it’s actually from a cookbook that is linked in there if you travel and camp a lot you would really enjoy this book it’s i’ve looked through it and they have recipes where you know if you’re in your kitchen at home you can make it in your oven this way or if you’re traveling mix these ingredients bring these ingredients and then when you get there here’s how you cook it on a fire so it’s got some diversity in there um sloppy joe’s bratwurst and pulled pork are good meats that you can cook in advance and freeze in containers make your lunches portable and if you want a sweet treat after lunch, then that would be a good time to see if there’s something fun like the ice cream cones we got.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Bagels. I thought about making some for the trip. I didn’t end up doing it, which is fine because we, Allison, I told everybody, your job on this trip is to eat food because I could already see as soon as we left that we weren’t going to eat it all.

Alison:
Eat more.

Andrea:
Eat more. You’re hungry? I don’t think so. Cream cheese and salmon. If you have access to those things, that goes good with bagels. Bread is good for cheese sandwiches, the tuna sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, etc. Wraps versus bread for sandwiches, since like Rebecca said, you can flatten the tortillas down. Frozen jugs of water. And if you are going to be going out and about, maybe think about bringing some water bottles so you don’t have to buy plastic ones with nasty water. Snacks. We brought cookies and fruit leather for little desserts or sweet treats.

Andrea:
And the fruit leather was amazing. I would definitely recommend that for trips now that I’ve taken it on a trip. So pro tip, take fruit leather. And when you plan your menus, Allison, you kind of alluded to this when you talked about traveling home, but think about the leftovers. So if you have a potato hash on the third day of your trip, then you can use up, the bits of egg and meat and cheese from day one and two that we’re not quite finished off. Yeah, you just mix it in. And then on day four, if you have any of that hash with all the leftover bits in it, leftover again, you can roll it into a tortilla with leftover sloppy joes and rice or something. So I tried to, I didn’t, I didn’t get way nitty gritty, but you know, when you have a good capsule wardrobe and the food or the clothes are high quality, and they’re kind of the colors you like and they all fit you, then you can mix and match them pretty effortlessly. And the same with the food. When the food is all really good and it’s things that you’re accustomed to and you like and they taste nice, they tend to mix and match pretty well. So that is the…

Alison:
So I have two questions for you still before we go. Is there time for me to ask my two questions?

Andrea:
Well, how fast are they and how long are the questions? Let’s try.

Alison:
The first one’s quite quick. The first one is, will you take me on a trip somewhere, please? Because I’d like to eat all that food.

Andrea:
Yeah, you sure can.

Alison:
Excellent. The second one is, I still don’t quite understand about the call pack situation. So when you get to the place you’ve got all this frozen meat in the cool packs was there a freezer that was big enough to put it all in or did you just take your cool packs out and freeze those again and then keep storing it in the cool pack thing if you see what i mean so.

Andrea:
The jugs of water being large stayed.

Alison:
Frozen all the way okay till.

Andrea:
The very end till.

Alison:
The last day there was ice To the last day of the tree.

Andrea:
Yeah, in the last one.

Alison:
Oh my gosh.

Andrea:
Yeah. So, obviously they were getting smaller and smaller because I was using them. Yeah. And then I also… Angled that we used the stuff that would be the worst the first there was a mini fridge where we got to so i unloaded one of the coolers into it but i really don’t think i would have needed to because the cool pack stayed or the cool that the jugs stayed frozen because they’re so big and they were packed tightly you know i had everything wedged in and then i was the only one who opened it and if anybody was getting anything out i was like hurry, so um now i get.

Alison:
It that the water was staying frozen okay so my little.

Andrea:
Tip to.

Alison:
Add to that is if you don’t have massive bottles of water or if you um have a smaller situation like we do what we have done sometimes is if on the way home we haven’t taken you know a professional call pack thing to put in the um case in this in the cool bag because we used a block of lard or something and then we’ve eaten all that lard but we want to take food back with us in the same cool bag sometimes what we will do is just go somewhere and buy a bag of frozen peas.

Andrea:
Oh you know simple put.

Alison:
That in the cool bag and then when we get home we’ve got all the food still cold and then we got some peas ready to eat too.

Andrea:
You know when when i was having kenton i did the same thing i did with the other babies i brought i bought frozen peas for ice packs right you want to have ice packs on hand yeah um and i bought like the cheapest ones because i was like i don’t know if i don’t know if i want to use these after it’s been on my butt right yeah and, and gary was like well you should get like the good peas why why would you get why would you even buy you know don’t contribute to the exactly you know to them and their stupid food systems, I’m like I didn’t think about that you know and then I never used them as ice packs and then I felt really dumb I was like oh I fed them to the chickens but I could have got peas I should have I should have bought real peas but oh well yeah it just means you’ve.

Alison:
Got to eat a lot of peas when you get back because generally they’re defrosted at that point and.

Andrea:
Then you’ve.

Alison:
Got like peas for the next three days.

Andrea:
Now this is on the printed menu if anybody downloads the menu um so you’ll see it there. But Allison, something to alluding back to what you said with your bread that you freeze before you go. I planned the dinner for the night we got back and the next day, because I knew it would be, well, like you said, you get back from a trip and, you know, we have animals and batteries and things we have to check on. And, you know, it’s all the unpacking and washing and hanging things up and stuff like that. So, So, I planned the dinners. Now, and I actually had a frozen dinner ready for us. We didn’t end up using it because we still brought home leftovers.

Alison:
Okay, yeah.

Andrea:
So, then I was frying up the bread because stale bread, when you fry it, it’s actually pretty good. So, I was toasting that on the stove and heating up leftover meat and we had cheese still and things like that. So, we didn’t have to worry about it. But I was planning, because do remember when you come home from the trip, you know, when you’re thinking about a trip, you think about yourself and you love yourself on that trip. And you’re like, yes, she’s going to have so much fun and I want her to have a good time and see all the sights. Well, love the you that’s coming home also. Be kind to her, too. In fact, be even nicer to her because she’ll be really tired. So, that’s my advice for the very end of the trip. And that is all I have for you on travel food.

Alison:
Wow. That’s a lot. Thank you ever so much. Really good episode. I’m glad. I mean, it seems quite apt, you know, because it is June. And so this will be great for this summer, but also great for future summers as well.

Andrea:
Oh, yes.

Alison:
Thank you.

Andrea:
Most definitely. Well, Alison, until next time.

Alison:
Yeah. Goodbye for now.

Andrea:
Bye.