What have we been eating? (Florida Boating, Post 35)

Some of you are intrigued and curious about what we’ve been eating on our trip and how we were able to bring a whole month’s worth of food with us. I actually brought too much food, lol!

We had a small amount of refrigeration most of the time, all except for the 5 days on the boat. But while we were on the boat, we could leave our refrigerated items in the van refrigerator, powered by the solar panels on top of the van. Because of that, we could bring yogurt, cheese, rice milk, and eggs.

For the first part of the trip we had an electric burner, but it broke shortly after arriving in Florida. We also have a microwave in the van and in the vacation rental. In the boat we have a one-burner camp stove. We always had a way to heat food, and often had refrigeration.

What we didn’t bring: fresh meat, fresh vegetables and fruit that would bruise easily or spoil quickly. We did have apples for about the first half of the trip. We also had hard-boiled eggs for about the first half of the trip.

Breakfast choices included instant coffee, yogurt, dry cereal, granola & granola bars, dried fruit, instant oatmeal and grits. I like grits a lot – I eat them sweet at breakfast time and savory at dinner time. John could eat granola every day for every meal, lol. Even at home that’s his go-to.

Before our electric burner broke, we occasionally made eggs or pancakes from a mix. We keep cooking oil in the van supplies. We also could have made pancakes on the camp stove on the boat, but I don’t remember doing so.

Cooking eggs in the van:

For lunches we had snacks and sandwiches – bread, cheese, salami, pepperoni, jerky, crackers, nut butter, jam, hard boiled eggs and mixed nuts and other packaged snacks. If we had time we often cooked dinner food for lunch. We frequently eat our largest meal in the middle of the day.

Dinner was usually a rice or noodle bowl with canned chicken or tuna and canned vegetables, with various sauces or spices, including a couple of different kinds of hot sauce. Everything is better with sriracha, right? We had a variety of packaged toppings and sauces, plus spices.

This wasn’t all our spices, just the ones we liked to have out handy. We also had more in the bin.

In the Florida humidity the garlic salt caked so hard that I couldn’t even get it out with a knife. That doesn’t happen in the desert!

Wet food in packets that don’t need refrigeration is really handy to have, but I found it hard to find ones that we liked. This Indian food wasn’t bad.

I was less enthused with these seasoning packets.

I liked my own spices better and won’t buy these seasoning packets again.

This broth doesn’t need refrigerated until it’s open. It travels well except it’s heavy. So I wouldn’t fly with it, but since we drove out, we brought a couple of these along.

These rice packets are handy – the rice is fully cooked.

Here is an example of something I enjoyed:

It’s rice with chicken, acorn squash and seaweed. Acorn squash travels really well if you don’t mind the weight and bulk. It lasts a long time without refrigeration and is sturdy – you can jam it into the bottom of a bag and not worry about it.

Acorn squash also cooks up easily in a microwave. I cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. I actually salt and microwave the seeds and eat them too – I really like them. But some people throw the seeds away, so that’s ok too. They’re better toasted in the oven, but I was surprised how well they microwaved.

The squash microwaves easily. I cut the squash in quarters and only cook one at a time, or as needed. They only take 2 minutes in the microwave. Then I scrape the squash off the rind after it’s cooked. The remaining quarters refrigerate fine for several days. Squash is versatile because you can eat it sweet with sugar and cinnamon, or unsweetened in soups and stews.

My rice bowl probably sounds bad to you if you don’t like seaweed, but I love seaweed and it travels very well. I buy dried wakame. It’s lightweight, indestructible, lasts forever, and a tiny bit goes a really long way. This one ziplock bag will make many, many meals.

Here’s what it looks like dried – this is enough for a whole bowl of seaweed.

Each of those tiny pieces expands to this big:

If it were just me, I’d eat seaweed every day and not even bother with canned vegetables at all. Unfortunately, John isn’t a seaweed fan. Canned vegetables for him!

The rice bowls I ate on this trip are very similar to other rice bowls I frequently enjoy on a regular day at home, so it wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Here’s one I made at home that is broth, black rice, seaweed and panfried fish. The only difference on our trip is I didn’t have frozen fish, and used canned chicken instead.

I was worried about a lack of fresh vegetables so I also bought powdered greens for the trip. It was awful. I didn’t realize it was sweetened and I put it into a bowl of stew! Ugh! Apparently it was sweetened in order to put it into smoothies. Yuck, and I hate stevia. Clearly, I didn’t do a good enough job reading the ingredients.

The protein powder wasn’t much better. I’ve since realized that the protein powder is ok when added to baked goods, but it’s not for soups and stews! I won’t buy these again.

Next time I’m going to make my own dried vegetables. I already bake kale until dry and crispy – which is very yummy and would travel well.

Here’s how to make crispy kale: Buy the bundles with full leaves (not the bags of chopped kale), so you can easily remove the stems. Stems don’t dry well. You can keep them and sauté them for dinner if you want, they’re perfectly fine cooked.

After removing the stems, chop the kale and put it into a plastic bag. Pour a little olive oil in the bag with the kale and shake it around, coating the kale. You can add a little salt too. Spread the oiled kale out on a cookie sheet and bake for awhile until completely crispy. I don’t remember what temperature or how long. I just wing it. Trust me, it’s easy.

I also have a food dehydrator that should work with vegetables. So far I’ve only used it for fruit, but I’m looking forward to experimenting with drying some vegetables for our next trip!

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