Cooking and Shopping on the road - Camping 2023 (and 2024)

SueF and I just returned from 13 days roaming Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and a bit of Kentucky towing a trailer she built from a cargo carrier. She did some serious woodwork here, it's all her handiwork except for the electrical systems which I did.


It's got a queen-size bed in the front along with lots of storage, and a kitchen in the back. 100W of solar and an 88AH AGM battery provided all the electric we needed.

The kitchen includes a two-burner propane stove, lights, a fan to blow cooking fumes in my face, a big slide-out cooler, a 7-gallon water jug and lots more storage. We kept a second small cooler with ice in a plastic bottle, in the car for produce, eggs -- things we don't want frozen at all. We started with frozen meats placed near a gallon milk jug filled with ice: a chicken breast, ground beef, breakfast sausage, and a pair of burger patties. We also cleaned out the garden, taking several tomatoes, jalapenos and a whole bunch of shishitos which were put into a number of dishes. On the back door is a spice rack with 12 small bottles with our most-used spices (no mixtures).

We cooked for ourselves all but two nights and all but one breakfast (lunches were mainly sandwiches). I posted on the "What are you cooking for dinner" a few of the dishes we made. While we stocked well, we forgot a few things: no soy sauce made a Chinese stir-fry a little weird (a little boullion and peanut butter worked OK as a sub), and no ginger isn't a deal-killer but is unusual for Indian. The burners are a little small, so cooking pasta and a sauce at once is a bit tricky.



The only real disadvantage to doing the cooking and cleaning is it takes time -- with October sunsets between 7 and 6:30PM, that eats a chunk of the daylight hours for hiking, etc. But after the first meal or two we got a rhythm for using the space we had together. Sue did a little baking over coals (scones and cornbread), but most of it was cast iron griddle, fry pan, or a non-stick pan. Breakfasts were mostly toast (peanut butter, Merkt's cheese spread) -- a camp toaster over the gas burner works pretty well.

Restocking was a bit more of a pain: after the first week, the meat was gone (we generally chose the most-thawed item each day). A lot of the small towns don't even have a traditional supermarket. A Sav-A-Lot in Bonne Terre MO (which has a very cool underground lake in a former lead mine -- the town, not the Sav-A-Lot) got us some more produce (lettuce, mushrooms, red bell pepper) but protein is a problem: they only have pre-packaged stuff all around $6 or 4 for $20, but too much for a two-person meal. All we ended up getting there was a sealed-package polish sausage (waaaaay below quality we're used to: flavored OK, but kinda spongy).

A couple days later we hit a Walmart for a few supplies, including ginger in a squeeze tube (used for the stir fry, I wish we'd realized we hadn't packed soy sauce at that time), avocado, etc.. Their meat is very similar to Sav-A-Lot: mostly family-size packages. A flatiron steak turned out to be a good bet: cut in half, part for the stir-fry, part for philly cheesesteaks.

The last dinner was sort of a clean-out-the-cooler night: cheese, avocado, tortillas, peppers made quesadillas, some salsa and hopefully not too questionable sour cream, the last few corn chips (supplemented with the last few pita chips).

We're planning a longer trip next year, and we know more than we did this time about what to stock. Meal planning will still be tricky after the first week -- we may have to pre-cook meat so it will last longer.

That is fucking bad-ass! So cool. I could never even dream of making a trip like that.

Do you think you'll go at roughly the same time of year in 2024 or will it be while there's more daylight?

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:Do you think you'll go at roughly the same time of year in 2024 or will it be while there's more daylight?

=R=

Both: it's likely to be a couple months on the road

Cool stuff! Is the thing behind the burners with a display a 120v inverter? Would you have enough juice to run a small induction burner?

tjr wrote:Cool stuff! Is the thing behind the burners with a display a 120v inverter? Would you have enough juice to run a small induction burner?

No inverter (yet). Most campsites have 120v power, I can plug the trailer in to charge the battery, and there are USB, 12V, and AC outlets in the headboard, shelf at the foot of the bed, and kitchen. The kitchen panel also has a power monitor so I know the load and charge level.

JoelF wrote:Most campsites have 120v power...

Camping's come a looonnnggg way since my last camping trip. With 120 power you could definitely consider an induction burner, and a thermoelectric cooler to supplement the ice supply too. Among other benefits, induction's safer and generates a little less waste heat in the kitchen (benefit on a hot day, not so great when it's chilly.) Does require slightly heavier pots, though, if you're short on storage.

In any event, that's a darn nice camper.

tjr wrote:

JoelF wrote:Most campsites have 120v power...

Camping's come a looonnnggg way since my last camping trip. With 120 power you could definitely consider an induction burner, and a thermoelectric cooler to supplement the ice supply too...

In any event, that's a darn nice camper.

Well, not all campsites, but most of the ones I can back a small trailer into. But we never plugged in, and we expect on future trips we'll occasionally be off grid entirely.

However, the power controller in the trailer only handles 15A circuits, I don't remember if my induction burner is under that. I could plug the induction burner into the post directly.

Refrigeration would be more useful if we were staying in one place, less so as we keep moving, unless we got a bigger battery and a second solar panel. Which we'll consider as battery and solar prices keep coming down

Thank you for the compliments, SueF put a lot of work into this.

Joel,

This is absolutely amazing. I’m incredibly impressed. You have me rethinking the next 10 years of my life.

Did you two design and create this all yourself or did you have any templates or instructions to go on?

Darren72 wrote:Joel,
Did you two design and create this all yourself or did you have any templates or instructions to go on?

The design is all Sue, inspired by teardrop trailers but scaled up for my stature built into a 5x10-foot cargo trailer ordered with RV doors. A lot of YouTube videos were used for cabinet techniques, installing the fan, etc. The first thing she did was tear out everything to put in insulation, marine-grade, epoxied plywood for the subfloor, and Baltic birch plywood for everything else.

The artwork was created by a friend of ours, Nick Collum, scaled up to a vinyl decal. It's based on a photo from the 50s of Sue's late mother on a scooter touring Europe.

JoelF wrote:

Darren72 wrote:Joel,
Did you two design and create this all yourself or did you have any templates or instructions to go on?

The design is all Sue, inspired by teardrop trailers but scaled up for my stature built into a 5x10-foot cargo trailer ordered with RV doors. A lot of YouTube videos were used for cabinet techniques, installing the fan, etc. The first thing she did was tear out everything to put in insulation, marine-grade, epoxied plywood for the subfloor, and Baltic birch plywood for everything else.

The artwork was created by a friend of ours, Nick Collum, scaled up to a vinyl decal. It's based on a photo from the 50s of Sue's late mother on a scooter touring Europe.

Really cool and I especially love the artwork.

Hi,

Mom and I had pandemic related activities watching people living in vans, converted buses and box trucks. Your variant is one I had not encountered, though I did not look for it, either.

Most of the people have used propane for cooking with not too many opting for induction burners. Just about everyone brought coffee makers with many commenting on how they sucked electricity.

You both have high level camping skills, which is an asset in making this livable. I will guess Sue used a Dutch oven for baking.

Sue F did a super job making this project really work and very stylish. Nice to have the electrical installation skills in-house.

Few of us could tackled such a job successfully, it is so admired.

Regards,
Cathy2

JoelF a tip of the hat to both you and Sue. Really nice!

It's 2024 and we're on another trip, this one much longer headed west. It's been 8 days, with only two lunches and one dinner eaten at restaurants (tonight is likely another). As of this morning we hit a dreadful milestone: the last of the garden veggies from home had to be tossed. We started with cherry and one full size tomatoes, a couple cucumbers, two small eggplant, and jalapeno peppers.

We've got two coolers: one with just a little ice to stop produce, peanut butter, chocolate, etc. from spilling, the other with lots of ice for meat and dairy.

More later.

So we started with frozen meats: ground beef, pork chops, some chicken tenders, Polish sausage. When we reached our first campsite, they were all still frozen.

So night 1 was a Knorr creamy garlic pasta, with sauteed mushrooms, eggplant, tomato, garlic and onion, and some diced salami. The Knorr products are good for camping because they don't need to be drained.

Night 2 the chicken had thawed, so after cooking down some onion, added diced chicken, peppers, garlic, ginger and tomatoes, cumin, coriander, tumeric and a little water and let it simmer. At the end added garam masala, and some whole-milk yogurt. Some Uncle Ben's converted rice we brought that had been in our pantry a while apparently converted back - even with extra cooking time the rice was still wet and a little tough.

For night 3, brown a half pound of ground beef plus some onions, garden cherry tomatoes and jalapeno, and bell pepper, garlic, cumin, oregano, chili powder, a little water; simmer until dry and it's tacos. We had shredded cheese, sour cream, flour tortillas and salsa.

Night 4: pork chops fried up on a cast iron skillet, plus scratch biscuits and salad.

Night 5 was our anniversary, went out for burgers.

Night 6: Polish sausage and onions, more salad.

Night 7: went shopping, bought some pork stir fry as it was the smallest package of meat, and Lloyd's pulled beef in sauce, and some ravioli. The pork was sauteed kinda teriyaki/bulgogi with onion, garlic, ginger,bell pepper and the rest of the eggplant, glazed with water, brown sugar, chili powder, sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce. Another Knorr packet made rice with teriyaki flavors. Pretty good meal.

Night 8: Sue made cornbread in the Dutch oven, I made salad and heated up the Lloyd's BBQ beef. Not buying that again. If the cornbread hadn't been so wonderful, or I hadn't brought any Marie Sharp's, it would have been inedible.

We did another quick grocery trip today, got some ground beef and polish sausage. We've got canned chicken, pouches of tuna and salmon, pasta, eggs, more salami, and we're heading for six nights without access to shops.

Grocery shopping for camping is a pain: finding servings for two eating modest portions in a meat department is tough. Four would be easy, and if we want to shop Walmart we'd better be feeding an army.

We've done shopping a few times now on this trip just entering its fourth week. Great meats are still a pain, but a Boise Albertsons - almost a clone of Jewel, understandably - at least had a meat counter where we could buy a single chicken breast, a couple tail-end pork loin chops, a half pound of ground beef.

Other stores we've found the only things in single meal for two packages are those with the most handling: stir-fry pork or chicken strips, cube steak, etc.

But we've done tacos, pasta, omelets, curry, a close match to Kung Pao (no green onions, pecans instead of peanuts), I'm actually losing weight (more than 10lbs in 3 weeks), and not too much junk in our diet.

A little adventurous tonight, tried and mostly succeeded with thai curry. We had packed coconut milk, and somewhere along the line bought an overpriced little bottle of red boat fish sauce.

I made a curry paste by grating four long Fly by Jing Sichuan dried chiles (which I'd thrown into our food bin on a whim) and adding hot water, one lemon's zest (no lemongrass), ginger, garlic, coriander powder, a big dash of tumeric,and a bit of my favorite powdered chili.

Sizzled that in oil, added half a can of coconut milk; when that was boiling added sliced (raw) chicken breast, about 1/4 of an onion, 1/3 of a bell pepper, and a small can of mushrooms (drained). Let that cook until the chicken was mostly done, then seasoned with the fish sauce, half a lemon's juice, a couple teaspoons of brown sugar, a tablespoon or so of Skippy. Let that simmer for a while, added a bit of water and half a package of Uncle Ben's instant brown rice (the whole pack would have worked but it was looking like a lot of food).

Overall not bad. Galangal and lemongrass would have been better and I think I could have used less lemon zest. Plenty spicy (maybe one less pepper), smelled right, happy filled belies.

Also tonight, yellow cake with chocolate chips (and the other half can of coconut milk) done in the Dutch oven over coals, this was the first campsite in a month where we could use charcoal because of fire risk. We're waiting for it to cool off now.

(Later) Oh yeah that cake is good. I'll let Sue provide the recipe.

Tonight was an experiment in pizza.

Boboli crust, shredded mozz/provolone blend, pepperoni, jarred pimento. Sauce was from a small can of tomato sauce, about 1/4 cup finely diced onion sauteed in olive oil, cooked down until thickened, flavored with dried basil, oregano, garlic powder, black and red pepper, and a dash of Red Boat.

Cooking was the experimental part. Originally when we bought the crust, we thought we'd do it over coals, but only one campground in the last week has permitted open fires. So we heated a non-stick pan with a film of olive oil on low, put the pizza in, occasionally drizzling a tablespoon of water in to help melt the cheese, slowly turning up the heat as it became obvious I want going to char it.

Crust had a nice crunch, cheese could have been gooeyer, but acceptable.

Second pizza: the Boboli crust had gotten a little wet in the cooler, but I think it improved the final result - had more time to melt cheese in the pan without burning the crust. Canned mushrooms worked nicely along with the mix of salami and pepperoni.

Only took a few photos on this trip related to cooking and shopping:
Tacos


The Weinermobile showed up at an Albertson's in Boise


Teriyaki Pork Chops, Griddled Biscuits, Seared Brussel Sprouts