Cooking on the road. First attempt = SUCCESS!

Hello friends! I write to you from the road. Right now we are driving through Indiana, heading south towards Kentucky. We’ve had a great start to this tour. It has seriously exceeded our expectations and we’ve seen God provide in really awesome ways.

I mentioned a few posts back that I bought a slow cooker for the car. Well, yesterday I put it to use for the first time. I’m trying to document what we eat on the road in an attempt to find out what works and what doesn’t as far as preparing food goes. So here’s the low down.

What I brought with me:
Oatmeal
brown sugar
cinnamon
black pepper
salt
rosemary
chili powder
brown rice
slow cooker
small cooler
walnuts
chicken broth
a small pur pitcher w/filter. We can get water from anywhere–gas stations, even bathrooms and filter it.

What I didn’t bring that I should have brought:
Plastic bowls, forks, knives, spoons (like the stuff you take to college for your dorm room)
tupperware (for lacto-fermenting the oatmeal, more on that later)
Ice packs for the cooler
A sharp knife

Thankfully, we’re headed home for a few days tomorrow so I can grab those things that I missed. We’re discovering that it’s actually pretty easy to eat relatively healthy and inexpensively on the road. Here’s what yesterday looked like:

Breakfast:
Oatmeal w/cinnamon & walnuts. We put the oatmeal in a cup with some water and microwaved it. Very simple and you could really do this anywhere. We stay with a lot of families or in guest houses at universities. They are always equipped with a microwave. If you’re staying in a hotel (and there isn’t a continental breakfast) I’m thinking you could find a microwave somewhere in if you asked. In addition to oatmeal, I’d been toying with the idea of instant coffee in an attempt to save the money we spend frequenting coffee shops while on the road. The idea of freeze dried instant coffee is really gross to me, so I was looking at stuff like Starbucks via (which is actually quite expensive.) We went to Whole Foods yesterday morning and discovered that you can buy Turkish ground coffee there. The Turkish grind is very fine and is actually what they use in instant coffee (like Starbucks via). So we bought some, asked for hot water and I now know how to make excellent coffee on the road without a pot and without spending $2 per cup. Yum!

Lunch:

On to the slow cooker! While we were at Whole Foods we bought a bag of baby carrots. These are already washed and peeled. We bought one sweet potato, and a small lamb roast. I think the key to making all of this work will be to shop at grocery stores that have a really nice meat section. We need to be able to buy small pieces of meat or one chicken breast at a time because we don’t have the refrigeration necessary to keep meat from going bad. So we checked out at the grocery store and went to our car. We drive a Honda Element, so we opened the back and used the bottom door as a sort of prep area. I put some rice and water in the bottom of the slow cooker, and added the carrots and the lamb. Tyler cut up the sweet potato (with a plastic knife from the salad bar at WF…what a feat!) and threw them in. We seasoned the food with salt, pepper, and a little chili powder.

The element has an extra 12 volt jack in the back, so we secured the slow cooker between our merch boxes, plugged it in, and flipped the power switch to on. Then we got in the car and began our drive to Indiana. We are trying to use the slow cooker primarily for lunches because most of the places we play provide us with dinner. I was a little worried that the food wouldn’t cook in time for lunch, but I was wrong! Three hours later the lamb was completely cooked through and the carrots and potatoes were tender. The rice was yummy too! We ate about half of the food, refrigerated the rest when we got to Indiana, and the plan today is to heat up leftovers in the crock beginning about an hour before we want to eat. The food should heat up nicely. I can’t wait to try new recipes!

Cooking on the road is working friends! I’ll keep you posted on my progress!