ROAD TRIP: FOOD PLANNING | my momma heart

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Remember that handy-dandy calendar I made for planning out our trip? I kept it on the fridge for months so I could continue to refer back to it as we were planning all the little details. I pulled it down to help with meal planning. I had three planning options for each meal: on the road (meaning sandwiches or other easy meals we could make from our cooler), camp meals, and restaurants/hotels. I looked at the week of travel and broke each day into the three main meals: breakfast, lunch, supper. I knew I’d need snacks but I planned for that later. For each day I wrote what kind of meal each would be; on the road, camp, or restaurant. Then I looked at how I’d manage the cooler situation. I knew there were some items that I was making or bringing from home that would need to be cooled and I worried about keeping everything at a safe temp AND the room we had in our cooler. I was weighing my options and realized that I could order groceries ahead of time at each location. WHAT? I don’t know, people, sometimes I surprise myself. I already had a ClickList account, so I hopped on it and checked locations. Boom. Bozeman had a store. I looked for locations in South Dakota to do this for the second leg of our trip and didn’t come up with anything that would really work, so I made a list of the places we could stop to grab groceries before we got to camp.

Once I knew how many meals I needed for each stop, I got to planning the meals. We bought a grill so it would make things a little easier in this department. Seriously, it was a lifesaver. I love a good foil packet meal but, man, cooking over a campfire takes forever and with all the adventuring we filled our days with, we just wouldn’t have time for it. I planned on taking our grill, two cast iron skillets, and a container filled with camp kitchen supplies. I tried to keep food planning pretty simple and make things I knew the boys would like. I didn’t want to try something new on a grill we hadn’t used yet and have it be a flop with 3 hungry boys (and a hangry husband). Here’s what I came up with:

Breakfasts:

Buttermilk protein pancakes / sausage or bacon / scrambled eggs / fruit
- Before we left, I made my own buttermilk protein pancakes and poured the batter into gallon ziplock freezer bags. I froze them FLAT and tossed them in the cooler the morning we left. When it was time to cook, I just snipped the bottom corner and squeezed it into my shallow skillet to make one giant pancake. To flip the pancake, I cut it into four wedges and flipped individually. These turned out AMAZINGLY and my kids loved having a hot meal.
- Before we left, I scrambled 30 eggs, added some cream, and kept them in a container that I could easily pour. I found the container at Dollar Tree when I was shopping for our camp kitchen supplies.
- I cooked eggs and meat in my large skillet.
- We bought pre-cut fruit to make things easy.
Croissant breakfast sandwiches with scrambled eggs, sausage or bacon, and cheese / fruit
- I grabbed croissants at Costco before we left home. We used them for sandwiches on the road and for yummy breakfast sandwiches. These crisped up amazingly in the skillet and when the weather was 27 degrees in the morning, these felt good in our hands, and tummies. These are pretty self-explanatory, but we cooked the scrambled eggs and meat, put it on the warmed-up croissant and topped with cheese.
Cereal and milk / yogurt and granola / fruit
- We didn’t want to cook breakfast in Yellowstone before we headed out for a day of driving, so we stuck with cold breakfast for our last day. It was less to clean and pack up and worked well.

Lunches:

For the guys, on the road lunches consisted of some variety of bread (croissant, tortilla, bread, pita) and sandwich toppings (meat, cheese, lettuce, ranch, peanut butter & jelly), and one of the million snacks we brought (check those out below). We ended up with all lunches either on the road or at restaurants. Who wants to head back to camp when you are spending a day out adventuring?

Dinners:

Cheeseburgers
Brats or hot dogs
Pita pizzas (pitas topped with sauce, cheese, and other pizza toppings and then grilled)
Veggies: my kids love charred brocolli with garlic and parmesan and, of course, baby carrots

Meal Sides:

Grilled veggies
Pre-cut fruit
Baked beans
Any of the below

On the Road Snacks:

Yogurt sticks (we love Simply Gogurt)
Cheese sticks (mozzarella, Tillamook cheddar cheese squares)
Pre-cut fruit
Applesauce pouches
Individual Annie’s snacks
Granola bars / protein bars
“Energy Bites” For this trip, one batch was with chocolate chips and the other was pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries.
Homemade Lunchables: some type of cracker with meat, cheese, and sometimes a thinly sliced veggie such as red pepper or cucumber (pepperoni and Colby Jack was a favorite!). We used Ritz and Pretzel Chips but you could use whatever your family likes.
Hedgehog cups (as we named them): Single-serve cups of peanut butter with baby carrots. These work anywhere but it was great for in the car.
Apples and peanut butter. To make them a treat instead of a snack, sprinkle some mini chocolate chips in there.

After deciding on meals and assigning them a day, it was a just a matter of making 3 lists: foods that I was making/buying at home, groceries for pick up in Bozeman, and a list of groceries to grab before getting to our camp at Custer State Park. I made energy bites, pancakes, and scrambled the eggs. I bought a bunch of the single-serve peanut butter cups, some Annie’s snacks, and applesauce before we left. I placed an order for pick-up in Bozeman a few days in advance and then the morning we headed into Yellowstone, we just swung by the store and picked the order. Some of our on the road lunches became restaurant stops but for the most part we stuck to the plan.

What meals have you found work best for drives? What about camp meals?