Oh-So-Portable Pesto and Other Travel Food

When we go camping or on vacation we bring our own food.  There are a number of reason for this.  One, its easier, in my mind, to bring food than to have to find it in an unfamiliar place.  Two, its cheaper than eating out or buying food on the fly.  We travel a lot and it would get expensive!  Three, I am able to eat the organic foods I prefer to.  Four, as a mostly-vegan and a rather picky eater its just easier than reading labels or making special requests of my hosts and/or restaurant staff.

So what do we eat on the road?  I've been asked that more than once.   The answer is lots of things, but there are some things that tend to make up the bulk of it.

Pizza (probably our most frequent travel food.  You can put anything on it and it doesn't require reheating, a plate, or utensils)
Pasta with pesto
Curries, usually over rice or quinoa
Stir-fry (a wide variety)
Soups/stews (vegetable, tomato, chili, carrot, chuckwagon, corn, potato, etc)
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Quesadillas, either cheese or hummus
Veggie breakfast wraps (sauteed vegetables in a tortilla)
Breakfast potatoes (cubed potatoes fried with onions, peppers, etc)
Fried Tofu
Mashed Potatoes
Pancakes
Carrots with peanut butter
Oatmeal
Chips and salsa or hummus
Dried fruit
Nuts
Granola
Risotto
Spiced lentils with rice (which we affectionately call gruel because while quick and filling it is not prety)
Biscuits and gravy

We have a single burner camp stove that runs off of a small propane tank.  We have one pot and one frying pan.  We bring our round wooden cutting board which also doubles as a plate and a lid for the frying pan.  We do tend to eat a lot right out of the pot to save on dishes, since its just the two of us mostly, but we also have two bowls each and the accompanying spoon and fork.  We bring a serrated knife, butter knife, and spatula.  And a thermos which I fill with tea on the first evening of a trip and lasts me through the night and into the next day.  Perfect on cold mornings as there is no waiting for water to boil and tea to steep.  We pack a table cloth.

We tend to precook most things so that at camp we just have to heat it up.   This is especially true of potatoes.  They take forever to cook on a camp stove so we always precook them.  We will saute up raw onions and peppers in the country.  Once Matt breaded and fried eggplant in the forest.  Another time he ambitiously built a camp oven and baked biscuits.  As a general rule though, we precook.  Its just faster and easier.  (And when I get hungry while backpacking it usually attacks with a vengeance and quick food is a must!)

We stock our cooler with homemade block ice and pint and quart jars of precooked meals.  Curry in one jar.  Breakfast potatoes in another.  Chopped onions and peppers in a third.  A small jar containing pesto.  My jar of hot sauce.  A tub of Earth Balance margarine.  Sometimes a jar of apple juice.  And so on.  Then we will also have the dry food bag where we will have peanut butter, tea, spices, bread or biscuits, nuts, and the like.

And it works for us.  With a little planning we're able to travel on the cheap and have good quality food immediately available when we want it which means we can have greater flexibility in our travels--driving or hiking until the mood to stop and eat strikes us. 

Home-cooked food is right at home on the road as well as in the kitchen.  And I am too used to eating this good to settle for anything less.