My family and I just returned from a much needed and very much appreciated week away. We live in the Piedmont of North Carolina, where it is very hot and humid in the summer and we escaped to one of our very favorite places, the mountains of our very own state. It’s amazing to me that we can travel just a few hours and experience completely different weather – and I’m super thankful that we can!
We love to hike and bike and just be outdoors as much as possible, but we definitely limit our outdoor activity in the summer because this mama does not enjoy the heat and humidity. So when we have a chance to get away where the air is cool and crisp, we do it!
Keeping in mind all the current restrictions in our state (limits on sizes of gatherings, mandatory masks in public, social distancing), we wanted to be able to get away, but knew that we did not want to have to rely on grocery stores or restaurants for our meals.
You can read more about our typical travel eating routine in this post (and others linked there), so this post will focus on dinners only. Frankly, because of my intermittent fasting routine, I don’t mess with breakfast, other than coffee, and lunch is always a mish-mash of picnic fare that I throw in the cooler before we head out the door for that day’s activities.
When I planned our meals for our week away, I knew that I would be traveling separately from my husband and son, which meant that my daughter and I would be doing all the heavy lifting. Consequently, I didn’t want lots and lots of things and I didn’t want a huge, over-stuffed cooler that I could not manage to haul up a couple flights of stairs. My meals were all delicious, satisfying for hungry hikers, easy and fast to prepare and required very simple ingredients for me to pack.
If you’re traveling now, during the Covid times, or later and simply like the idea of or need to prepare your own meals more often than not, I hope my meals will give you some ideas.
In this post, I’ll list our meals and show you pictures, and below, there will be a pdf document you can print out that lists all the food we brought along for these dinners, plus our breakfasts and lunches.
First day – after driving and hauling in all the luggage, food, and everything else we needed for the week, I knew I was not going to want to cook so I planned a salad for myself and my daughter enjoyed a grilled sandwich, some chips and watermelon.
My boys arrived from a weekend backpacking trip tired, wet and hungry! I prepared a very quick, but hearty dinner for them. We had quick trip chicken, rice and broccoli and cauliflower.
I told everybody what the meal choices were for the week and they all voted which one they wanted which night. The unanimous decision for day two was burgers. We had simple burgers with gluten free buns, tater tots, sweet potato tots (because you can never have too many tots) and a big pile of greens. I mixed up a recipe of balsamic vinaigrette before I left home, stored it in a mason jar and we ate that on our greens all week.
Next up, shrimp stir-fry. This was so simple, I think we’ll be eating this meal all the time! I dumped two bags of “stir fry vegetables” straight out of the freezer into my pan with a little avocado oil. Once they were cooked to my liking, I added about a pound of thawed, peeled and deveined shrimp, a little salt and pepper and stirred that around until the shrimp were done, which just took a couple minutes. While the veggies were cooking, I made my sauce by boiling together some coconut aminos, a little maple syrup, ground ginger and garlic powder to make a sauce. Once the shrimp were done, I poured the sauce over the top, mixed it all together and served it over some more white rice.
For our next dinner, we had spaghetti and salad. Super simple and yet still hearty and delicious. This was simply a pound of ground beef that I browned and added to a jar of marinara sauce. I had a few miscellaneous vegetables I brought from my crisper drawer at home that would have gone bad while we were away. I just sautéed those in a separate skillet, cooked a box of gluten free pasta and everyone had sauce with either pasta or vegetables or a little of both. Again, we had salad on the side.
Breakfast for dinner is always popular! We had pancakes made with my all purpose paleo baking mix, bacon and clementines for the fruit course.
And last, but definitely not least – pizza! Everybody loves pizza night, which is typically Friday in our house. The gang all voted to keep with that tradition even on vacation. More salad for our side dish.
Extras:
I brought half a watermelon from home (a huge one!). I cut it up the first day we arrived and everyone ate that all week long. I also baked a couple batches of cookies that served as dessert all week – both at “home” and for our picnic lunches. Conveniently, I had planned to make two batches of cookies and one child requested molasses gingerbread and the other requested monster cookies (recipe coming soon). My husband will eat any cookies that don’t eat him first, so he’s pretty easy to please. We all practiced a lot of self-restraint and managed to make these last until the very last night.
For breakfast, I made a batch of my mini quiches, and brought those frozen. My husband often makes grits to go with his eggs so I poured some in a baggie and brought that along. I also made a batch of pumpkin bread, bought one box of cereal and my family made their breakfasts from those items all week.
For lunch, we pack a cooler so we can eat wherever we happen to be when hunger strikes. I bring a bag with paper plates and napkins too so we can be a little civilized. Lunch foods are typically lunch meat, cheese, fruit, greens, carrots, apples, chips and cookies.
And there you have it! Our very simple meal plan for a week away when you want to eat good tasting and good quality food, but not spend all your time in the kitchen. Below you will find a printable PDF that lists all the food I packed, categorized by pantry, fridge and freezer. I’ll also include what I packed for breakfasts and lunches.
If you have your own favorite travel meals, please share them in the comments.