RV Meal Planning Tips and Tricks | Ep. 25

Join Melina as she dives into this really yummy episode on successful meal planning and food prep while Rving. We've taken all the questions we've received from listeners who've reached out to ask everything from how we plan menus, to shopping and keeping food cold when driving. 

All the questions you wanted to know about eating on the road are rounded up here with our best advice. We'll also highlight the staple meals our family can't live without.

Let's dig in!

Transcript

0 (5s):
Hi, everyone.

1 (6s):
Welcome to episode 25 of the RV Canucks podcast. It's Melina. Dan's away. So I'm flying solo on today's episode. If you're new to the show. Welcome. I hope that hearing just me today, alone in a room talking to nobody, doesn't turn you completely off because I am normally joined by my much more interesting and charming husband, Dan. However, he should be back for next episode in two weeks and together with our teen and tween, we are the RV Canucks, a Wiley band of Canadian part-time RV peers who traverse our way around North America from our home base in Southern Ontario.

1 (46s):
And today we've got a really great episode in store because it's all about food. More specifically, we've taken all of the questions we've received from listeners. Who've reached out to ask us about how we handle meal, prep, planning, food storage, et cetera, while camping in our trailer. So if you haven't connected on social media, we'd love you to join us on Facebook and Instagram at RV connects, that's R-V-C-A-N-U-C-K-S. Alternatively, you can always email us as well at hello@rvcanucks.com, which is the website address where you'll also find our blog. If you're loving the show, we'd love it. If you guys gave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts, as that helps us be more visible to other people like you, who want to hear our stories, tips, tricks, campground reviews, and all of that jazz.

1 (1m 31s):
And if there's an episode that really resonated with you or two or three, go ahead and share that from our blog to your own social media channels, we'd really, really love it. And with that plug aside, let's dig in. We rounded up 10 questions that cover most aspects of how we plan store prep and cook our meals while on the road. And hopefully you'll find some of these tips helpful. Also, if you do something different than what I'm about to share here, reach out and let us know. We'll mention it on a future episode because we're always looking for new hacks to make life easier on the road. So question number one that we've received and probably one of the more common ones is, do you have a standard grocery list?

1 (2m 10s):
If so, what's on it. While we have stable items, we bring on every trip like eggs, bacon, cheese, milk, margarine, et cetera. Our grocery list tends to change based on what meals we've planned for the trip. So everything tends to begin and end with the meal plan we've created and we've kind of come up with a pretty efficient system to make sure nothing gets left behind. So first what we do is we sit down and we list the days that we'll be away and we break those down into breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then we'll cross off certain meals that we know we're not going to need, depending on how we're traveling. For instance, on episode eight, we talked about how to cover more miles on your road trip. And one of the tips was if you're leaving after work, call ahead a town or two ahead and pick up a pizza along the way to eat while driving.

1 (2m 57s):
So we often do that if we have to take off after work or we can't leave until somebody gets home from school, et cetera, and we have a ways to go. So on the days we drive home, we tend not to also plan breakfast or lunch because that tends to be a free for all for whatever's left in the fridge. Somebody might want toast. Somebody might have leftover fruit and yogurt or whatever's left. So starting out the trip plan by crossing off meals, we don't need has really helped us from overpacking. And we've just kind of learned that from trial and error, I guess over the years, we also make a habit of not scheduling a lot of lunches. So we often, when we schedule them, we tend not to eat them because we're out and about. Or we just grab some snacks for lunch or we'll just pack up whatever's handy and put it in a backpack.

1 (3m 41s):
If we're out and about, you know, we'll grab like crackers, cheese and fruit or something, which would we, we tend to make lunches from what we already have in the fridge and in the cupboards anyway. So we found that just planning an extra meal for lunch was just something that never tended to get eaten, or we weren't even at the trailer or nobody was hungry for it, et cetera. So we tend not to plan a lot of lunches, maybe one or two on a trip and the rest we just kind of grab and go throughout the day. Once our meal list is complete, we draw a column down in the middle of a piece of paper and we list all the ingredients. We need to make our chosen meals. So on one side we write down items we need from the store. And on the other side of the columns, we write down items we need, but we can bring from home.

1 (4m 23s):
Then we just go and do our shopping. We keep plastic grocery bins or grocery totes out on the counter or in the kitchen. And we keep all the non-perishables we need, and we check them off the list and put them in the bin. And that bin goes right in the RV. And then for the cold items, we check them off the list as we bag them. And then we put them in the fridge, in their bags. So you, all you have to do is grab the bag, put it in the fridge and you're go, you're good to hit the road. So all of that kind of ties in with the next question, which is, do you just raise your own fridge to bring stuff with you, which is a great question. And the answer to this is it depends as a general rule. If we're going out for a weekend trip or if we're going for a week or two within Canada, we'll generally take condiments from home.

1 (5m 8s):
So things like ketchup, mustard, pickles, really important things like Bailey's Irish cream for my hot chocolate at night. You know, the important stuff. If we have a bag of marshmallows or a big container of hot chocolate or a container of Jif, peanut butter, I tend to pack those. So we don't end up with double of everything when we get home. So there are a few exceptions, good example of that is butter. So at home we love butter. We prefer it over margarine, but keeping butter on an RV counter in the middle of summer is not really safe when it's kind of gross and trying to spread cold butter on anything makes me kind of ragey. So we tend to get a tub of margarine because it's just easier.

1 (5m 51s):
So some things like milk, we don't take with us. We tend to just drink it all up before we leave home. And the reason is, and for our American listeners and those elsewhere in Canada who have far surpassed Ontario in this regard, feel free to laugh at us because in Ontario we still have bagged milk. And I grew up on the West coast and I think I was like nine years old when they stopped doing bag milk and they went to jugs. But anyway, I digress the bagged milk. Isn't great for an RV fridge because you put the bag in like the little container and you snip the corner of the bag to open it. And if it's jostling around in an RV fridge and you've got it open, it's going to spill everywhere. And I just kind of don't want to deal with filling up a larger container with a lid with milk, because it takes up too much space.

1 (6m 36s):
And we tend to go through a lot of milk on the trip. So I don't want to have to refill the container I've originally brought from home, et cetera. So we tend to buy like a two liter carton of milk. So in the U S we would have like a half gallon jug because it fits nicely in the fridge. It doesn't spill, and it's easy to replace at pretty much every corner store you will ever pass when you're on the road. So it's, it's something that's really easy to replace. We do have seasonal staples that I tend to buy doubles of though. And we keep those in the RV because we use them a lot at home and on the road. And they're pretty versatile. The things we tend to buy devils I've and keeping the RV are things like olive oil, Pam cooking spray.

1 (7m 17s):
I keep salt and pepper paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, chicken broth, mix, balsamic, vinegar, chili powder, red pepper flakes, guacamole, seasoning, and cinnamon. So that's a pretty basic list of spices, but it's so versatile. You can put them in everything and make anything taste great with them. So we tend to stick to those and just kind of pick meals we can make with those spices. So question three, we received is asking if, if we pack differently or if we plan differently for weekend versus one to two week plus trips. And that's also an excellent question. And we definitely do, because we bring so much less for a weekend trip that it all tends to fit in the fridge nicely.

1 (8m 4s):
So if we're going away for a week or more, we tend to freeze our meat and we pack it in the freezer to allow more room for fresh fruit and veggies. We only take the meat out that we need for the next day and just let it throw on the fridge. And we deal with the meat portion, like one by one, but the meal planning principles tend to say the same, except that we use box lunches when we're traveling on the road. And if you want to know exactly how I put box lunches together and how we eat them on the road, have a listen, go back and have a listen to episode eight, because that explains that in a lot of detail. So question four, do you have go-to meals? You always make, yeah, we do.

1 (8m 44s):
We have all kinds of family favorites, but the trick is to have a small enough selection that it becomes tradition to eat some of them. And you need to have a large enough selection that you can through each trip without becoming bored with your food. So, since Dan and I were tending, when we were dating, our thing was like, we would, we would arrive at the campsite. We would set up our tent and we would cook up stag chili, like a canned chili with garlic toast. And that was like our rival night set up meal, always because it was easy to heat up. It would warm us up before getting in the tent for the night. And it was just something that, that became a tradition that we continue today. Although Dan now nowadays tends to make his own famous chili at the campsite, but other favorites, which you may have heard us talking about.

1 (9m 31s):
And some of which w you can find recipes for on the blog are things like we make steak and potatoes a lot, any packet meals. So like sausage, chicken, veg potatoes in foil packs, and we cook them over. The fire are always, always ahead. Burgers or Turkey burgers. Dan's famous goat, cheese pizza, tortellini soup. I'm not chose, or Paragi nachos are always on the list for us, something simple, just like tuna sandwiches and chips. Like nobody can get enough of it. Or if I have enough eggs, I might boil those up and make egg salad sandwiches. And we'll eat those with a bag of chips for lunch, hot dogs, pie, irons, classic bacon, and eggs. You can't really go wrong with bacon and eggs. And a couple of traditions for our family is muffins and pasta salad, both of which bring us to the next question.

1 (10m 15s):
Number five, which is, do you prep any food before you go before you leave on your trip? So we do, but we only do this selectively. So one of the things that we love about RV and camping in general is that we have the time to make cooking and event. So we kind of feel like camping over the fire is a time honored tradition and taking the time to do that at the site is relaxing to us. And it allows us all kinds of time to just hang out and talk to each other while we're doing it. But that said, there are a few things which are a whole lot easier to prep at home. And lettuce is one for me. So generally we eat salad a lot while camping and we'll use lettuce for a lot of other meals.

1 (10m 56s):
And I don't love bagged salad. I don't love the taste of the pre-bagged salad. It tends to have recalls a lot. And I just like a nice, fresh bit of lettuce if I'm going to make a salad. So I'll usually buy a pack of say, romaine lettuce or something, and I'll wash it and spin it at home. And I'll just put it, chop it up and put it in a large Ziploc bag with a sheet of paper towel put in, and that kind of helps control the moisture and keep it crisp. So it's usable for the whole trip. It's easy to grab some out, to put on top of a burger to put it in a wrap or make a salad with another one that I pre prep before we leave home tends to be watermelon because they're huge, they're messy. And I've had more than my share of ant problems when I tend to cut the watermelon at the site at the picnic table, and we don't have enough counter space to do all of that inside the RV.

1 (11m 42s):
So I just dice it up. I stick it in a rectangular container that just fits perfectly in the RV fridge and off we go. So the last two that I mentioned in our family favorites list is muffins and pasta salad. So the salad is a massive tradition for us while camping. And I tend to use every vegetable imaginable inside my past to sell. So I just don't want all of that time cutting and chopping and washing, et cetera at the campsite. So I tend to make that the night before we leave, which works out well, because if we have a long trip, it's a whole lot easier to pull into a rest, stop dish out, some pasta salad and fruit or something, and eat that picnic style than it is to eat Truckstop food, or try to find a place to stop that could accommodate 50 feet of truck and trailer.

1 (12m 29s):
And it makes it a whole lot healthier, I guess. And the same goes for chopping vegetables to snack on. I sometimes will do that and stick that in the fridge. So it's easy to grab on the road and muffins. So finally muffins, it's been a tradition to bake muffins before we leave and take them with us. Now, before that makes me sound like Betty Crocker, like this is the muffin, the Quaker muffin mix, you know, that I would eat as a kid. And you just add water only you pour the bed like half of the bag, we'll make, you know, 12 muffins and I'll make a pan of orphans and stick them into the RV, but they actually help in a pinch. They're great snacks. Sometimes we'll make them in many, many form mini muffins and we'll just, we'll stick them in the RV. They're perfect for breakfast.

1 (13m 10s):
If somebody, you know, can't wait until dinner, cause they're hungry and need a snack. They're just great to pop and eat on the go. So question six, what prep goes into the fridge before each meal? So generally not much at the camp site. I tend to prep as we need it, but for things like peppers, carrots, like if I know I'm going to need something for more than one meal, for example, like onions, if we're putting it in Chile, and I know that I'm going to need it a few days later for nachos or something, I'll just dice it all and put it in a container to make it easier. Same with bacon, we'll cook an entire pack or two during the first breakfast. And then we'll use that and heat it up through the week for like BLTs, put it in Caesar salad or for future breakfasts.

1 (13m 50s):
And I know Dan's talked on one of the episodes about how he is perfected the art of like reheating bacon. So I'll have to look that up. I'll put it in the blog, what episode that is. And you can go back and have a listen at that. So I guess all of this kind of transitions into question seven, which is what do you do with leftovers, which is an Epic question because we have a very specific rule about this. Exactly. So the RV connects food rule is this. So every meal made needs to feed us more than once, but the second meal must take a different form than the first. So this rule does two things. It conserves the storage space we have available, and it keeps us from getting bored with our meals on the road.

1 (14m 31s):
So a good example would be chili. You know, we might have a Hardy bowl of chili one night, and then we use the leftovers to make chili dogs or chili nachos packet meals, which I've talked about as well. They're fantastic for breakfast the next day. So if you have, you know, roast potatoes, onions, peppers, sausage, whatever, you know, just dump all of that in a scale at the next morning, add in some scrambled eggs, heat it all up and you have the most fantastic breakfast hash in the morning. You know, the makings of chicken wraps can become KCT is passed. A salad can be heated up and made into warm pasta, like a warm past a meal just by adding some protein and some goat cheese or something. And the list goes on and on and on.

1 (15m 12s):
So that's our rules, just whatever we come up with for a main meal, we come up with a leftover using those ingredients and it can't take the same form as the first one. So it's actually a really great way to keep things interesting and get the family involved in the meal planning aspect of RVN. Okay. So question eight, and this is kind of an interesting one and it's going to change, I think for anybody depending on the setup of their rig, but it is. Do you have RV food storage hacks for making a small space work? Well, we do, but they work for our trailers specifically. So one of the things that our trailer lacks is a dedicated pantry. So we have to be pretty creative about the way we store food in our RVs.

1 (15m 55s):
Also, unless you have something like a class, a that has the benefit of a full-size fridge, your cold storage is going to be scant at best. So the best tips I can give you based on our experiences is one to get rid of the random old set of reusable containers. You moved from your house into your trailer if they don't match. And this is not about aesthetics, it's basically about the way it fits in your RV fridge. So get some reusable containers that actually fit your fridge. What I actually use is the reusable type containers you would get at like a Chinese food restaurant when you get leftovers, not the round ones, but there's some rectangular ones.

1 (16m 35s):
And I have bought those at Costco and they're in a massive pack. I think it's like a 50 pack at Costco. And it was like something reasonable, like $25. And I'm still on the same set. I mean, I reuse them as many times as I can. And then when they get gungy, I recycle them, but I'm on the same set that I bought midway through 2018 and it's 2021 and I'm still going through them and they're perfect because they actually fit with wise and lengthwise in the fridge and they're stackable and let's face it, stay away from anything that's round in terms of storage containers. So everything in your trailer is meant to be stored in cube form, I guess. So honor the way that your rig is designed, because that's going to make your life a whole lot easier, get a hanging fruit basket, or like a multi-tiered fruit basket.

1 (17m 23s):
It saves a ton of space for all the fruits and badge that don't absolutely have to be in your fridge eggs. We eat a ton of them and they take up a lot of room. So there's kind of two ways to handle this one. You can crack your eggs into a large bottle with a lid and put it in your fridge. And as you need it, you can just pour them out and scramble them or pour them out and fry them. However you want to do it. And I know a lot of people do this hack and they love it. And the second way is, and this is the way we mostly do this because sometimes we might want to boil our eggs that are hard boil. Our eggs is that we use our really old, really cheap Coughlin's brand camping egg container from our tenting days. And it's like that yellow, hard plastic with a little handle, and you can stand it up in your fridge, like a suitcase.

1 (18m 7s):
So it, it really does not take a lot of room. It helps keep your eggs from breaking. And it's just a really, really, really good solution that we have carried over from our pre RV days that we just love to use, use the inside of your oven for storage. So we talk on the show a lot about how I've only used the oven in our RV. Once I tend to not cook inside at all. But even if you use it, you can store a lot of stuff inside while you're traveling. Just make sure that you don't turn it on before you remove that stuff. I tend to just put our tray of muffins that I've made inside it, which is great, but it's a good, good place to access extra storage while traveling same with like the inside of your microwave and things like that, which speaking of, you know, be creative with your space.

1 (18m 51s):
So we recently had to order a replacement microwave for our trailer because one of the kids put metal in our previous microwave when they were little and we have to replace it. So we went to replace it just last summer. And when we did, we got the right model unit, but we realized that they trim framing that goes around, that holds the microwave into the wall no longer fits with the new microwave. So we couldn't use it. We just, for that trip, we took it out of the wall cavity or the, the shelf above the stove. And we put the microwave in the girls' bunkhouse and plugged it in where you would put like a TV above their wardrobe and we use the microwave.

1 (19m 31s):
So, so rarely that it actually worked for us. And we actually really love the fact that we have this nice big open shelf right above the stove. So we've actually just decided to keep it that way for now. So make it work for you. The other thing is, you know, I, I mentioned we don't have a dedicated pantry, like a lot of RVs do. So what we do is we use what is referred to as like the entertainment storage, which, you know, we've got the TV at the foot of our bed, between the master bedroom and the living area of the trailer. It's in a place where, you know, some people might have a fireplace. If you have an electric fireplace down below the TV is kind of in that area, but it's a, just a really shallow covered. But for us, it's the perfect, perfect size for like lining up cereal boxes or Cracker boxes and canned goods, even bread.

1 (20m 15s):
We'll just stand our loaves of bread on their end. And that's pretty much where like 90% of our non-perishable food goes, but it works for us. And it's right beside the sink. And it's fantastic. So don't be afraid to get creative with the way you store things so that it works for you and it's going to be different for everybody. So question nine, how do you keep everything cold while traveling? This is a question that is asked a lot in the RV community, and it's a bit of a hot button topic, I guess, generally we tend to, and we've mentioned this before. We tend to travel with the fridge running on propane, especially, you know, if we're on a cross continental journey in the middle of July for obvious reasons, but that said there are a number of provinces and States where this isn't necessarily legal.

1 (20m 59s):
In addition, you are required to stop and turn off any propane before entering a fueling station before entering a tunnel or before going on a ferry also for obvious reasons. So, I mean, that said, I'm not advocating that everyone traveled with their propane on, because there are a lot of factors involved, including how far you're going, what the ambient temperature outside is, how old your rig is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what I will point out is that RV fridges are mostly absorption fridges, so they don't have a fan to circulate the cold air built in. So it takes some time for them to cool down enough to safely store food. So no matter how we're traveling, we turn on the fridge at least 12 hours before we're due to pack up and pre-cool the food that's going into the trailer.

1 (21m 46s):
So that includes pre freezing meat to a solid state before putting it in the trailer. And this allows the fridge to just maintain its temperature instead of having the temperature inside rise, because it has to work to cool warm or room temperature food, which can kind of put it in that danger zone where you don't want like meat and all of that dairies sitting out at until it gets cold. So even if you're traveling with your fridge off the RV fridges, although they take a long time to cool down, they're pretty good at staying cold while they're cold. So to keep cold on the move, you can just freeze bottles of water and tuck those in laying down beside your food in the fridge. And we tend to just put ice packs in our freezer, along with any meat or whatever that we have in the freezer because the ice packs are perfect to have anyway, you know, to throw in a small cooler or a backpack.

1 (22m 35s):
If we've got a hike planned or a day at the beach, and the bottles of water will just eventually melt and you can drink them, you don't have to travel with your propane on, you can do a good job, keeping the food safe and cold while you're traveling without the propane on without having to like pack a separate cooler and then transfer it all over to the RV fridge later. So hopefully that answers that question satisfactorily for everybody. But you know, that kind of gives you an example of how we tend to handle it when we're traveling. So finally, question 10. Do you have any must have gadgets or appliances in your trailer? Fantastic question. There are so many things you can bring with you to make your trips neat and exciting in the food department.

1 (23m 17s):
I know some popular ones are countertop, ice makers, air fryers, InstaPot's slow cookers, all of that jazz. Now, do we have any of those in our trailer? No, we don't. And here's why we are severely hampered by both counterspace and weight restrictions in our rig. So my teeny, teeny tiny counterspace is reserved for the one gadget I will not live without. And that is my coffeemaker, Dan and I drink coffee like a baby drinks milk, and will pry that luxury out of my cold dead hands that said, we also have a vintage kind of coffee percolator, like a stainless steel percolator that makes the best cowboy coffee over the fire.

1 (23m 57s):
And we keep that in the rig for times that we are boondocking and we don't have shore power. So other than that, we have our cast iron cook set. And if you've listened to our episode on the best holiday gifts for our viewers or our episode on cast iron cooking, you'll remember that we picked out this specific set because the lid of the Dutch oven also acts as a second skillet. So it kind of cuts down on the number of pots and pads you need. And between this set and the griddle we have that goes on our camp stove, that's pretty much how we cook 99% of our meals. So other than that, we have a tripod grill that we use. Every trip. We have a collapsible colander, and I have a really small cookie sheet that does fit inside my oven for the very rare time that I want to use it to roast veggies or something in the oven.

1 (24m 43s):
And that's about it for the bells and whistles. I would like an air fryer. I think I'm the more I see people using them in their RVs. I'm really excited at what that can offer in terms of giving us more variety in our food. But other than that, we have a pot set. That's like a legit backpackers pot set. That's, you know, the nesting set with the collapsible handles that fits in a drawstring bag. Like that is the extent of our camp cooking that we've transferred over from back at our 10 days. So that's the great thing about RV life though. You could make it as basic or as glam as you want. So I don't get the ice that make her thing though. Maybe it's just that we're more beer than cocktail people, but we tend not to use a lot of ice. I don't know why, but if there's a listener listening who has one reach out and let us know why you can't live without it in your rig.

1 (25m 27s):
So maybe there's something huge I'm missing. And I would love, love, love to hear your perspective on that. With that said, that's the top 10 questions we've been asked about meal planning. Hopefully you find some of those answers helpful. If there's anything that you think I've missed or anything that you do that you want to share. Absolutely. Reach out to us on social at RV connects, send us an email. hello@rvconnects.com and I will put it on the blog and I will definitely mention it in a future episode. So everyone else gets the benefit of your wisdom as well. So thanks again for joining us. And we will talk to you again in two weeks. Bye

0 (26m 1s):
<inaudible>.