Traveling On Our Stomachs

There is probably a huge variable in how various RV'ers do meals. This may be somewhat related to our individual cooking styles whether or not we are on the road but must be affected by the generally small size of the cooking and food storage areas. I think I've mentioned some of our discoveries here and there in these blogs but a few more need mention.

A recent discovery is Duncan Hines Perfect Size for 1 cakes you can microwave in a minute or so in a coffee cup. There are I believe about 14 varieties/flavors of these cakes and all you need add is 2 to 3 Tablespoons of water. Just add the specified amount of water, stir well, microwave for 55 seconds or 1 minute 10 seconds and voila! a delicious cake snack. I have not tried them all yet, probably only about half of them, but it seems that if the cake specifies 2 Tbs then it microwaves for 55 seconds and if it is 3 Tbs, microwaves for 1 minute 10 seconds. They make a great snack including at work and seem ideal for the limitations of RV traveling.

A drawback on an RV is the tiny sinks and limited amounts of water. I took a coffee cup, spoon and mix packet to work several times but then had to bring the used cruddy coffee cup home again to clean it. Our sink at work is even more useless than the kitchen sink in Timmberwolf! My first thought was those disposable styrofoam cups used for coffee to go but most of those aren't very good for microwave use!

This is the busy time of year for me at work but Geoff had the time and researched microwavable disposable cups and found some! Dixie makes two types actually, one called Perfectouch and another called Dixie To Go. They are available in 12 oz, 16 oz, and 20 oz sizes and most if not all come with snap on lids. I have tried/tested these for the little cakes and they are perfect, just toss that messy cup.

But now I'm thinking ahead ... I really hate trying to wash much of anything in Timmberwolf's tiny sink even though it is a double sink, both tiny! We've migrated our eating habits on our RV trips to a lot of microwaved, dehydrated, or prepared foods which cuts out the pots and pans but now with these microwaveable cups we can cut out a lot of dishwashing.

One of our frequent breakfasts is the Mountain House Biscuits & Gravy or their Breakfast Skillet. Each pouch is a serving meal and we split it. Of course that leaves nice messy bowls etc to have to wash up. Now that we have discovered these microwavable cups with lids, all we have to do is split the pouch between two cups, add the boiling water (half in each cup), give it 8-10 minutes with the lid on, and voila! breakfast with only two spoons to wash!

A trial run for biscuits & gravy is in the cards for us here at home in the near future since it opens up a lot of possibilities if it works. This should also work with various soups and with some of the prepared and dehydrated entrees.

One of the things we found out starting with our first trip is that restaurants are just too easy to be a default meal choice which leads to higher costs and added weight! The easier and pleasanter meals in the RV are, the likelier we are to choose it instead. Last year discovering the ready-to-eat choices helped reduce our restaurant tabs. Since we are not grill cook-out people, anything we can learn to encourage us to eat at the coach will help!