After six months on the road and a variety of food experiences, I think it’s about time we let you all in on what we’re eating. It changes from day to day and week to week, but there are a lot of common threads in our food choices – and we’ve learned a lot about what and how we should be eating.

The first thing that I would say about eating on a bicycle tour is learning what your individual body needs. Over the past many months, we have learned (through trial and error) all of the details about how we need to eat. For example… Russ needs meat. (Sorry vegetarians.) For whatever reason, his body doesn’t derive enough energy and whatnot from non-meat forms of protein. Peanut butter, beans, lentils are all hard on his system, whereas a good cheeseburger gets everything moving well. I have learned that I have a really hard time digesting food while we’re riding. We used to stop for actual lunches and make sandwiches, until I just couldn’t stomach all that heavy food anymore. For me, it’s best to munch on apples and granola bars and fig newtons and trail mix and jerky throughout the day, and then sit down to a huge dinner at the end. I have also learned that I need a lot more fiber and vegetables than Russ. It puts some interesting limitations on the ways that we eat while traveling, but it’s all important to know and to understand, so that we can keep ourselves functioning as best as possible, and stay healthy.

Another component of our eating habits that’s important to understand is the ways in which we focus on eating whole foods. Sure, we consume our fair share of M&Ms and chips and bottled juices and prepackaged convenience stuff. But, we also work really hard to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and whole grains as much as possible. I personally believe that your body gets more nutrients out of whole ingredients, so that’s what I try to focus on buying (within reason, of course, because it can be extremely difficult sometimes).

And, last but not least, we’ve learned that the foods we eat and carry and the ways we cook all depend on where we are. The Pacific Coast is such a popular route that it was easy to just carry snacks during the day and buy food for dinner near to where we were camping (allowing us to be much more gourmet). Out in the desert, where we are now, it can be days between markets, so we need to plan well and carry foods that will survive in a duffel bag for awhile.

So… on to the details… what, specifically, do we eat?

Breakfast… Generally, we’ll get up in the morning, break down camp, make coffee, and have a breakfast of peanut butter and jelly on a tortilla. It’s simple, quick, easy to prepare and easy to carry. Lately, we’ve added some Nutella in to this mix, and Russ likes to also add trail mix and/or chia seeds. But since Russ isn’t a big fan of peanut butter, we’re constantly on the look-out for other non-nut-based breakfast options. If we’re in a populated area, we like to swing through a diner for a hot breakfast or pick up eggs or bacon or cereal or yogurt for a change from the peanut butter. We had a small stint (back in September) of making pancakes every morning, until (morning after morning) we’d find ourselves hungry only an hour later.

Lunch/Mid-day Snacks… These days, we will typically stop several times throughout a riding day to eat snacks or mini-meals. Our favorite mid-day foods include: fresh fruit, granola bars, trail mix, fig newtons, peanut M&Ms, hard-boiled eggs, beef jerky.

Dinner… This is where we can get creative. By the time we roll into camp for the night, we’re usually quite hungry, so dinner has be a hearty meal, in a large-enough quantity that we both feel sated. The actual meals that we prepare vary depending on what ingredients are available. When we’re traveling through remote areas, we often have to pack for several days at a time, which means a bit of creative planning and buying ingredients (in advance) that don’t require refrigeration. When we’re in more populated areas, we can purchase ingredients near to the campground, allowing us to buy fresh cuts of meat. When we’re free camping, we try to stick to one-pot meals. When we’re camping at a structured campground and know that we’ll have plenty of time (especially if we’re able to have a campfire), we can get out the paella pan and cook a more elaborate meal.

For days when we’re in remote areas and cook quick, one-pot meals, we’ll make various combinations of: pre-cooked sausage (in not-hot weather, pre-cooked sausage is okay unrefrigerated for a day or two, provided you heat it well when cooking a meal), canned chicken, zucchini, canned beans, canned tomatoes, couscous or other heat-and-eat packaged pasta/rice dishes (we recently discovered Uncle Ben’s pre-cooked rice mixes, which have brown rice and lentils, beans, corn and only require a dash of water and to be heated through).

Here’s a glimpse of what we bought in Carlsbad before heading off on our five-day stretch with no markets (which, unfortunately, we’re discovering isn’t quite enough, so we’ll need to plan even better before hitting Big Bend)…

food

For days when we have more flexibility (ability to buy fresh ingredients close to camp and/or ability to cook more slowly in more than one pot), we’ll cook meals like…
– Beef and vegetable stir-fry with rice (tip: soy sauce doesn’t need refrigeration, so you can carry a small bottle and then make a quick sauce with soy sauce, water and lemon)
– Sausage and sweet potatoes, served over rice or quinoa or made into burritos
– Pasta – a quick and easy and inexpensive sauce can be made by simply cooking down several chopped fresh tomatoes – or mix cooked pasta with smoked salmon, a can of olives, perhaps a cucumber, and some garlic and salt and pepper
– or just about any other “ordinary” type of meal that you might cook in a “real” kitchen

We are both huge fans of food and eating well, so we strive to find good foods and make interesting and tasty and fulfilling meals. Since this is easier when touring through more populated areas, we are quite looking forward to getting to the end of this vast emptiness that we’ve been rolling through for the past few weeks. (Although, there is also immense beauty in this nothingness, so we’re trying not to rush it.)