Recently my family of 7 just took a road trip from the west coast of Florida to the east coast of Florida to visit family. With holiday traffic, it only took about 100 years to get there. We still had a good time though and managed to eat relatively well. We were able to “Keep Our Fats Straight” here and enjoy ourselves. Was every bite of meat perfectly raised? No, but most of it was. Was every vegetable free of pesticides? No, but most of it was.
The first thing I did was to plan ahead. I searched for lodging that would have a tiny kitchen with at least a stove top and a few burners. Microwaves aren’t my thing, and having one or not having one makes no difference to me. I knew that I would need to pack a cooler and bring some bags of non-refrigerated items of things that we like to keep in the fridge, but would be okay outside of the cooler on the road as well as pantry items.
I put the following in our cooler:
Plenty of Pastured Butter like Kerrygold
Pastured Eggs
Organic Frozen Veggies
Organic Frozen Meat
Pre-Chopped Organic Fruits
Organic Raw Cheeses
A Gallon of Raw Milk
A Jar of Milk Kefir (with the grains inside to make more kefir as needed)
A Gallon of Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice from the store
Kombucha
Heavy Whipping Cream
Here’s the things I brought that weren’t in the cooler:
Organic Sprouted (soy free) Bagels
Organic Rice Pasta (like Jovial)
Organic Tomato Sauce in Glass
Coconut Sugar
Organic Sweet Potatoes
Organic White Potatoes
Organic Pumpkin Puree (packaged in a box)
Some Spices
Organic Apples
Organic Apple Cider Vinegar
A Non-GMO All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend (for pie making)
Mineral-Rich Celtic Salt
We arrived at our hotel and I realized that even though I thought it had a small oven, that indeed, it did not! Aaah! I thought about what I was going to do for awhile most importantly for the pie’s sake! I had packed some pots and pans, so I decided to just deal with it.
I ended up making all of our meals during our stay, toasted our bagels in the cast iron and even managed to make a stovetop lasagna as well as a pie by putting it all together in a pie pan and placing it over water hot enough to steam and placed a lid over it to fully cook through. The textures were a little different and the pie was handled roughly to get the pie pan off of the steaming pot of water, but all were very enjoyable. I used my immersion blender to make whipped cream. And who says you can’t use hotel towels as hot pads? Who says? Not me.
The only times we ate out were when we were actually on the road. We stopped on the way in at an amazing Farm-To-Table Restaurant right off of the interstate outside of Orlando called BB Junction.
On the way home we stopped for Thai food because the curries are coconut milk based. We ate and packed up what was left to place in our cooler once it reached room temperature, so I could have an easy meal to heat up once home while unpacking and catching up on laundry.
Overall we had a great time filled with real food, family and fun.
Pamm says
Great pictures and you explained everything in a fun and excellent way. I will use your tips for my next Florida trip!