Many people look forward to a vacation without cooking or food preparation - but other families look forward to making special vacation fare when they're away from home. Some families have special dietary needs and must prepare food - even on vacation.
When I planned my first major vacation a few years ago I had children with special dietary needs. We also decided that we'd like to take a longer vacation, and eating out for every meal would have been cost prohibitive. It made more sense to me to prepare more meals and enjoy a longer vacation.
We were planning to head to Traverse City, Michigan, which was a two day drive from where we lived. I knew that I'd need to have food prepared for the entire trip up because we weren't able to eat at fast food or chain restaurants along the way.
This is the system I developed to plan for a big road trip and vacation where I knew I'd need to prepare meals:
First, determine how many days you'll be on the road, and decide how many meals you'll need. Some families prepare all meals, other just want to prepare lunch. They prefer to eat breakfast and dinner at a restaurant on the road. You determine what your family needs.
Don't forget about snacks, especially if you're traveling with children. When we travel we typically plan a stop every 2 hours. We have a small snack at every stop we don't eat a meal at. We also have something to drink - cold milk or water (or coffee for the driver). My family prefers to avoid having children drink on the road so they need to go to the bathroom too frequently.
Once you've decided how many meals and snacks you'll need on the road, it's time to determine what foods you'll need to take. Also look at the size of your cooler - what you take is going to have to fit in the cooler. Some of your foods, like trail mix and other snack foods won't need to go into the cooler, but you may want to have a picnic bag or even a reusable grocery bag to keep all of those things and your utensils and cups together.
Take a look at your family's favorite meals and decide which ones might be easy for traveling. Sandwiches are always good, and you can bring the fixings and the bread and put sandwiches together. Roll-ups made with tortillas and sandwich fixings are another good thing. Trail mix, dried fruit, fruit in the peel (like bananas and applies), cheese cubes or string cheese, jerky, and other easy-to-carry foods are good for snacks.
My family has always enjoyed fruit salad on trips, which is easy to prepare and store in a plastic container. Tossed salad can be purchased bagged, or you can buy a head of lettuce and shred it then bag into a resealable bag yourself. Add salad fixings like meat, cheese, nuts, hard boiled eggs, etc. right into the bag, or in separate baggies if you need to tailor salads to each family member. Bring a bottle of salad dressing along.
We have always purchased a gallon of milk and brought it along in the cooler. We bring several gallons of water and just set them in the car. We serve milk with snacks and water with meals.
Plastic utensils, re-sealable bags, disposable plates, paper napkins, and disposable cups make clean-up easy. Just toss everything once you're done. Make sure you bring enough for every meal. If you're going to have something like salad or fruit salad you'll need utensils, so don't forget them. Sandwiches and wraps obviously don't need them.
Look through family travel books and books on vacationing with children for other travel-friendly recipes. With some advance planning a little work in advance of your trip you can have healthy, easy travel food that suits everybody in the family.
Kristen really enjoys vacations - and she really likes writing about them! Since that initial vacation to Traverse City, she and her family have started a site all about adventures in Traverse City. Get more info about vacations in the Grand Traverse region, including directions for driving to Traverse City.

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