Road Trip Planning: Meals

Yesterday I spent a lot of time pouring over camping books and recipes to figure out what I could do to feed my family on our road trip.  It's going to be interesting.

Traveling across the country without eating out is going to be a challenge, but I'm pretty sure we can do it...mostly because our budget won't work out otherwise.  Becca's goal of raising $1000 (basically the cost of her trip if she flew there and back by herself...which wasn't going to happen) didn't quite work out, but she made it pretty close.  She's about $240 off, I can't really cover that without cutting something...so we aren't eating out.  Then there's the fact that I unexpectedly had to take on a new car payment because my van stopped working well enough...well, it basically took away a bit of the money we were going to save for the trip.  We are cutting every corner that we can, so no eating out and no amusement parks.

Micah is gluten and casein free.  This makes for a different experience in camping.  That, on top of the fact that we are on an extremely limited budget made me really work on the meal plans for our 3 week adventure.  While we aren't camping at every stop, much of our trip we will be in the car or in a tent.  Yeah, that means camping food.

What is the first thing you think of when you think campfire food?  Smores.  The biggest problem with these things for the gluten free is the graham cracker.  I have been baking gluten free for 7 1/2 years now and I have never made a gluten free graham cracker that tastes good.  Honestly, I don't like any of the store bought ones, either.  There's a couple that I deem edible, but I refuse to pay $7 for a box of graham crackers.

There are hot dogs that he can have, we will make banana boats, but there will be no Smores on our camping trip.  That's kind of a bummer.

We will be having sloppy joes and chili.  Hot dogs are obvious.  I have tamales and sandwiches on the menu as well.  The tamales are coming from home, so only for the first leg of the trip while they are still good.  Tuna and spaghetti work well.  There are gluten free noodles that work well for all of us.  I'll probably work on hobo packets and I'm experimenting with bread on a stick as soon as I can.

I'm organizing everything and meal planning now, though I know how my mom travels, we aren't likely to stick to the plan all the way.  We both like to have things planned out, but we are both flexible if things don't work the way we planned...she's more flexible than I am.  I'll be the one shopping for the stuff we will have in the car for the first leg, so we will have to stick to it somewhat.  I will also be getting the stock of staples that I don't know if we will be able to get along the way.  I know we aren't going anywhere too terribly out of the way, but I really like a certain gluten free flour mix for things that I can't always find in every grocery store and I know we will need it. Micah's chili is pretty easy to find, but I don't want to have to look for it so I figure I'll be bringing several cans because it makes a great back up meal if something else goes wrong.

So what do you think?  Do you have any more ideas?