How to Eat Real Food on a Cross-Country Road Trip

4,500 miles. 12 days. Kansas to California. 

When we mentioned that we were going to take our 10 week old baby on a road trip out to the Bay Area in California, we received many strange looks and opinions from others regarding our pending trip. My husband and I had already driven the ALCAN from Alaska to Kansas in 2014, so we were ready to take on another road trip, this time with baby in tow. 

My goal for our trip was to pack all of our meals while on the road so that we wouldn't have to eat out during the long days of driving. We were blessed to stay the nights at friends' and family's homes and to receive of their hospitality, which made meal planning a little easier. I have shared what meals we ate during the trip below.

I learned so much from traveling with a breastfed infant and hopefully this post will help me remember what worked well for our next adventure (mommy brain is a real thing).

Tips for Traveling With an Infant:

• Sit in the backseat next to the baby, especially if you don't have any other children to keep them entertained. 
• Pack a manual pump. I was a little surprised when my baby didn't want to eat as often as she was at home (every 2-3 hours) while on the road. Thankfully I had brought along a manual pump, allowing me to relieve any discomfort and to keep up my milk supply when she didn't want to eat. I kept the bottle in the cooler next to the ice packs and used it later to calm her down when she became hangry so that I could nurse her a little more easily. 😉
• Offer to nurse every time you stop, but don't force her to eat. 

• Keep bag of burp rags accessible while driving.
• Pack lots and lots of diapers and wipes. This cloth diapering mom forgot how many diapers a baby goes through! We used over 100 for our 12 day trip. 
• Pack little baggies to put any blow-out clothing/diapers in until you arrive at a location where you can do laundry or throw away a messy diaper. 
• Pack a Fels-Naptha laundry soap bar. No one wants to scrub out 2 week-old poop stains. Scrub out the stains the night they happen to make for easier laundry later. 
• Plan to add an hour or two to your travel time. 

Tips for Eating Real Food on the Road:

• Truck stops are your friend! Besides just having nicer bathrooms in general, they have microwaves that you can use to nuke any foods you may want warm for your meals.
• Do not eat your meals in the car while driving. Stop. Get out. Find a grassy area, a picnic bench, or a table in a truck stop to eat your meal. You will feel much better after the break.
• Prep the food for lunch while driving before you arrive at your break stop. I made sandwiches and sliced cucumbers, among other things. This will make your rest stops a little more efficient and you can spend your break eating and resting, not prepping food. 
• Stay at friends' and family's homes at night along the way, if possible. This will help you rejuvenate and have access to a fridge to put your food in. 
• Utilize thermoses to keep lunch warm if you don't want to try and find a microwave on the road. Warm up the food in the morning at your friend's or family's home, and it will stay warm until lunch time. 
• Foods like canned tuna and jarred beans are great because you don't necessarily need to warm them up to eat! Remember to pack a can opener though.
• Freeze anything you can before you leave on your trip. It will act as ice during the first day and stay fresh longer. 
• Bring along a simple homemade salad dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper in a disposable water bottle for an easy way to dress up any meal or salad.  
• Avocado and mustard act as great condiments for things like sandwiches or tuna salad. Mayo goes bad a lot quicker if it isn't kept cold. I bought an unripe avocado and allowed it to ripen during the first couple of days before we used it. No one likes to waste avocado!
• Pack a roll of paper towels and disposable bowls and plates and utensils. 
• Pack a knife with a sheath so no one gets stabbed. 

Breakfasts:

• I made two types of cold cereals: sourdough raisin, and honey fruit quinoa granola from the cookbook, Nourished Beginnings.
• These individual serving size, shelf stable milks to pour over our cereal were perfect!
• Hard boiled eggs
• Butternut squash pancake "pizzas" with leftover stir-fry veggies. I made these the night before at my sister-in-law's house with leftover lunch material that needed to be used up, and then just microwaved them at a truck stop at lunch time.

Lunches/Dinners:

• Tuna Avocado Salad with homemade sourdough crackers & cucumber slices

• Butternut squash pancakes with cheese

• Salad mixes. This all-in-one salad mix was great to eat along the road because it was easy to mix together in the bag. I also loved having some bags of spinach or mixed greens to throw into whatever we were eating for lunch or dinner. 

• Meatballs & stir-fry veggies (warmed up in the morning and put into thermoses)
• Sandwiches 
• Indian "ready-to-eat" curry mix with rice & greens. I loved these little 2-serving Indian meals! So easy to just reheat in the microwave. The rice was made ahead of time and we just kept it cold in the cooler and then the fridge when we stopped for the night. 

• Summer Italian Sausage wraps: This was a fun meal because it was our last one before returning home, which meant that I could be creative by using up the remaining food ingredients! We used spinach, salad dressing, sliced sausage, sliced hard boiled egg, feta cheese, and chopped apples inside a tortilla. 

• Bean burritos with home-canned beans, salsa, greens, cheese

Snacks:

I try not to pack food that is considered "junk food" for the trip since they often make me feel gross, but I still packed some snack cookies that wouldn't send the blood sugar souring but still satisfy any cravings. 

• "trail mix" cookies
• sourdough chocolate chip cookies
• 3 lb bag of snack apples
• baby carrots

Eating good, nourishing food along the road is totally possible; it just takes a little bit of forethought and planning. Road trips have the potential to be so fun, so don't let an infant detour your plans. Take them along for the ride and enjoy all the fun, new adventures!