Trip Food

We just came back from our Spring Break trip, which took in Niagara Falls (from the Canadian side) and the historic sites around Palmyra, NY.  We also stopped in a children's museum in Rochester, NY, which was a fun and unexpected side trip.

I'm crazy frugal about food on trips, so I packed us 7 full meals' worth and we only bought one meal at a Wendy's plus 3 items at a local grocery store.  I brought us hummus, bagels, and vegetables; hard-boiled eggs and instant oatmeal and hot cocoa packets to use the room's coffee maker for hot water; tuna and mayonnaise, peanut butter and jelly, lunch meats, cheese slices and sticks of various kinds, gogurts, apples and oranges and pears for lunches.

Our second hotel had breakfast provided and a two-burner stovetop, so I also packed us a can each of corn and refried beans, a tupperware of salsa, and tortillas and cheese for one night, and some cheap boxes of mac n' cheese and a package of hot dogs for the other.  I sort of borrowed a little milk in a cup and a couple little packs of those spread butters from breakfast to make the macaroni with rather than bring perishable stuff like that.  Plus, of course, I stocked lots of pretzels and crackers and cookies and such, along with a big can of V8 each.

I took the hot dogs and gogurts straight from the freezer, stuck some blue ice in the grocery sacks with them and the meat, cheese, and mayo, and just didn't worry about the hummus or eggs much until we were in the second hotel with a fridge and freezer.  I planned our menus to use the most perishable stuff first, and it worked out well.

It certainly wasn't gourmet, and I do get tired of making sandwiches on my lap in the car day after day, but it was worth the $$.  I know people who take food trips, just to try all the restaurants; we're rather the opposite  :)