Travel Food For Those with Dietary Restrictions

We returned from a lovely trip earlier this week and I am just now starting to catch up around the house and online. I asked for travel food ideas in my last menu plan and I was blessed by many of your ideas. So I thought I would share what worked for us.

I do confess that I have an easier job than most whether I’m preparing meals at home or for the road. My husband is the least picky eater I’ve ever met. He praises most everything I make and very, very rarely complains. He is a practical man who loves real food and has passed that on to both of our boys, making my job that much easier.

We were gone five days and I tried to pack enough food for the majority of our meals. We ate out a few times, but for the most part our meals came from our cooler. Grains, beans, sugar, and pasteurized dairy are off the menu for some or all of us, so I knew that eating out would be a challenge.

What We Packed

• Salad fixings. The easiest main dish to prepare for those with dietary restrictions is a large, dynamic salad. I packed greens, avocados, chopped veggies, homemade salad dressing, and containers of cooked and seasoned grass-fed beef and cooked, chopped chicken. When meal times came around I assembled salads for our family and served them with sourdough bread + butter for our boys.
• Snacks. Some of our meals were just an assembly of small snacks. Raw cheese + almond crackers, fruit, vegetables, and crispy nuts are the ones we chose. A little bit of super dark chocolate made for a nice treat.
• Grain-free baked goods. The most portable of foods is the muffin. I threw together an experimental recipe of coconut flour pumpkin muffins using a pumpkin I roasted before the trip. The recipe still needed tweaking, but with some grass-fed butter it made for a filling and nourishing snack.
• Omelet Muffins. Readers Erin and Aurelia reminded me of these handy little eats. I need to make the recipe again before sharing the specifics, but it is basically eggs, cheese, milk, and cooked vegetables baked in a muffin tin. We ate these for breakfasts twice and they were a hit.
• Beverages. Water is our beverage of choice, so we filled up some kombucha bottles for the road. Raw milk and kombucha rounded out the other options.

Eating Out

Like I said we did eat out a few times. Before the trip I did a little bit of research so that we could be prepared. I wanted to make sure that we had options and guidelines when we were on the road. So there were two places I knew we could eat.

1. Chipotle. Because they source their pork from Polyface farms this is one place we don’t mind eating. Using the salad option (minus the rice, beans, and dressing) and adding guacamole you have a filling and nourishing meal. Our boys love it as well.
2. Whole Foods Market. Ridiculously pricey? Yes. Full service salad bar? Yes. We never actually did stop here, but I knew we would be able to find options here.

So along with our driving directions I added locations to the above establishments for when we passed through large cities. All of this preparation really paid off in both saving money and keeping everyone healthy.

How about you… How do you do travel food?