Food We Buy While Living On The Road
When it comes to shopping while living van life you have to assess how much fridge and freezer space you have. We have this retro Magic Chef Mini Fridge from Home Depot. We love the size of this as we feel we can fit over a weeks worth of food in the fridge and 2+ weeks in the freezer.
A typical week of meals for us looks like this:
Breakfast: We typically fend for ourselves for breakfast, Sunny will have yogurt with berries and a banana as well as a protein shake and an RX bar (he eats a LOT). Whereas I tend to skip breakfast to intermittent fast and just have water and tea or coffee, however if i’m hungry in the morning I’ll snack on fruit.
Lunch: We like to keep it simple for lunch so we basically have the same thing everyday. Sandwiches or salads.
Dinner: I like to go all out for dinner. When we’re both done working around 6pm I’ll start on dinner and make something really yummy consisting of a veggie, protein and possibly a gain like beans, pasta or rice.
Dessert: We each have a piece of dark chocolate after dinner. Unless we have ice cream in the freezer, then Sunny will eat that.
Weekends: Weekends are a different story. On the weekends I like to make a big breakfast. Avocado toast or breakfast tacos, etc.
Here is a list of food we bought from our last grocery run to stock up for the next week of living on the road.
FRESH PRODUCE
One of the biggest perks of having a decent size fridge is to be able to eat fresh produce while living on the road. You’ll quickly learn we aim to eat fairly healthy. So we always have fresh berries on hand for breakfasts and a variety of vegetables we rotate on a weekly basis.
Fruit: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, bananas, avocados
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, mushrooms, green beans, broccoli
Cooking garnish & flavor: lemon, cilantro and green onion
*We also always have onions and bell peppers but we didn’t need to buy more of that as we already had some in the van. Also not photographed was lettuce because we already had it in the van. We had 3 bags of arugula that we make salads out of.
PROTEIN
Sunny and I are omnivores so we eat it all. Making tacos is a staple for us, and we love grass fed bison. We also love fish. Ideally ‘wild caught’ for it’s nutritional value. So we bought salmon, cod and scallops. When shopping eggs we only buy organic, pasture-raised and they are delicious.
*I did see plenty animal protein substitutes if you don’t eat animal products. Also not photographed is lunch meat because we already had some in the van. We always have some sliced turkey or chicken to make sandwiches with.
SNACKS
Some of our staple snacks are plant based yogurt with fresh berries and granola, turkey jerky, hand full of nuts and carrots with hummus. And we basically live off of RX bars so we typically will buy an entire box.
*Granola and carrots not pictured because we already had some in the van.
CONDIMENTS
I got some tartar sauce for the first time to add some flavor to our fish based dinners and we are going to try out this Green Goddess dressing on our salads. I’m a huge mayo lover and am so happy to have found this avocado based mayo. It’s so yummy and such a healthy alternative to regular mayo.
*Other condiments we already had in the van is mustard for sandwiches and balsamic vinaigrette dressing for salads. As well as pasta sauce when we make pasta.
DRINKS
Sunny starts his morning with a protein shake made out of plant based protein power followed by a glass of iced coffee concentrate mixed with oat milk. We like coffee concentrate because we can buy a bunch and store them in the van without taking up much space. Sunny goes through the coffee fast so we have to buy a lot of them to not run out right away. I like to start my day off with tea so I’ve been drinking this organic chai blend and mixing it with this macadamia milk because it has a lot less sugar and carbs than the oat milk Sunny likes and we can store it in dry storage so I don’t have to worry about fitting it in our fridge until after we open it. Lastly, we LOVE kombucha. We tried out this new brand because it had 2g of sugar which is a lot less than the average kombucha.
GRAINS
We can’t go a day without our 21 whole grain bread or Sunny will get “hangry”. He LOVES his daily lunch time sandwiches and that is our favorite bread. As I mentioned earlier tacos are a staple in our tiny van household so we always have tons of corn tortillas on hard. And last minute Sunny grabbed this cinnamon swirl brioche bread. He said he wanted his “one guilty pleasure”. His guilty food pleasures change week to week.
*Not photographed, tons of cans of beans, containers of rice and pasta we have stocked up in the van.
FROEN PREPARED FOOD
Sometimes I feel too lazy to go all out with dinner so in that case I like to have a few options of things I can simply throw in the oven and call it a day.
SPICES
We just recently have been exploring the South and just went to New Orleans where we learned all about the food and Cajun culture. First of all, some of the best food I’ve ever had has been in New Orleans. We we stocked up on cajun seasoning and I needed to stock up on my dill weed which I love putting on my salmon.
*We have lots of other spices we keep in our spice rack. These were just the ones we needed to restock on.
HOME SUPPLIES
I’m a sucker for seasonal things, especially anything “Fall” related. We were running low on dish and hand soap so we love the Meyer’s brand because it’s natural and biodegradable ingredients. Also smells amazing!