Food was a definite “thing” on this trip. Before this journey, we were dialed in with three-four night campouts either in a tent, a rooftop tent, or canoe camping and we had it DOWN.

This experience was going to be entirely different. We now had a refrigerator that kept things cold and a tiny freezer that actually kept things frozen. It was amazing not having to manage a cooler and ice all the time. At home, we create a menu each week (thank you Mo Landrith!) and shop for those items only. This system creates very little food waste. On this trip, we had to figure out camper meals, meals with our peeps, and meals in restaurants as we went sightseeing during the day. We had to figure out what to bring that wouldn’t go bad but what was also easy to cook as we settled on just two saucepans and a frying pan.

Discovering that the freezer actually kept things frozen was life-changing. Also, at home, our routine is to basically skip breakfast Monday – Friday, have a blended salad smoothie for lunch, and a mostly meatless dinner. When we travel, making the daily juice is not happening so we came up with cold oatmeal with berries, nuts, dried fruit, and non-dairy milk. It’s our new, warm weather favorite.

For dinner, we found out we could store four one-pound bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer. With leftovers, it gives us eight meals when we add brown minute rice and a can of beans, and maybe an egg on top or some non-dairy cheese. Other than that we often had tortillas, hummus, and veggie roll-ups until we ran out of tortillas and literally couldn’t find any east of Texas.

Here’s our little stove at work warming up the beans and vegetables while cooking the rice for ten minutes. It became our favorite camp dinner. We tried to substitute quinoa but didn’t love it.

We found this on the beach of Padre Island. We took it with us and opened it with a hammer at camp in Walasco. It was good and we didn’t get sick. We were a little nervous about eating it as we had NO idea how long it had been out to sea.

We ate out, a LOT. Here we picked up some nuts from a street vendor in Progresso, Sonora.

We had our first Philipino food with Dave and Bong in Houston, Texas.

We had fish n chips and DELICIOUS mac and cheese at Katie’s Seafood in Galveston. That wasn’t necessarily new but it had been a LONG time since we’d had it.

In Louisiana things got interesting. It was recommended we eat at this grocery and deli by our Voodoo Museum tour guide in New Orleans . He wasn’t wrong. We got the gumbo and it was delicious. We ate it outside on the sidewalk, sitting against the building.

Near the Whitney Plantation, we found this cajun market and restaurant. It had alligator heads all over the place and we ordered the catfish PO-boy and shrimp gumbo. Other people ordered a platterful of very red crawfish. We skipped that delicacy.

At Dollywood, we ordered what amounted to be a $12 cup of rice with a little sausage and chicken thrown in so it sounded better on the menu. It was cooked in this giant wok. In Gatlinburg, we tried the chili cheese fries and were not disappointed. I believe they cost as much as the cup of rice.

In Weaverville, we ordered  Mo’s barbecue ribs, cornbread, and mac & cheese. Yum.

In Hillsborough, we found a food truck and got some tacos.

Our friends and old neighbors,  Trish Paul in Weaverville, put this delicious spread out for us one morning,

Cousin Colby impressed us with his chef skills in making these smashed potatoes to go with our roasted chicken, Ceasar salad, and garlic-me bread.

Granddaughter Akacia fed us one evening from a Hello Fresh box. It was a nice combo of burger and fries.

At the farm in Nebraska, Aunt Becky showed us how to extract honey from bee boxes. It was so interesting and delicious.

We got to bring home over 12 pounds of the stuff plus some honeycomb to chew on.

The grocery stores along the way were also an interesting experience. Once we hit the South we saw things not normally seen in our stores in Flagstaff.

I’m not sure what it’s all used for but I’m pretty sure if offered, I’d give it a try.

I hadn’t seen white asparagus before.

The food tour has come to a close. It was fun eating different local cuisine. We decided not to eat Mexican food once we left Texas but succumbed and DID have good tacos out of the food truck in North Carolina.

Next week I’m going to share some of our excursions. It’s a keyword change from my original list of nine. Excursions replaces Urban. As I said, keywording is a work in progress.

Happy shooting!