Here are my dehydrator snacks, plus a couple of items from the store.
I'm starting to get ready for our trip to Windermere and thought I'd share some of the snacks I pack for a road trip. For longer trips we will usually plan a stop somewhere along the route for a meal, but this trip is a shorter one, so won't require a stop.
If you are doing a longer trip, it's helpful to take a few minutes to plan where you will stop, since eating a gut-healthy meal does require a bit of advanced planning. Traditional diners usually work well, because it's pretty easy to get an omelette or a steak and salad (ask for olive oil and lemon for your dressing). Franchised restaurants don't tend to work well, since much of their menu is prepared, frozen and shipped to restaurants, which makes it very difficult for restaurants to customize your order. Start by choosing a town that you anticipate reaching at lunch or dinner time. Do an online search for gluten-free menus. Once you find restaurants that accommodate for gluten, it's pretty easy to customize to gut-healthy from there.
Some other gut-healthy meal ideas are:
Italian - order a chicken, fish or meat dish that is baked or grilled (not breaded). Ask for extra vegetables instead of pasta or rice.
Mexican - grilled meat and vegetables without the tortilla. Ask for vegetables to dip in guacamole.
Burgers - call ahead to find out if they use fillers in their burgers. If not, then you are good to go. Order a burger without the bun, or ask them to wrap it in lettuce for you. Add a side salad.
Japanese - sashimi and seaweed salad. Make sure the salad doesn't include soy sauce.
Regardless of whether or not you stop for a meal, some snacks are always important to have along, especially if you have kids in the car. It's almost impossible to grab a gut-healthy snack at a gas station, so a little bit of planning goes a long way to making a road trip enjoyable.
This year, I'm packing some homemade crackers: flax seed crackers and a sweet chocolate almond flour cracker, both of which were made in my dehydrator. As you'll see, a dehydrator can be invaluable for road trips. Other snacks I made in my dehydrator are beef jerky and kale chips. Before we leave I'll get some fresh fruit and veg, and some nitrate-free sandwich meat and salami to go with those crackers. Two of my kids love seaweed, so I'll also have some Seaweed Snax on hand, and we'll be trying out some plantain chips I got at Blushlane. I'm hoping we'll see fresh fruit vendors somewhere along the way as well, but this is the first time I'm making this trip since I was a teenager (that was a few decades ago), so I'm packing fruit to be on the safe side. Additionally we'll have some nuts and seeds on hand, and we'll have extra water on board. Some bottles of kombucha will round things out nicely. I always end up packing more than we need, but on those few occasions when we've been delayed it has been great to have food on hand, especially for the kids.
What do you pack on your road trips?
What do you end up grabbing on the road if you don't pack snacks?
Happy Healthy Snacking!
Tracey