Topic: Eating while touring

[Schnell]

Let's hear your thoughts on this topic. What is your daily budget? I'm most interested in hearing about the lower end of the spectrum. $5 Subway foot long, and how about Chinese all you can eat lunch buffets? Then there is beans and wieners bought at grocery store and heated up with propane single burner camp stove in a pot, but that adds almost a cubic foot to ones packing.

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

Continental breakfast, dollar menu for lunch, beers and bar food or happy hour and dollar menu again for supper. That's splurging! $20/day can go a long way. I can do $10 if I don't have those beers.

[cb650]

Forget the burner.   Wrap what you want to eat in foil and set it on your engine hour before you stop.  The original roast beef run.   Works good for burritos too.   
More room fore beer.

[70CB750]

Forget the burner.   Wrap what you want to eat in foil and set it on your engine hour before you stop.  The original roast beef run.   Works good for burritos too.   
More room fore beer.

+1  done it in my jeeping days

[Stev-o]

Supermarkets are a great place to eat cheaply. Sandwiches, hot food, fruit and drinks all available and some have tables to eat at.

[70CB750]

Or price clubs, this summer we traveled Colorado, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico on Costco hotdogs and pizza   

[ofreen]

If I am going to cook on the trip, I'll use my backpacking stuff.  Otherwise I'll hit a supermarket deli a lot. I don't like to eat heavily while traveling by bike, so I lean toward salads from the delis quite a bit.  I don't turn my nose up at the dollar menu for breakfast in a pinch.  As Jerry says, 10 bucks a day or less is doable. Once or twice a trip I may stop at a small cafe, but it is easy to blow a whole day's food budget in one meal at those places. 

[70CB750]

I like to eat out of chains, but sometimes it is hard to spot a good place without local knowledge.

I remember once in NYC business trip I could see a street stand from my window. It would operate 10pm to sunrise or so and the line was always long made of people who work the city at night - cleaners, cops, guards and such.
Second night I decided to try it, not sure what quisine it was, but I will remember forever how good the food was.

[FunJimmy]

   I have quite a bit of wilderness, bike, and small boat travel experience and like to eat well so that seldom if ever includes fast food type crap.  I will make room for cooking gear and food (quantity depending on mode of travel).  When you do stop at cafes go to the local place in a small town or something to that effect.  You will not meet anyone interesting in Subway or MacDonalds.  If you are camping you may not be in town anyhow and why drive 20 miles for a meal at Subway when you could whip up something at camp and maybe have a nice view or potluck with other campers.
    We have a food dehydrator and use it for all our trips, beef jerky, chile, fruit leather, chocolate pudding dried makes a great dessert, cherries and fruit make a great snack, etc. The right cheeses will hold up for a few days and we found a hard salami that does not need refrigeration and these things can be replenished along the way.  My wife makes a great selection of snack mixes too.   We pride ourselves on eating well....I don't do well on a steady diet of restaurant or highly processed food.
     An omelet pan is the most versatile cooking utensil you will find ( the heavier duty ones not the cheap lightweight ones).  They have a removable handle and you can store your other utensils inside using a small bag so they don't scratch the Teflon.  We use it as a frying pan, dutch oven, pancakes, everything really.  Pancakes are great as you just flip it  though they are half circle in shape.   The good ones will survive rough treatment...we get several years out of them cooking daily over campfires on our 10 day long canoe trips....just treat the inside Teflon with care.  We just returned from a two week sailing trip and used the pan to make wild blueberry cobbler every nite.  We use Arrowhead Mills pancake mix for everything and may alter it slightly depending on use.
   On our canoe trips we take along dried pineapple and make pineapple upside down cake.  It works great to slice up potatoes, onions, peppers, maybe some salami too and cook it up.  These are things you can pick up along the way.  Lunch is almost always snack mix, beef jerky, dried fruit, something like that as we are usually on the go at that time of day.  Sure it takes time and cleanup too but for us it's part of the experience we enjoy. 
    Years ago I had a small military surplus stove that would use gas out of the bike to fire it ....don't use that anymore but I do have a nice little stove that folds up into a small space and will carry a small pop can size container of propane/butane or maybe two.  You could find them along the way easy enough.

This is great advise. Nutrition if vital to your health and energy.
You can not continue to eat the quality of food offered at cheap crappy fast food diners. Spend a little more time & money and live long!

[MiGhost]

$10-$15 a day for food, and drinks is very doable. As a long haul driver. I have been living on that budget since 2007.

My normal schedule would look something like a breakfast bar in the morning. For lunch I would keep it light with a sandwich, or hotdogs. In the evening I would have something on the order of a subway sub. Maybe every 2nd, or 3rd day I would stop to find a good sit down restaurant and have a real meal. I try to stay away from fast food as much as possible, but is does help in a pinch. I find that snack type foods (snickers, payday, jerky etc...) help considerably to reduce the effect when I get hungry.

Sometimes buying in a larger size is better. Especially when it come to drinks. A 1 gal jug of water is around $2.00-$2.50 in most places. The same amount in 1 liter bottles would double that price easily. Refills are another place to save money. A 24oz coffee is around $1.70-$1.80. I get 2-1qt stanley coffee thermoses filled for about the same price.

One place to steer clear of when eating is the major truckstop chains (TA, Petro, Pilot, ETC...). You will easily blow your budget for a couple days when eating at one of these places. If there is a truckstop. There will be a grocery store not to far away.

[Schnell]

Thank you for that ghost! (And others)
Lacking experience with this, I thought truck stops would be good places to eat.