Road Tripping with Food Intolerances

We are three days from leaving Seattle and moving to Colorado.  The house is full of boxes and those strange piles of miscellaneous things that either don't fit in boxes or are needed in these last days.  I'm still taking every free moment to scrub a corner or a cabinet in hopes that the last day will not be completely filled with soap suds and hot water.

But today I designated as the food prep day.  When the family is avoiding gluten, soy, dairy and eggs, its not possible to just stop at a restaurant, let alone snag some snacks at a 7-11.  We will be traveling for 4 days.  That's a lot of meals and snacks to organize for a family of 4.  But I've got a plan!

Breakfasts are pretty easy.  I did finally find a reasonably priced gluten, soy, egg free cereal that Lucy likes so we'll have that a couple mornings.  But I will also freeze our pancakes for easy toasting on the road.  I also have just discovered a fantastic granola recipe from this book that is my new favorite.  And I was finding I'm not tolerating too many oats during the day and this is oat free.

Lunches will probably be glorified snacks.  Black beans, chips, salsa, fruit, gluten free lunch meat, veggie sticks, etc.  Plus, I have some energy bars I make and today I'm testing a gluten free banana bread muffin recipe from the ratio rally that many gluten free bloggers suggested.  Its a new adventure for me to create a recipe.  But I'm excited to try.  It seems so simple.

Now for dinners.  Which can be tough some times.  Actually, now that I think about it, we may flip the lunch and dinner menus so some mid-day play time can coincide with longer food prep time.  Then at night when we have to set up a tent, the lunch meat, fruit and chips is an easier option.  Hmmm...yeah...that makes sense to me!!

We'll have our beans and rice combo one day where we toss in guacamole, brown rice, black beans, chicken, and salsa.  All these items can be prepped ahead and just warmed up in a pot.  Another day, we'll have gluten free pasta and meat sauce.  I'll season and brown our turkey meat ahead of time and mix it with the sauce when we're ready to eat.  And another day I was thinking we might be able to swing our pizza.  We make a gluten free crust using Bob's Red Mill prepackaged pizza crust mix.  I can make these ahead of time and freeze them.  Then just warm them on the spot and top with sauce and fixings.  The kids just toss pepperoni on top and don't care about it being toasted.  For the grown ups, I can saute veggies and plop on top of the warmed crust.  When you don't need to melt the cheese, it makes on the road pizza easier!

I'll let you know how that works.  There is a lot of veggie prepping, cooking meat, and baking a variety of things to be done today.  Then we'll freeze a lot of it so it will keep better in the coolers along the way.  I guess we'll just eat what's thawed first.  :)  Or I can take some stuff out for the morning drive so it can thaw in the car until lunch.  I'm sure there will be lots to share about this road trip.  It will be an adventure.