I often say that our kids eat like elephants. Not how they eat (although eating with a trunk would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?) but how MUCH they eat! It is not an easy job keeping a hungry band fed while we are on the road, especially since our family eats vegan-ish, so it is not always easy to find quick and ready food. We need to be inventive!
It all starts with the car snacks- everyone loves a good car snack! Jacob generally asks “Do we have anything to eat?” before we are even at the end of our driveway. His favorite car snack is BBQ chips. Sarah likes snap peas and muffins. Ryan can demolish a bag of homemade fruit leather in no time, and is surprisingly tidy eating chips and salsa, while Emma never says no to a nice crunchy apple or popcorn.
A Sad Snack Story
We were on tour in Hawaii and Emma had a bag of sunflower seeds from our garden that she kept in the back seat so she always had something to munch while we were driving. One night, our rental van was stolen, along with her precious sunflower seeds! Apparently, being a thief gives you a hearty appetite! I sure hope they enjoyed her delicious, hand-selected treats.
We get to go to lots of neat places, and always like to try the local food too! This is a photo of Emma grinding corn in El Salvador! In El Salvador they use corn for EVERYTHING, there was even a meal one night where every dish was made out of corn. Even the drink! It is called “Atol de Elote.” After Emma ground the corn they added a bit of water and flattened handfuls into little tortillas that were cooked up fresh on a wood-fired grill. Yum!
But not all food experiments turn out so well. Check out this sucker with a scorpion inside it! We asked “Why?” and were told “Protein!” We’ll stick to organic food bars, thanks.
Culinary Adventures
We’ve eaten meals and snacks in A LOT of strange places: carpet picnics, back-of-the-car-while-it’s-raining picnics, on planes and boats, in airports and hotels, and we always start by thanking God. Jacob is the best pray-er when we are super hungry- he prays fast!
Staying in hotel rooms while we are traveling brings a whole new adventure to eating. We are thinking of writing a ‘How to Cook in Hotels’ cookbook! Perry is the real chef when it comes to in-room dining. Of course, if we happen to get a kitchenette, with a real stove, he thinks that is cheating. He prefers to make us spectacular suppers with nothing but a clothes iron and a coffee pot! We have had noodle soup-a-la-coffee-machine and warmed up veggie dogs on the coffee pot burner. But that’s nothing compared to his creativity with a clothes iron! We have had a full Indian dinner complete with warm naan bread and curry (the bags of curry heat up nicely laying on top of the iron) His real specialty though is grilled cheese sandwiches. They take about 45 minutes each to actually grill and melt, but they are worth the wait!
Perry once told us a story of a guy that was playing in his old band (Perry and the Poorboys) who actually made fried eggs on the coffee maker base, and pancakes on the iron! We always clean up well, of course. We don’t want to be one of those bands more famous for destroying hotel rooms, than for their music!
Being inventive is half the fun. Once Perry and the kids were making pizza while staying in a rental home in Minnesota. They couldn’t find any flour to roll out the pizza dough on, but they did have a handy-dandy box of crackers! After several minutes of smashing and hammering- voila! Flour! Here’s the pizza – looks yummy, right? You can tell that I wasn’t there- I don’t like tomatoes. Plus there’s the fact that it was nearly midnight by the time the kids ate, but that’s not something I really need to know, is it?
Come join us for dinner on the road one day!
