I didn’t get to post while I was away as I’d hoped, but I did learn plenty about prepping healthy food while traveling. I’ve done this many times in the past several years, but there are always new lessons to learn (and share). For example:

• When you’re only going to be gone for 3-4 days, make sure that all dishes use the same one or two spices to avoid having to either take half your kitchen with you or buying new spices on the road. Buying spices makes an otherwise reasonably priced grocery trip get expensive if you’re not careful. (I personally erred on the side of bringing too many spices from home, but I won’t be repeating that mistake.)
• If you know what kinds of grocery stores you’ll have available at your destination (Google Maps is really handy for this!), make your grocery list in advance of your trip. Then you can more easily decide whether to bring along hard-to-find items. (I packed veggie broth cubes just in case, though I ended up not using them.)
• Plan on making 2 “anchor” dishes in quantity and adding salads and veggie side dishes to give yourself more variety. By anchor dishes, I mean anything from a soup to a stew or lentil loaf — in other words, a hearty entree that can easily be slanted to different side dishes.
• Make up the food on the first day as best you can (some hotel kitchens are very sparsely furnished), and then reheat as needed throughout the week. You can purchase inexpensive plastic storage containers and put cooled-down foods such as soups in them in portion-sized servings for the week. (I recommend not putting hot food in any plasticware, and I also never reheat any food in plastic containers either to avoid chemical leeching.)
• Keep some healthy convenience foods on hand like Sunshine burgers, fresh fruit and baby carrots. They’re as quick as fast food, and as an added bonus, they actually have nutrients in them! :)
• If you’re picky about a particular kitchen item and it’s small enough to pack, do it! I packed my wonderful little ceramic knife, which I use for everything from chopping the apples for my oatmeal to prepping onion for soups and stews, and everything in between. It weighs next to nothing, and it’s so nice not to have to rely on the often cheap knives in hotel kitchens.

And one last thing: As I mentioned before I left, I took my Vita-Mix along. Had I not been traveling by car to my destination, it might have been too much to pack a heavy blender. But as things stand, we were able to have smoothies, sorbets and homemade hummus (my son’s favorite) in no time flat.

I probably spend more time on food prep than most people will want to while traveling — and I do it (almost entirely) by choice! — but realistically, it doesn’t have to be difficult to eat well on the road. It just takes a little planning, and if you don’t mind repetition or simply eating simple fare like salads every day, you can easily eat very healthfully without stressing out.