Travel Tips: Eating Well on the Road

On the road in Puerto Rico (last summer's wicked awesome vacation)

It's almost time for vacation! Hurray!  Those of you who know me understand my obsession with seeing new places.  I have a REALLY long bucket list that includes seeing hundreds of places.  It's the traveling TO the destination I'm not so crazy about.

Right now I'm getting ready to hit the road... well, flying first, then driving (more about that later).  This year, I am determined to eat well while traveling and not spend a boatload of money on airport food. I'm reminded of a Jerry Seinfeld bit I heard once about stores in airports not knowing what the rest of the world charges... but he tells it better (as I'm SURE you can imagine). :-)

Anyway, here's a collection of tips from fellow bloggers around the web:

• Amy, from PCOS Diva suggests packing perfect portion sizes in glass jelly jars for picnics or lunches out and about.  
• Katie, from Kitchen Stewardship, has quite a few yummy and healthy snack ideas perfect for road trips, day trips, lunchboxes, or just munching on around the house.
• For picnic lunches and road trips where you'll have a cooler, Lisa at 100 Days of Real Food posted these salad recipes.  She also has some awesome information on staying healthy while eating out and  whole food choices at chain restaurants. 
• Kath at Kath Eats Real Food is a frequent flyer.  Check out some of her healthy food choices while in the air here and here.
• Heidi from 101 Cookbooks did a great post on healthy eating while traveling - be sure to read the comments too! Some of her readers had great ideas!

Some other online resources I stumbled across include:

• Local Harvest, a site that allows you to search for farmer's markets, healthy restaurants, and co-ops across the country, by city, state, or zip code.
• Eat Well Guide, a great resource for finding local, sustainable food while traveling throughout the United States and Canada.  
• I found this site especially easy to navigate and it even offers a keyword search feature that allows you to search by product or production method (no added hormones? pasture raised? grass fed? no antibiotics? you bet!).
• Another feature I enjoy is the "Plan a Trip" feature.  You basically just put in your starting address and destination address and click Search - then the site gives you a list of restaurants, bed & breakfasts, CSA's, farmers markets, etc. 5 miles or less off the highway. How awesome is that?! 

If you're traveling in the near future, or just looking for a portable snack or lunch for work, any of these ideas could work well.

Between what I've got on hand and TSA restrictions, I plan to bring some natural pb sandwiched between graham crackers, snack mix, baked oatmeal cups, and oranges. That should keep the cash in my pocket and the guilt away from this trip!