Sunday, March 25, 2012

Real Food on a Road Trip

We recently started the GAPS diet.  GAPS is pretty restrictive. You can't eat just anything. Most of what you eat needs to be home cooked or raw.  Ideally it would all be organic, grass-fed, free range ... we can't make that happen right now, so we're doing the best we can. We avoid as many chemical additives as we can, no sugar or artificial sweeteners are allowed, except honey; no grains or starches either. You'd be surprised where you find sugars and grain additives!
But here's the deal: we're driving to the Grand Canyon from Alabama. 24 hour drive. 2 1/2 days driving. Yeah. I thought about just throwing in the towel and starting over when we get home, but the reason I started was the discomfort my two year old was experiencing and I wasn't going to go back on the progress he's made, so ... I just had to come up with a way to make the road trip and the diet work together! Not gonna lie, I took cues from a couple other blogs www.passionatehomemaking.org and another one I cannot for the life of me remember right now. I spent 2 days cooking up some chicken and cutting up veggies. Here's most of what I put in the cooler on ice.
In the 4 gallon sized bags: 5 dozen hard boiled eggs, 16 pounds of roasted chicken drumsticks, 10 pounds of marinated, baked, chicken breast tenderloins.
In the 7 quart sized bags: 8 cucumbers cut into "sticks", 6 sweet bell peppers (yellow, red and orange) sliced, bunches of carrots, I couldn't even tell you how many, peeled and sliced into discs,and some cuties.
Then there's Bubbie's dill pickles, sauerkraut (which I actually tasted and ended up leaving home, homemade yogurt and bananas.
I also packed a jar of ghee, for cooking at the campsite,raw honey and a half gallon of raw milk I had left in the fridge. We stopped at Sam's Club and picked up a bunch of Pink Lady apples, more bananas, some strawberries, and a box of Larabars. 
To be honest, I'm not sure we're going to make it.  We've already gone through half the carrots, about a third or so of the cukes, half of the peppers, all of the tenderloins, and slightly less than half of the drumsticks! The milk is gone, and so are most of the Larabars. And we're only 2 days into the week long trip.  We haven't touched the eggs yet, because the hotel we stayed at last night had hard boiled eggs at the breakfast and we can always stop and get more fruit and veggies, but the meat might be a problem. I'll have to think about how I can cook some up at the campsite to bring with on the way home.
What are some ways you deal with eating real food on the road?

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Home Management Notebook: Downloads and Links

Our Home Management Notebook is well under way. I've given you the overview and the general idea to hopefully get you thinking about what would be most helpful for you to have at your fingertips. And I've given you access to a few downloads. With this post I will give you the last of my downloads and then link to some resources that I loved and gave me a lot of ideas. :)
Menus: "They" say that most women have about 21 meals in their rotation, so many women make a list of their 21 meals and draw from that when they make their Monthly or Weekly meal plans.  I chose to go about that a little differently.  I am in the process of making a Recipe Binder that contains basically everything I make on a fairly regular basis or that we really like. This is still ongoing and probably will be forever, but I had to start over recently because of the new healing diet we undertook here. More on that another time. But I'm taking that Recipe Binder and using it to put together Master Meal Plans. Plural because I have one for spring/summer type recipes and one for fall/winter type recipes with more soups and stews and such. And then I'll use these master plans to make my Monthly Meal Plans less stressful and also to help me purchase things in bulk or ahead of time.  This way I can just line my current month up next to the master and rotate things in based on a recipe I just found that I want to try or Holiday meals or whatever. Once my Monthly Plan is complete I'll use my Weekly Meal Plan with the shopping list to plan not only my dinners but also breakfasts and lunches.  It doesn't have a snack section. I'm thinking of adding one. Or two. If I do, I'll update.
Planning: I watched "I Don't Know How She Does It" the other night.  I thought it was pretty cute, but I kept saying to myself  "why doesn't she write her list down???".  I have to say, I make a lot of lists in my head. Not in the middle of the night. I generally sleep like a rock, but in the shower I'm on autopilot and I plan a lot.  But if I don't write it down as soon as I get out, I am going to forget. There is no question about that! So I have an ongoing Master To Do List for all those things that always need to get done. Like extra cleaning, organizing, stuff to get, things to tell Nathan ... and on and on and on. I also have some specific To Do Lists. One for Personal Growth Goals, One for Home Improvement Projects, one ofr Crafting Projects that I want to complete--can we say Pinterest?? :D, and a special Christmas in July list.  I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory.
Shopping: Simple it's a shopping list, but it matches the rest of my downloads so I like it :D
Notes: Just a place to write down stuff I don't want to forget while I'm on the phone, or making notes while I'm researching something online etc.
Maintenance: Here's where I keep a written record of maintenance done to the van, and to the house. So when something comes up, I know exactly where to find out what we've had done, when, how much it cost, and who did it.
Inventories: I'm keeping an inventory of my pantry and freezer so I never run out of staples, and so that I don't buy duplicates. A quick check to these lists when I'm making my shopping lists will keep me from wasting money, or from frustration when I go to make a meal, only to discover I don't have what I thought I did.
Account Info: This one I went back and forth on for quite a while, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep it in something I carry everywhere, but I need it with me in case I'm out. I you struggle with remembering all my user names and passwords for websites that I use? I'm afraid to ever change them for fear I'll forget what they are and I tend to use the same 2 or 3 for everything. More mental clutter trying to remember all that stuff all the time! I keep another copy in my Bill Pay Binder just in case my HMN is ever lost or stolen, I can quickly change all my passwords and not worry so much about hackers and identity thieves.
Spending Tracker
One more thing about the downloads, for some reason some of them look like half sized sheets and some look like they'll print in the center of and 8 1/2 X 11 sheet.  When you go to print, just make sure you look at the printer set up and set it to print 2 per sheet.  They will print out just fine :) Let me know if you have any issues in the comments section and I will do my very best to make it right!
This is just a list of blogs that I have found with Home Management Notebook resources:
mommytracked.com -- she's got some really cute printables
accordingtotonya.com
a mom after God's own heart
create order
desiring virtue -- really like her printables and her heart. nice blog
design finch -- a collection of printables from various blogs
delicate construction -- printables
Keeper of the Home
Life...Your Way
List Plan It
Miss Poppins
The Nest Effect