Wednesday: Road-Trip Cooler Food, a Tire-Pressure Detour & Hotel-Room Five Guys

Got up this morning and immediately started making food.

We had a lot of logistics happening today because Chris and I were leaving for St. Louis, while the kids were staying behind—and two of them still needed to go to co-op tomorrow.

So before I could even think about packing my own things, I needed to pack co-op lunches, co-op snacks and food for our road trip.

Basically, I packed food for everyone going in every direction.

Living Off the Land…With a Cooler

One of you recently used the phrase “living off the land” for traveling—basically, don’t haul your entire kitchen with you. Eat the food that’s available where you’re going.

I love that.

And that’s mostly what I wanted to do on this trip because I wasn’t entirely sure what our schedule would look like.

However.

I am still me.

So obviously I brought a cooler.

My Hotel Cooler System

I didn’t know whether we’d have a refrigerator in the hotel. It turns out we do have a tiny one, but I don’t particularly trust hotel mini fridges to keep my food as cold as I’d like anyway.

So I went with my ice system again.

I brought the Costco cooler I bought this summer and filled gallon Ziploc bags with ice.

Then I packed extra empty gallon bags.

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels, and I can’t think of one in the U.S. that didn’t have an ice machine somewhere.

So morning and night, I can dump the melting ice and refill the bags.

No trying to refreeze ice packs.

No depending on the hotel refrigerator.

Just keep refreshing the ice and keep an eye on the cooler temperature.

Protein Bag + Produce Bag

I organized the food into two main categories.

First, the protein/snack bag:

• Individual hummus packets
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Chris
• Sliced homemade teriyaki beef summer sausage
• Sliced grilled chicken
• Hard-boiled eggs for Chris to have for breakfast

Then I did a separate produce bag with things like:

• Cucumbers
• Peppers
• Oranges
• Apples
• Carrots

I also packed a separate bag of room-temperature snacks.

Nothing about this was intended to replace every meal on the trip.

It’s just food insurance.

And as it turned out, we needed it almost immediately.

Jumbo Shells, Round Two

Before we left, I still needed to feed everyone lunch.

We had jumbo shells left from yesterday, so I basically recreated the kids’ favorite pizza-in-a-shell lunch.

It also helped me finish a bunch of little odds and ends in the refrigerator before leaving town.

Great idea in theory.

Except I lovingly put every topping into its own little container again.

And then I looked at my kitchen before we needed to leave and realized I’d created an entire collection of dishes for myself to wash.

Why?

I should have put everything on one plate and said:

Deal with it. Some of the foods are touching.

But no.

I served it exactly the way they like it.

And then I washed all the containers.

And We’re Off

We dropped off the kids, loaded everything into the car and started driving toward St. Louis.

And then, about two hours into the trip, just before Indianapolis:

Low tire pressure.

Excellent.

We pulled over, checked the tire and added a little air.

Then we found a Costco in Indiana that was reasonably close to our route and decided we’d feel better having someone look at it.

They couldn’t fit us in.

But by then, the tire-pressure warning had gone off, everything looked okay and we needed to keep moving.

So we did.

So far, so good.

And This Is Why I Packed the Cooler

The tire situation cost us the time we would have used to stop for dinner.

And we had somewhere we needed to be in St. Louis.

So instead of stopping, we opened the cooler.

Grilled chicken.

Hummus.

Peppers and other vegetables.

Basically a little charcuterie-style dinner in the car.

Was this the dinner I had planned?

No.

But it was exactly the reason I packed all that food.

Sometimes I pack food for a trip and we barely touch it.

And then sometimes a tire-pressure light comes on in Indiana and suddenly I’m extremely pleased with Past Me.

Cocktail Hour…Then Five Guys

We made it to St. Louis, checked in, got dressed and headed to a cocktail reception for content creators attending the Fulton Sheen beatification.

Which is still a very strange sentence for me to say.

Then afterward, we realized our little chicken-and-hummus dinner had done its job, but we definitely wanted something warm and more substantial.

Chris remembered that we had an Uber Eats credit.

Excellent.

So he ordered Five Guys to the hotel.

After the credit, I think we only ended up paying a couple extra dollars.

And eating a hot burger in a hotel room after a long travel day, a tire-pressure detour, car charcuterie and a cocktail reception?

Exactly right.

So we made it to St. Louis.

The tire made it to St. Louis.

The cooler system already proved its worth.

And tomorrow is the big day.