How to eat while traveling, even with dietary restrictions

Eating out at restaurants is hard enough when you have to worry about food sensitivities, so traveling with dietary restrictions can seem nearly impossible. 

When we travel, we almost always stay somewhere with a full kitchen. We did this most nights even when we were moving across the country and just spending a night or two in each place. 

We currently aren’t dealing with any food restrictions other than my youngest can’t eat straight eggs, but this was even more helpful when we were more restricted. Either way, not having to eat out for every meal saves lots of money and makes me feel better since it’s hard to find quality food when eating out. So, here are a few things I do to make eating easier while on the road:

• I pack some quality salt, cinnamon, and a few seasoning blends so we don’t have to buy these at our destination.
• I also bring quality olive oil for cooking and salads if we are driving (I’d rather not pack this if we are flying and we’ll just buy a small jar when we get there).
• I bring just a few glass food storage containers to make storing leftovers easy (the hotel kitchen isn’t usually stocked with these). Usually, these are filled with road/plane snacks for the trip there. Our favorite on-the-go meal to pack is tuna chickpea salad.
• We plan on eating out a few times so we don’t feel stressed about having to cook every meal. 
• We make salad dressing simply with olive oil and lemon (we make homemade dressing at home too).
• We cook up a ton of food at dinner to have leftovers throughout the trip.
• We buy a few staple veggies like carrots, broccoli, and potatoes and cook them up in different ways throughout the week. I normally try to get lots of variety in our diet but this just doesn’t happen on vacation and that’s ok!
• I always get greens (spinach or kale) to stick in whatever we can like eggs or ground beef for tacos.
• If we are driving, I’ll occasionally pack a crock pot or instant pot for easy meals. An instant pot or other type of multi-cooker is a great option if you aren’t staying somewhere with a kitchen.

Spice Blends:

Adobo seasoning or something similar is great for chicken and veggies.

Homemade taco seasoning:

2 tbl chili powder
4 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano, garlic powder, and onion powder

Meal planning and grocery shopping for vacation is always a challenge to try to have as little leftovers and food waste as possible by the end of the trip. Here are some typical things we eat that work well for leftovers and re-purposing a few staple ingredients.

Breakfasts: 

Oatmeal sweetened with cinnamon, applesauce, bananas, and/or raisins. 

Yogurt with fruit and granola. 

Eggs, breakfast meat, potatoes, toast

Breakfast burritos

Snacks:

In-season fruit

Chips & salsa

Crackers (I found these for this most recent trip)

Peanut butter or sunflower seed butter with fruit

Raw veggies (we like carrots and bell peppers)

Grass fed beef sticks (usually brought from home)

Nuts & seeds (usually brought from home)

Lunches: 

Peanut butter/sunbutter and fruit sandwiches

Deli meat or veggie sandwiches

Dinner leftovers

Dinners: 

Baked chicken with veggie sides (like carrots, broccoli, potatoes, frozen peas)

Taco night

Burgers or veggie burgers

Pasta dish like spaghetti and meatballs, cauliflower mac & cheese or tuna casserole.

Here’s what you would probably find on our grocery list, depending what’s in season/on sale. I wouldn’t necessarily buy all of this, for example – I’d just pick a few veggies depending on what we were eating that week.

Carrots
Potatoes
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Lettuce
Spinach
Cucumber
Red peppers
Greens

Bananas
Seasonal fruit
Avocados

Applesauce
Raisins
Oats
Sandwich bread
Peanut or sunflower seed butter

Canned beans
Rice
Pasta

Eggs
Coconut yogurt

Organic chicken thighs
Grass-fed ground beef
Deli meat (if we can find good quality)

Our main goal is to make it simple and to end up with as little left over at the end of the week as possible. We never plan anything for our last dinner or breakfast, we just eat what’s left or go out if needed. Hope this is helpful, and makes traveling a little less intimidating for you!