4/23/2012

Thought I would write a little today about fixing food on the road.

My current workplace/home

A lot of drivers don't think that they can eat healthy on the road because of the space problems as well as the lack of a kitchen, so they grab fast food or even worse, junk food at the truck stops. Seems these day that all of the truck stops have abandoned selling any kind of healthy choices for us, guess it's the old profit margin thing, the good news is even with very little space and some careful shopping you can eat well and eat for your health.

In my last post I gave the food plan that I have been using for the past 14 months that has been responsible for my now 165 lb weight loss and the reversal of my diabetes. This food plan costs me about 70 to 80 dollars a week to eat on and I am seldom ever hungry. The biggest “secret” to this food plan is shopping at Wall Mart.

Typical Lunch on Food plan

Most Wall Marts are truck friendly and have big enough parking lots for us to park in without problems, please be courteous and don't overstay your welcome or that may change in the future and for God's sake don't dump your pee bottle in their lot!

Wall mart is carrying a plain wrapper brand now that provides almost everything that I need, it's called Great Value and it really is a great value, not only that, but Great Value brand doesn't add all kinds of unnecessary ingredients like sugar or extra salt, and unlike previous plain wrapper brands the food actually tastes good.

You will also note in my food plan that I use a lot of salad, there is a secret here too. Buy the 12 oz. bags of pre-cut salad, why? Because it wont go limp on you for at least 6 days. The pre-cut salad is packaged in nitrogen and as long as you keep it at about 38 degrees Fahrenheit and don't puncture or open the bag, wilting wont take place. I use an ice chest in my truck and the salad keeps just fine for a week. Longer than a week or if I let the chest go over a day without ice then I will have some loss.

Concerning salad dressing, I use GV's Italian dressing it is somewhat lo-cal very good tasting isn't loaded full of sugar and is cheap. One of the big bottles last all week.

You really don't need a microwave or hot plate to eat on this food plan. I didn't have a microwave in my truck for a long time and the only problem I ever encountered was on those rare days that I had to park somewhere where a microwave was not available then I had lunch for breakfast and had breakfast when I could get to a microwave, my oatmeal was the only thing that needed to be cooked as I bought pre-cooked meats (look in the freezer section of Wall Mart).. The Great Value brand sells pre-cooked chicken patties (don't get the breaded ones) that weigh 3 oz each so I didn't even need a kitchen scale. Read the labels and know what you are looking for in portion size and it's easy enough to figure out. The same brand also sells pork and turkey sausage which is delicious and will hold in an ice chest for a week without spoilage. In some Wall Marts, Great Value also has pre-cooked hamburger patties that also weigh 3 oz's. It does take a little looking to find these items but they are there in most of the super stores.

One quick note about oatmeal. All oatmeal is “quick oats” don't let the merchandisers fool you into paying more than you have to. Follow the directions (½ cup dry oats and 1 cup water) and watch that it doesn't boil over in the microwave. I do not use sugar but I do flavor my oats with about a half teaspoon of cinnamon and sometimes cut up my apple or orange and add to it.

For dishes I use Rubermaid resealable containers, they can be used in a microwave and they double as storage containers ( they are cheap too) cleanup is easy, just wipe with a paper towel until you can get to a sink with hot water.

Well, that's it for now, happy trucking.