A Blur of a Summer Hurtling Toward Road Trip Planning: Paleo Nonperishable Snack Ideas

Greetings, fellow summertimers!

It is my first summer after a full public school year; my oldest daughter wrapped up kindergarten last month, and ever since then, we've found ourselves in a strong undertow of summer scheduling. Summer means many things:

• Swim lessons for both girls, speech therapy, and occupational therapy soaking up much of the mornings
• Dependably long, solid naptimes (wahoo! so I usually get to nap, too!)
• More time outdoors in general, especially in our back yard and garden
• Grilling
• 8:30 pm bedtimes for our girls owing to the later sunsets
• Me trying to squeeze hot yoga and CrossFit in around the margins of such packed days

I guess it should be little wonder that I've found myself thinking in circles, drafting blog posts in the back of my head, but seeming to never sit down and lay out what has been rocking our world lately.

One thing that galvanized my meandering thoughts into sharp focus today, though, was a long road trip that we have on the horizon. Though it is weeks away, planning road trip sustenance can never happen too early - especially when one of your trippers is a 3 year old with major food sensitivity issues. (For those of you just joining us, we are currently experimenting with my sensory daughter's diet, and right now are combining a gluten free casein free approach with low salicylate content.) We have a hotel stay involved, so I was trying to figure out ways to prepare our own food in the hotel room. Hotel-provided breakfasts are notoriously carby and gluten-y, so by now I have learned not to depend on any hotel/restaurant when feeding my food-sensitive daughter while travelling. One genius suggestion from Twitter pointed me in the direction of an inexpensive single burner hot plate, which I ordered and received last week from Amazon. Hooray for our first go at frying breakfast eggs in the comfort of our hotel room!

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While visiting my folks today, we stopped by the Trader Joe's in their town. I love Trader Joe's. I joke that it is probably for the best that we do not have a TJ's in our own town...other wise I'd be that much poorer for it!

We bought some of our Trader Joes' favorites, like their inexpensive organic free range chicken drumsticks and uncured bacon ends. We also bought some cashews, beef jerky, wild salmon jerky, and other unsweetened dried fruits. I plan on saving most of these nonperishables for our road trip.

You'll also notice the 1 lb. of smoked wild salmon peeking out. This is no everyday treat; I turn 30 this week.
Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeee. :)

I'm stowing our road trip nonperishables in a
Sterilite container to keep them from getting
"accidentally" consumed by browsing snackers
in the time leading up to the trip.

As I said, a lot of forethought is going into the road trip menu.

• My 3 year old will need lots of low-salicylate options that are free of gluten and dairy. For us this means starting with a paleo template and customizing.
  Food sensitivity appropriate nonperishables for her: Jerkies (beef, salmon, bacon), organic rice crackers.
• For my 6 year old, I will prepack lots of little snacks to hand back as necessary. Kid-friendly nonperishable ideas for her include: Jerkies, snack size bags with homemade fruit-and-nut trail mixes, Mariani granola bars (They are honey, fruit, and nuts, love'em for her! We get them at Wal-Mart.), and sunbutter or canned tuna in olive oil with organic rice crackers.
• For me, my usual 3-4 weekly yoga classes and 3-5 weekly CrossFit classes will not be an option. I'll be going from highly active to fairly sedentary on this trip, so I must dial my carb intake way down in order to compensate for the reduced activity levels. My road trip munchies will therefore be by and large low carb to control cravings and manage hunger hormones.
  Low carb nonperishables for me: Jerkies, cashews, homemade spiced nut mix, jarred kalamata olives, coconut cream concentrate, coconut milk (often in coffee), 99-100% cacao chocolate, canned tuna.

My husband does not have any particular needs, so he will be eating from among all of our nonperishables.

Nonperishables aren't going to be our only packed food; we'll also be packing a huge cooler full of various meats, eggs, fruits, and veggies for us all when the time comes. But, you can bet that when I'm starting to throw things into that cooler, I'll be glad that I'd already mostly packed the nonperishables way ahead of time!

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How are you managing travel with your dietary needs this summer? Have you stumbled across any great ideas for keeping your diet grounded in an endless sea of processed food options?

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