Meal schedule while traveling
If you want to travel efficiently and have time to see the world around you, you won’t be sitting there 3 times a day, making a complex warm meal. I usually stick with two warm meals a day – breakfast and dinner. Breakfasts should be filling and calorie-dense to keep you full for as long as possible. Then some snacks come in, and in the evening, after the distance for the day is covered, it’s time for dinner. This meal should be protein-rich and include some type of comfort food (preferably healthy, of course), helping you to regenerate, relax, and prepare for sleep. Don’t overcomplicate your diet. Dishes should be easy to make, preferably in one vessel, and hard to mess up.
Where to cook?
Finding a proper place to cook is yet another story. You can cook right outside your car, of course, given that you use a stove, but that’s not always an option. Weather, lack of space, or local regulations can make it difficult to cook near your car. In populated areas, you can use some publicly available shelters or picnic tables with benches as your cooking spot. A roofed shelter is especially nice during rainy weather. Don’t cook near other vehicles, cause their owners might not like the idea of you playing with fire and swinging pans around next to their car. Be mindful of your surroundings, and cook only in places where it won’t bother anyone. Just be considerate.
When in the wilderness, you should observe the environment to choose the right spot. Don’t cook on humid, soft ground or bog, cause the stove will wobble and your clothes will get soaking wet. Try to find a place sheltered from the wind. If you’re making a campfire, make sure it’s safe. I wrote 2 whole articles about finding the right spot to cook and making a cooking station. You’ll find more detailed info here:
https://bush-cook.com/2025/03/12/how-to-start-finding-the-right-spot-to-cook/
https://bush-cook.com/2025/04/02/how-to-start-making-the-fire-pit-and-the-cooking-station/
If the weather is bad, you can also make a tarp shelter and cook underneath it with your stove. If you cook over a fire, dig the fire pit in front of the shelter, not inside of it – hot air and sparks will be going straight up, and if they reach your tarp they can cause serious damage.
Snacking while driving
If you’re travelling with someone else that’s not a big problem – they can hand you some food over or even feed you while you’re driving. It’s a lot harder to eat while driving when you’re alone, so you have to prepare yourself for that.
When driving alone, you should select the snacks you want to eat and keep them within easy reach of the driver’s seat. I usually put my snacks on the passenger’s seat, but some shelves and other compartments may work too – every car is different. The food should be stored in bags or boxes that are easy to open with one hand, even without looking. I usually use paper bags and some lidless plastic boxes. When planning on eating sandwiches, unwrap them before departure – wrappers can be a pain in the ass to get rid of blindly and singlehandedly while driving.
Don’t choose loose or crumbly foods, e.g. crisps, grains, seeds etc. They’ll make a mess and will be difficult to eat singlehandedly. Once, I bought some sunflower seeds to eat while driving, and I can still find them in the deeper crevices of my car to this day. Choose dense foods that stay in one piece after you bite them.
You should always have something to drink at hand. Normal bottles with screw-on caps are useless and annoying for this purpose. Use a sports water bottle with a cap that you can unlock just with your mouth or one finger. The same thing applies to drinking coffee – find a thermos or thermal mug with a lid that can be unlocked with one simple move of a finger or your teeth.
It’s also a good idea to always have some chewing gum on hand. When you lose focus, you can start chewing on one – the constant movement of your facial muscles will keep you awake and concentrated on driving, while not adding any unnecessary calories to your daily intake.
