Food is expensive, especially in the countries I’ve been to thus far: New Zealand and Australia, and it’s not much different than food from the U.S. So to save on expenses I’ve cooked about 90% of my meals, only buying food on travel days. I’ve whipped together some pretty decent meals and I feel like my cooking has improved drastically already (out of necessity so I’m not eating instant noodles for over a month), but I’ve also created some pretty ‘interesting dishes’ when I was strapped for ingredients or did want to spend too much on groceries.
So from normal to weird, here are some of the meals I’ve cooked on the road so far:
Normal
Egg and Spam Fried Rice
Baked Chicken and Potatoes
Old Reliable Meal Prep
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Savory Chicken/Cucumber/Onion Crepes
Weird
Sometimes I didn’t have salt, seasoning, or oil, or I was somewhere too remote that anything fresh was extremely expensive. So I had to get a bit creative.
Tongariro Mash
- Microwave 2 potatoes for 2-3 mins, flip over, 2-3 more mins. Then mash.
- Chop up spam into little cubes for some flavor.
- Throw in salted peanuts and some onions for more flavor.
- This requires no salt, no oil, nothing but a microwave.
Outback Breakfast
- Make PB&J
- Make instant noodles
- Break cucumber in half.
- Water.
- Only requires the ability to boil water. No salt or oil needed.
- The salty noodles balance out the sometimes too sweet taste of the PB&J in place of milk.
- Vice versa, the sweet and buttery sandwich serves as a great juxtaposition to the one dimensional cheap instant noodle flavors.
- Cucumber for vegetable, water to wash it all down, both good hydration for a day in the desert.
Raglan Ramen Stew
- Boil water and add instant noodle flavoring package (best with Shin Ramyun Spicy Korean Instant Noodles!)
- Chop and throw in potatoes, onions, tomatoes
- Add noodles
- Crack 1-2 eggs in and mix slightly
- When almost done, chop and throw in broccoli stalk
- Only requires the ability to boil water. No salt or oil needed.
- The instant noodle flavors the potatoes and everything else well.
- Super hearty noodle soup, great for after a cold, windy, winter surf session.
- Good way to soften and eat broccoli stalk.
I now understand why salt used to be so valuable that some people used it as currency, and also why spices were so sought after.