In this post I will be talking about the food I ate while camping the last couple weekends and how I managed to cook it all. I hope this post will be of use to you, both to understand that you're not alone, as well as give you some tips on how to pack, cook, and store the right food. Whether you go camping or not, these meals can be cooked whenever and wherever.
Let me first say that I know food is a hard subject. It's hard for me to read or even think about food sometimes. I have had gastroparesis for over a year now, and it has been difficult for me to eat and find food. For awhile I was so irritated because I had to be picky at party's and restaurants and not eat things I really loved.
Now that I have Hashimoto's on top of gastroparesis, I think about how silly I was for thinking that my gp diet was hard. Now, my diet is even MORE limited: I am gluten, dairy, egg, whole seed/nut, raw fruit, raw vegetable, red meat (mostly), and soy free. The only exception to these is ghee, which is butter without the proteins like lactose in it that can be tough for digestion. A lot of people that cannot tolerate dairy, do okay with ghee. I also only eat organic food now, leaving out nightshade and gassy (cruciferous) vegetables, and keep my sugar intake extremely low, especially for added sugars.
That's kind of crazy, right? Even with all of this though, I can still eat, enjoy life, and travel! If you don't have Hashimoto's, and you're struggling to eat with gp or just eat healthier in general, please remember that it’s an adjustment and it does get better with time and effort. I'm hoping this post will give you some inspiration to start being creative with your meals!
A couple weekends ago my boyfriend and I went camping with some of his family along the coast of Maine and it was great. We had a lot of fun and I was able to eat quite a bit because I planned ahead of time. In fact, about a week before the trip I wrote out what I wanted to eat, what I needed to buy, and how I was going to cook it. It went so well that the week after (this past weekend) we decided to camp again just my bf and I.
-Here is what I ate-
Note: everything mentioned is gluten, dairy, soy, egg, red meat, raw fruit and raw vegetable free.
Day 1-
We arrived at the campground in the late afternoon, so we only had to prepare dinner. My boyfriend had precooked some turkey burgers in the morning and wrapped them in aluminum foil, so when we got to our campsite all we had to do was heat them up to eat. I use Ener-g brand gluten-/dairy-/egg- free bread as a bun. I also had some gluten/grain and soy free chips on the side.
Day 2-
Breakfast: I prebaked some chocolate muffins at home and heated them over the campfire to toast them.
Snack: We ended up going on a hike so when we got to the top I had a coconut protein drink (ordered off of ThriveMarket- Aloha brand) and some grain free chips.
Lunch: I made a sandwich with pre-cooked chicken pieces, Forager's plant-based yogurt, and the Ener-g bread, with some more chips as a side.
Snack: In the car I ate a small cup of apple sauce.
Dinner: We baked sweet potatoes in the campfire by wrapping them in aluminum foil and just setting them in the pit, though it took awhile for them to fully bake. While they were going, I cooked some onion and zucchini in a cast iron.
Day 3-
Breakfast: There ended up being leftover sweet potato and onion from yesterday's dinner, so I heated them back up. Adding a bit of maple syrup to the sweet potato made for a little extra sweetness. I also had another chocolate muffin toasted over the fire.
Lunch: For lunch we were on the go so we ended up making a quick stop along the road and I made a chicken salad sandwich using Forager's plant yogurt and bread. This meal was quick and a great source of protein.
Dinner: we ended up being home for dinner so we made pork loin and some veggies.
I put together some snacks to have throughout the trip, for when we were hiking or just exploring around. These included coconut protein drinks, applesauce, chips, and even some salted paleo coconut puffs we found in a store along the way. I also always bring tea! I drink tea quite a bit, but for camping I make sure to bring at least peppermint and ginger tea incase my stomach gets upset. For energy I have been using matcha. This seems to settle well with my stomach, but you should try it out at home before going on a trip.
To pack it all, I ended buying a new cooler that was quite a bit larger than the other two I had. I found one off of Amazon for only $25 and it worked great. To keep everything cool, we picked up a couple of bags of ice; we ended up only having to buy one more while we were camping to keep the food cold.
Tips:
I find helpful is to only bring what you'll need food wise, so you can fit it all nicely in a cooler without having to worry about any of it going bad. For example, I knew I only needed 4 coconut wraps, two for me and two for my boyfriend, so I only brought that instead of the whole package of 7. Same with the potatoes; even though they would keep fine outside of the cooler, it's nice to save space and only bring what you know you'll actually use.
I also had supplements that I needed to keep cool, but not ice cold in the big cooler. This was also harder to do since it was 80+ degrees outside. I ended up using a small lunch bag, and stored the pills in there with a small ziplock bag of some ice cubes. I did not bring whole bottles of supplements though! I only took the amount of pills I needed for the trip, in a travel pill case.
Some other food options:
I was able to camp a couple times in the past few weeks and so some other meals I had were:
Dinner: Turkey burger, pieces of chicken, jasmine rice, mushroom, sugar snap peas, and carrots all cooked like a stir fry.
Lunch: Chicken, vegan cheese and mustard sandwich... it was good!
Breakfast: Honey, banana, almond butter and cinnamon cooked in a coconut wrap.
No matter where you go, I hope these meals can be of use to you. Don't stress out in the process of planning for your trip. Try to relax and enjoy your time. Don't obsess over food, but try and plan ahead so that you will get enough calories and protein.
Please let me know if this was helpful to you. In later posts (coming soon), I will be talking about how I pack in general, what you should pack, and what to be mindful of when you are traveling both on weekend getaways, longer trips and even international adventures.
For more pictures, of this trip, food, and packing, see my Instagram: gphealth_loreal under the highlight "Camping" in my bio... for additional travel tips please see the highlight "Travel Tips".
Stay healthy,
-Loreal
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