Traveling While Doing GAPS

We love traveling and staying at "who-tels" (as my children used to refer to them), probably because we don't get to do it very often.  So the first thing we thought when we found out we would need to stay overnight one night for the soccer tournament was  "Yay!" 

But I quickly followed that up by thinking, "What are we going to eat since we're still doing GAPS?"

When Jas and I went away together to the marriage conference a few months ago, I packed meals for the two of us.  We were gone for 2 nights.  That gave me a taste of what planning this trip would be like - albeit for 5 fewer people. 

That meant I needed to put my thinking/planning cap on.  

To make things more interesting, G is still also having to avoid dairy and eggs (in addition to the regular GAPS restrictions).  So I had to keep that in mind, and bring some additional items for him, to substitute for items we were eating that he can't have yet.  

These are the Coconut Lime Gelatin Treats I made with G in mind.  (This is *not* made from Jell-O...this is Gelatin from Grass-fed Cows...so good for us!)  He LOVED them...but so did the rest of us, so I had to watch and make sure the rest of us didn't eat all of G's treats!

Jason made these yummy meatballs with some of the beef we just filled our freezer with.  They are just ground beef and spices, baked.  (We leave out eggs because of G)

For our Saturday late-morning snack we brought smoothies.  This is a picture of G's dairy-free smoothies, made the same as ours except he had coconut milk in there instead of kefir.  

We boiled 12 eggs to bring with us for (part of) breakfast on Sunday morning.
We peeled them at home and brought them in a (large-ish) old repurposed pickle jar so they wouldn't get squished.

Here is what our menu ended up looking like:

Saturday
Breakfast - Chai-Spiced Muffins, Scrambled Eggs (we got up early Sat. a.m., ate breakfast at home and hit the road, jack!)

(Late morning - drink smoothies in the van, just before arriving at fields)

Lunch (after 1st game) - Chicken Salad (with homemade mayo), sliced apples, carrot sticks

Supper - Smoked Sausage, sliced cheese, peanut butter brownies


Sunday
Breakfast - Cinnamon-swirl Bars, boiled eggs

Lunch - Tuna salad (with homemade mayo), sliced apples, carrot sticks

Supper - Meatballs (with sauce for dipping), sliced cheese



Extra snacks for between meals:
Avocados, Bananas, Oranges, Apples, Cashews, Almonds, Pâté, Homemade Cheese Crackers, Banana Walnut Bars, Coconut Lime Gelatin Treats, Banana Chips, Plantain Chips






All of the above items are GAPS-friendly, but some of them are definitely what I would consider "treats"...things we don't have every day, since at least 80% of our diet should consist of nutrient-dense broths/meats/veggies.  We definitely need to keep in check our nuts (too high in omega-6s to rely on too heavily), baked goods, and "chips", even if they are plantain and banana chips.  It's not that these things are "bad" for us...they just would displace other things that are better for us if we let them.

When we're at home, we focus on getting home-fermented items (sauerkraut or carrots, etc.) and broth every day (multiple times a day actually) but since this was only a 2-day trip, I felt ok about leaving that part of the GAPS healing protocol off.

Very Important Tip That Made My Life Easier:  I made our menu about a week or so ahead of time...and that was key.  This way it enabled me to not have to do special baking and fixing just for the trip.  Instead, for example, when we had Cinnamon-Swirl Bars for breakfast a few days before the trip, I just set extra aside in the freezer for the trip.  When we roasted some chicken for supper a few days before the trip, I set aside some of the pulled chicken meat in the freezer, so we would have that for chicken salad.


Bottom line from packing our GAPS-friendly food for this past weekend:

This totally worked out better and easier than I had even hoped it would.  It literally just took me sitting down and thinking through it and planning out the menu for the two days we'd be gone.

I always bring too much food when we're packing for a trip (like when Jas and I used to frequently go tent-camping when we lived in Colorado).  I'm just always nervous about running out of food...and this time, with us doing GAPS, it would have been much harder to make do if we'd run out of food.  We didn't even end up eating all of the food we brought.  No problem, we've just been finishing it up here since we arrived back home.

Now, to start figuring out what we're going to do for our upcoming annual TWO WEEK trip to the beach....