Saturday, October 16, 2010

Taking Lunch on the Road

The last month has been very action packed. Speaking of packed, each day brings a different challenge of lunch packing. Some days the smaller kids stay home with a sitter and don't need a lunch packed, other days they head off to daycare and I need to pack lunches for them as well as their big sister. All of this is good preparation for our upcoming holiday train trip.

We are going from Southern California to Oregon on the train.
It's a 27 hour journey...that means two lunches, one dinner, one breakfast and several snacks (times five people that is 35 "meals"). The train does have a dining car but the logistics and expense of going to the snack car or dining car all together for each meal are daunting. So, I am planning on packing 12 Easylunchboxes of meals, several free-standing snack bags and bringing lots of these Horizon milks in the aeseptic packaging.

Clearly the things I pack need to require little to no refrigeration and will be supplemented by the occasional onboard meal or snack. Bringing a cooler is a logical option except...we have three kids who are four and under which means we are already bringing a lot of gear. As I begin the journey to this journey, I am looking for ideas, tips and suggestions from others who have done this before.

Many of my friends said take the plane as their suggestion...we will do that another time...this is a chance for our little family to bond and learn to travel together without as much restriction as a plane or car. It's a beautiful ride that I last took with my brother 20 years ago!

"This legendary train now features enhanced Coaches and Sleeping Cars, along with exclusive new amenities. The Dining Car offers fresh cuisine served on real china and table linens, while the Arcade Room will entertain kids of all ages with a great selection of arcade-style video games. Coach passengers enjoy big, comfortable seats, plenty of legroom and new, larger pillows, plus available at-seat meal service." (We know where the biggest kid - aka my husband - will be!)

Would love to hear your tips!

2 comments:

  1. We didn't travel by train but we did take a 4 day road trip earlier this year with my daughter and we wanted to eat out as little as possible. Peanut butter sandwiches were great, individual apple sauce containers (in different flavors for variety), small pop top cans of fruit, small pop top cans of tuna with crackers, for breakfast I would do dry cereal or granola bars and milk, raisins, dry cereal, crackers, pretzels, banana chips, other dried fruit.

    Hope this helps.

    Sarah

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  2. Sarah, this is very helpful. I forgot about the small pop-top cans of fruit! This is not the time to use "economies of scale." Great ideas. Thank you!

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