How To Pack Your Food For Car Camping Trip

hey everybody I'm Nick Peltier and today we're going to be talking about what we pack and how we pack our food for an extended car camping trip what I've got in front of me is mainly our dry food and our storage containers that we will be using when we are actually on site now we'll go over some of the frozen foods that we will be taking with us but I don't want them thawing out on me while we're recording this video so before I get into the specifics of what we actually bring with us here I want to give just a few tips and some clarifications the first is that you have to determine how long you're going to be away and the second is that you really need a meal plan because if you don't do this you might find yourself with not enough food or you might find yourself with too much food yes you can pack too much food and here are a few reasons why you definitely don't want to number one is that if you don't use it you don't want going bad nor do you want to be throwing it away number two is that the more things you have the more difficult it is for you to get things when you need them for example you don't want to be digging through the back of your car especially late at night looking for some specific kin or food item because you have all this excess stuff that you really don't need and third is that the more that you have the less room you have for other things including yourself this is gonna be even more important if you have a smaller car with multiple kids if you're going on a long extended trip the last thing you want is things packed around your feet and you're uncomfortable on a long drive so some other things to keep in mind is that this is not an end all of what you have to bring or this is the only way to do it this is just a perspective so again this is for a family of five and it's gonna look a whole lot different if you're a family of eight or if you're just a couple or if you're going three days as opposed to five seven or ten eventually through the process you're gonna learn what works for you and the number of people that you're bringing with you on any of these trips alright so let's get started so we take with us these Clif bars there's basically two different types chokolate chip and crunchy peanut butter we get these from Costco they come in a bulk box those are really good we kind of keep them like that easy to store when we pack in the car we also have with us these protein builder bars again just adds a little bit of variety a little bit more protein for when we're out there hiking and doing physical activity so we just have a package of rice that go along with one of our meals that we have planned we have raw organic honey we bring this basically with us for our teas we have some snack items here obviously somebody wanted to have a few luxuries along with their trip we have some Starbucks coffee sachets here instant oatmeal again this is really something that we use so that we can kind of get out really quick in the morning it's going to be a little bit colder where we're going so we want warm breakfast but again something that's quick we can heat it up eat it and be out without a whole lot of mess not a lot of cooking and not a lot for us to really clean up afterwards just in case somebody wants to spice up their instant oatmeal we have a package here of dried fruit April syrup you can't go wrong with maple syrup there's always something you can use maple syrup before as a sweetener somebody wants to have pancakes or something like that we also have cold cereals but it's packaged in such a way that it's really quick and easy to grab and so each person has one we also packed with US olive oil that's kind of what we use for all of our cooking on our cast iron so here's another luxury item hot chocolate we have it basically measured out and this is a really good example of what I want to talk about with regards to downsizing so this is the original container this is basically what I have for one night as opposed to having this big container again we're not going to go through this in a week if we did that would be pretty crazy and so bringing a big container like this is a real pain in the neck and it takes up way too much space so another item we have here is basically our tea kit so we haven't here all different types of teas some of these are for early in the morning and breakfast and these are also kind of part of our first-aid kit that's why we bring so much hunting with us god forbid anybody gets sick or gets a cold there's nothing like having some hot tea when you're sick to kind of soothe your throat and this is our spice container so for example here we have our pepper and we have another container here I think that is chili powder or cayenne pepper and then we have our oregano and we have salt I think there's some other spice packages in here for specific meals taco seasoning mix and [Music] for chilly well for the most part these are the main things that when we kind of use for spicing our food up let's go into our next container here and we've got some canned goods and we've got some different mixes for when we're out hiking as well so we have some dried fruits again these are items that we probably take with us when we're hiking these are chili spiced mango this is a trail mix looks like we have some mango banana chips and cashews so this is packed in a way that we know that maybe this is going in one person's backpack for a day we have the American traditional item some chocolate Hershey's chocolate some marshmallows and you definitely need with that of course graham crackers so for some people these things might seem like they're really excessive items that are definitely not necessary when you're going out camping or hiking but again we've got kids with us and we're trying to relax trying to have some fun so we don't really pack a whole lot of items like that but we definitely want to have a few of them around just kind of relax around the campfire at some point then we have a pack of dates again these store really well and they're good for energy so that's another item that we'll have along with us whenever we're out hiking then we have our canned goods we've got tuna sandwiches it's a real quick and easy item again for us a lot of times the priority is not having these extravagant meals otherwise we'd be cooking lasagna out in the woods but for us a lot of times it's how quick can we get to the food because when you are hungry you just want to eat got some tomato paste we have coconut milk we've got some diced tomatoes more Thai coconut milk and we've got some vegetarian baked beans probably for chili and we've got some red beans and some more red beans so again if you look at this for the most part this is our tallest can and it's gonna fit right here you can't fit a can on top of a can inside of this container and that's basically because we don't want it to want to just be able to look in really quick see what it is that we need and get it out just some other items that we'll have with us we have some juice boxes again these store pretty well have organic juice boxes for the kids we some vegetables with us that will be cooking which we have some carrots potatoes onions as well as a pepper those are just to add to our meals I'm sure this is just out for display but we have a whole lot of apples that we'll bring with us for the kids so again looking at some of the items that we will put in our cooling system we have here a smaller bottle of ketchup again downsizing this or this when it comes to space you want to really make sure that you have this smallest container that you really need so we have some buffalo sauce mayonnaise container and small mustard container last thing I have up here for now is our eggs so you can get these egg containers at REI I think Walmart also sells them probably Academy some other outdoor stores you're gonna be able to find them pretty easily you could get them on Amazon and again this is just to protect the eggs so that anything does hit the egg it's not necessarily going to break it okay so I got out some of the food items that will be packing in our Yeti cooler again I'm going to do a complete video about all of our frozen foods and how we packed them along with the dry ice to make sure that they not only stay cold but frozen throughout the duration of our trip so let's just try to knock them out one by one we've got some beef franks hot dogs that we're gonna have those are definitely things that we cook at night by the campfire we also have chicken this is basically cut and diced up this is probably for coconut chicken curry and we have another one here that is for chicken fajitas it's really important that again we keep everything in these plastic bags that way we can see exactly what we're looking for but we've flattened them so that they're very easy for us to stack and pack into the cooler these are frozen juices basically what I'll do is I will cut this in half and I will put them into plastic containers because for the most part if I want to put all of this into a container I need a really big container and if I cut it in half I can basically put it into my liter bottle and then mix it up for the most part we normally drink water throughout the trip but it's nice to have a little bit of a mix up every once in a while ice cream totally a luxury item for soompi people must have in our family you're definitely the coolest person in the park if you are in the middle of the Smoky Mountains and you're eating Ben & Jerry's or Bluebell the cool thing about having a yeti cooler with dry ice is that this will definitely keep frozen you have some ground turkey using that for I think our chili you have turkey sausages here turkey bacon we have some turkey cold cuts for sandwiches this is our banana bread we'll keep that frozen until we start to eat it and this is definitely a really really good option for quick breakfasts in the morning and this is our cauliflower rice stir-fry so a lot of our meals that we have are basically packaged as such they're packaged as meals so we basically grab that meal and we cook it as fast as we can some nights we might have some chicken burgers we also have turkey burgers also bring with us a package of cheese again it's pretty compact so the only things that we don't really have up here right now our bread and our dairy items but again you kind of get the point our idea here is just to show you how will be packaging things what type of containers you might want to use again you can get these at Walmart they're not the only option I'm sure you can probably find many other options other places it's good to keep them clear so that you can see into them so kind of just to recap number one you want to think about how long am I gonna be out number two is what are the meals that I'm going to have three the types of activities that I'm going to be doing and how that might affect my meal plan you want to downsize all of the items as much as possible if you can take a smaller container then you absolutely want to do it remember that there's no perfect setup because the end of the day there's too many variables with regards to people's personal preferences alongside of how many days you're going out where you're going to the weather that you're going to be dealing with along with the type of activities that you will be doing so thanks for stopping by hope you really like this video if you did definitely subscribe to our Channel if you have any comments complaints questions suggestions or any advice that you might want to share to the conversation definitely leave that in the comment section below and we'll see you next time

Channel: Nick Pelletier

Views: 129,911

Rating: 4.8195329 out of 5

Keywords: camping, car camping, family trip, food, national parks, tent camping, family camping, food system, road trip, packing food, outdoor enthusiast, the outdoor enthusiast, wilderness, bushcraft, hiking, survival

Id: Y5V3lnCvi1I

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017