Roadtrip Picnicing

[Michael Linehan]

My family consists of four hardy highway veterans.

I'm looking for picnic menu ideas for our next two-week roadtrip in June. We find ourselves tired of the same old lunchmeat-on-a-bun-chips-on-the-side meals every time we stop at mid-day. So if anyone has some creative ideas, please post them here!

The only requirements we have are that the picnic don't use up a huge amount of space in the cooler, and little or no cooking should be required. Remember, we will be on a roadtrip, so cooking meals the night before for the next day's lunch is not truly feasible.

Thanks for your help!

- Michael

[kntheboys]

I have a couple suggestions:

We've done meatless taco salads using a can of pinto or black beans (plus the usual cheese, onions, tomatoes, and a few crushed chips on top served with sour cream and salsa or taco sauce or Western/French dressing).

It depends whether you'd rather have variety or extreme simplicity as to what you can take because if you bring a slow cooker, you can throw boneless, skinless chicken breast in (frozen even) the night before with a little salt and pepper and water and cook all night on low. (To make it even more tasty, use a little lime juice, cumin, chili powder, onions for a "fajita meat".) Then you can have "fajitas" (cold) with cheese, sour cream, guacamole, tomatoes, onions, lettuce all rolled in a tortilla.

You can do the same with ground beef. Just put it in the slowcooker raw (add onions or any seasonings--taco, etc.) and have cold tacos or taco salad with meat.

I've even boiled noodles in a hotel microwave and mixed up a simple chicken, seafood or tuna salad in a ziploc bag.

I use ziploc bags a LOT for food when travelling --takes up less room in the cooler.

We're leaving in a week, and I'm going to cook chicken breasts, burgers and taco meat to have in the cooler the first few days.

These are just a few things that came to mind right away-- hope it helps!