Guest Post: Feeding the family on a car journey
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Feeding the family on a car journey
When it comes to feeding a family during a long car journey, an old adage applies: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. If you travel without sufficient supplies, you could be at the mercy of over-priced service stations, garage sandwiches and rocket fuel coffee.
Follow our guidelines below to help ensure that the whole family is fed and watered for your journey.
Feeding the adults
Follow our guidelines below to help ensure that the whole family is fed and watered for your journey.
Feeding the adults
It’s very easy to focus all of your attention on getting the food right for the children, but you also have to think about yourself and any other adults in the car.
You might think you can dash into a service station and pick something up, but this is a surefire way to rack up a very expensive bill.
A simple packed lunch should be fine for most journeys. A couple of homemade sandwiches will be far cheaper than a service station sandwich, and should be a whole lot tastier to boot!
A flask of tea or coffee will stay warm for around six hours, and again will save you a lot of money.
Feeding the kids
This is the big challenge. The best way to approach the journey with children in mind is to have a list of what not to bring.
Fizzy drinks, sweets, chocolate and fast foods should all be off the menu where possible. This is going to be difficult for some parents, but steering your kids away from this stuff – especially on a long car journey, can only be a good thing.
All of the above foods are going to give children a sugar rush, which is likely to see them hyper one minute and irritable and moody the next. Chocolate and fast food are also notoriously messy to eat. Unless you want to be scraping chocolate off your back seat and finding cold fries down the gaps for weeks, you need to come up with something more sensible.
Healthy can be fun
The thought of a healthy snack is enough to make most kids run a mile, but if you make them fun, you might just get a better response. Cutting fruit up into smiley faces might seem labour intensive, but if it gets them eating the good stuff then it is worth it.
Most children have a sweet tooth, so fruits like pears, strawberries and blackcurrants should appeal to their taste buds.
Bring plenty, and keep it cool!
A six-hour trip can easily turn into ten if you hit some really bad traffic, so you should always cater for a longer-than-planned journey.
Boost supplies with things like cereal bars, boxes of raisins and other healthy packaged snacks that will be good for another day if they don’t get eaten on the journey.
Any perishable goods should be kept in a cool box. Things like carrot sticks, sliced fruit and yogurts will be fine on a normal journey, but will be that bit tastier if they are kept cool.
Snack in the back, meals not on wheels!
Food can play an important part in keeping children content on long car journeys. Having those healthy snacks to hand could be useful if there are any back seat flare-ups during your trip.
Eating away from the car is a good idea for a couple of reasons. Firstly, kids can make a lot of mess when they eat, so it’s best if it is done away from your car. Secondly, getting the kids out of the car will break up the journey for them.
It’s very easy for children to get a bit stir crazy when they’re in a car, so let them stretch their legs and get some fresh air. Finding a nice picnic spot is always a good idea, and a safe place with a bit of green space will mean that your children can run around and let off some steam.
Don’t overlook other important things when you are planning a trip. Having adequate car insurance
and roadside recovery is just as important as bringing the right food along.
Author Bio:
Jeremy Chapman writes car related articles for the Sainsbury’s Bank Money Matters Blog. In his spare time, he loves nothing more than cruising coastal roads in his old camper van with the whole family in tow.
