Long boondocking trips: A fresh foodie's challenge

Boondocking/Dry Camping

April 17, 2010

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By Bob Difley

Food supplies usually don’t limit the number of consecutive days you can boondock, like a full holding tank or an empty water tank does. Canned, dry, and packaged foods will keep for months. Frozen foods a bit less. The food items that will put limits on your camping trip are those you forgot, ran out of, or only eat fresh–and their importance depends on your culinary lifestyle.

There are those among you that place a high priority on fresh local food, and, like my wife, will drive 50 miles to obtain fresh vegetables and salad greens. (She actually has driven from the Mogollon Rim in Arizona down to the Phoenix area because the quality and variety of vegetables and greens available locally was not to her standards. Forget what she spent on gas for the trip.)

So in an attempt to limit the number of such trips, here are some tips for getting the most distance and time from your fresh food purchases.

Milk will keep for a week if kept refrigerated. Then you can replace it with powdered or canned milk to stretch a few more days.
Salad greens will last about five days. But those sold in sealed plastic bags will keep for about a week if unopened, then another four to five days once opened.
Use other tossed salad ingredients that have staying power, such as radishes, onions, jicama, cucumbers, and red and yellow bell peppers.
Fish frozen at sea when fresh caught is not only the tastiest compared to fresh, but will keep in the freezer for weeks.
Shop the local farmers’ markets, farm stands, and U-pick farms and orchards for fresh-out-of-the-field veggies, rather than supermarket veggies that have already aged by the time they hit the shelves.
Keep veggies in the refrigerator to extend their shelf life.
Root vegetables keep well if kept cool, like carrots, potatoes, turnips, and parsnips. Collard greens keep well if refrigerated. Winter squash keeps very well in a cool, dry place–not in frig. Think root cellars–dark, cool, good air circulation–before refrigeration was invented.
Ask the fruit orchard farmer for a cross-section of ripeness, with some ready to eat now, to others that will take the longest to ripen–and how to tell when the fruit is ready to eat. Apples and oranges will last a long time.
Ask the farmer if he has any older produce that he is about to throw away and will sell to you at a discount. Use this to make sauces, soups, and stews in quantity that you can freeze to eat later.
Fresh herbs–not dried–like marjoram, sage and rosemary, will keep in their original boxes if you place a piece of paper towel in with them.

Plan your meals ahead of your trip, and select the ingredients for those recipes. Try not to over buy. Twenty percent of land fills is discarded food, not only a waste of food but a waste of money as well.

When you have a chance, check out my eBooks for more tips on boondocking and saving money on the road: Boondocking: Finding the Perfect Campsite on America’s Public Lands and 111Ways to Get the Biggest Bang Out of Your RV Lifestyle Buck.