cooking with no kitchen

I say "cooking" lightly. There really is no cooking without a kitchen.

Oh, sure we can throw some stuff in the crock pot and have a delicious meal, but real cooking involves so much more. Like the dicing and sauteing of veggies, the peeling of potatoes and simmering of sauces, the broiling of garlic and the mixing of ingredients. 

Not to mention the not having to wait 6 hours before you can dig in. 

That's torture is what that is. Usually when you cook in a crock pot, you throw it in, and leave your big open house while it cooks, and then when you come home from your shopping and lunches with friends and mani/pedis and all the fun stuff you can do when you're not sitting in a truck traveling 70 mph all day every day...

When you come home from all that, the food is ready to be eaten.

However, if you so happen to be sitting in a truck traveling 70 mph all day every day, and there happens to be something sloooowly cooking away in the crock pot, you smell it. 

If you're not hungry already, you will be. 

There's no airing the truck out. If you dare open the windows more than a crack, all your belongings will soon be scattered all over the USA. And while it certainly does sound like a good reason to go shopping for all new belongings, you simply will not have time to do so, because there is a load to be delivered and as soon as it's delivered, there's another to pick up. 

All you will be left with is the clothes on your back, providing they survived. 

That being said, we love the crock pot!!! 

Because when you have to choose between a slice of truck stop pizza that is dripping in grease and has been sitting under the warmers for who knows how long and a nice hunk of pot roast and carrots, 9 times out of 10 you are going to choose the pot roast.

And trust me, if you have to choose between a truck stop soup bar, and freshly slow cooked chicken and rice, 10 times out of 10 you are going to choose chicken and rice. 

Shucks, even if you have to eat the grease-on-a-crust, you aren't going to eat from the soup bar.

If you are presented with a choice between prepackaged sandwiches and some good old slow cooked pulled pork with BBQ sauce on a premium wheat bun...well the answer is obvious.

And that is why we love the crock pot. It's not as good as real cooking, but it's a luxury we are glad to have.

But, we don't always cook in the crock pot. We have a microwave and we have a huge box full of microwave meals.

I usually eat pastas, like these:

As far as microwave meals go, those are the best.They each come in several different flavors, so there's bound to be something you'll like. 

Jesse usually eats these:

They come in lots of different meals. He's had chicken and rice, meat loaf, some Mexican concoction, raviolis, and lots more.

I don't really care for them. They all seem to have the same underlying flavors, and they are certainly nothing special, but that's just my personal opinion.

Breakfast is the hardest. We have done a sausage egg casserole in the crock pot that was awesome.

I keep a box of cheerios and some milk in the fridge.

I slice up a banana with my spoon-knife and have me a regular old breakfast.

Before we leave, I fry up a pound of sausage patties for Jesse, he eats them on English muffins with mustard. That usually lasts about a week.

When we don't eat cereal and sausage sandwiches, we usually eat a honey bun or a Dole fruit cup.

On occasion I insist we eat out, because when else are we going to eat at the Lone Star Grill or Crazy 'Bout Crawfish? I like to eat at little one of a kind places, and as long as we can get in and out of the parking lot, Jesse doesn't mind eating with me.

By far the best little hole in the wall place was Crazy 'Bout Crawfish, a Cajun cafe in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.

I got the seafood platter, because I couldn't decide on one particular thing.

The food:

some sort of shrimp on rice

super spicy fried shrimp, tail on

crawfish pie

fried crawfish

fried fish fillet

crawfish cheddar jalapeno cornbread

and 3 other things that had foreign names and were really tasty!

We also have some snacks! A typical day consists of a small breakfast, an afternoon snack, and either a crock pot meal, microwave dinner, or eating out somewhere. 

And there you have it, the glamorous life of a foodie stuck in a truck.

It really is quite tortuous at times. I constantly am thinking of things that I can't wait to cook when I get home. For example, deviled eggs, angel food cake, pumpkin pie, a salad with avocado, sausage gravy and biscuits, apples-anything with apples, all foods that I can't fix, and you just can't buy them to taste like you want.

What foods would you miss the most if you didn't have all the comforts of a kitchen?

On a related note-I will be so glad to come and cook for you when I am home! Just let me know in the comments, and I'll text you when I'm home and we'll set up a date!