How We Eat Well And Healthy On The Road Pt.1

This is a new sub heading, written by Mary Ann...

Ok, we admit it! We are food nuts!

We got into RVing because of traveling to small towns and not being able to find good sources for our organic eating lifestyle. After fantasizing about going "full time," a term we had never heard of until our maiden voyage outside of Dallas in 2009, we stored our six thousand pounds of downsizing and our BMW's and motorcycle (which are now part of someone else's families) and hit the open roads.

Our first challenge was giving up our Gaggia espresso machine and Jura Capresso coffee maker. (Not enough room in our then 32 foot motor home). None of the small coffee makers met our standards of giving up as much plastic as possible. Our generation's bodies are tanked up on plastics from the water we drink to the foods we eat, without even trying.

We landed on making coffee the old fashioned way, in a Melitta drip maker. You know, a white porcelain coffee pot with a porcelain cone which you put the coffee in and drip with hot water. You know, there are some fancy coffee places that call this a pour over. The coffee is so "pure" tasting, we are not sure what took us so long. We have a bonnet which fits over it and use a candle warmer to keep it hot. It works like a charm.

Melitta Pour Over drip system..good even if you don't live in an RV!

Ok, we do cheat a bit sometimes...with Nespresso Coffee. The rich flavor just can't be duplicated, so we give some valuable counter space up for our two (little) machines. One is for the smaller OriginaLine capsules that brew anywhere from a shot sized serving to a little more, like a small cup. The other is a VirtuoLine brewer that makes a full mug sized cup of very rich coffee. We're addicted and consider them necessary luxuries! (By the way, we learned that the capsules are coated with a food grade lining to prevent much of the metal, which the capsules are made of, from coming into direct contact with the liquid brew).

Nespresso Pixie machine (left) and newer VirtuoLine machine.

Induction cook tops for RV’s. Our coffee projects lead us to another need. I do not care for the smell of propane, and even with windows open and exhaust fans, I’m sure we are inhaling way too much. So Marty, my shopping maven husband, started researching for alternatives for stove top cooking. Induction is the newest technology and is now available in a lot of the highest end homes, and stores like Williams Sonoma have started really promoting it too. Induction cooking is the wave of the future, and I predict it will replace propane in the RV world too. Induction heating uses magnetic energy and heats the pure stainless steel cookware or cast iron which is magnetized metal. So far I have not found any bad press about the cooking mechanism changing the molecular structure of the food, like microwaves do. Another benefit is speed. You can put a tea kettle on the induction cook top and have a full pot of hot water in way less than three minutes! The amount of heat is also much easier to control than regular electric cooktops, more like using natural gas.

Our two induction cooktops we use instead of propane.

So, now we have fast, hot water for our morning coffee pour over "machine" and are not ingesting plastics because of the pure brewing process. Oh yes, as I mentioned, the coffee simply tastes great too!

Next time, How We Source Healthy Food On The Road...

JULY,2016? Where Have We Been?!

The stunning Oregon Coast

Smarty and Smartyn before Smarty got adopted

Wow! Guess you thought we'd given up the gypsy life and headed to Equador or somewhere! Well, nothing of the sort. In fact, other than a new "Smarty" (this one wants to be called "Smartyn"...pretty snooty little attitude for a Smart Car!), and another 20,000 or so miles, not much has changed since our last post. The truth is, we've just been too busy living the LIFE and not enough time to write about it. This will act as a crude attempt, at least, to catch things up. Some of the locales we've added to our been there, done that list are the upper California Coast and The Oregon Coast and Portland, more places in Central Florida, and The Big Bend of Texas. In fact, after we did that part of Texas, we came over to the cool little town of New Braunfels, at the most Eastern edge of The Hill Country, between Austin and San Antonio, and found the base we've been after for almost six years on the road. We're now full time motor homers (with an apartment). Now we can come back and spend a little time running to doctors, getting hair cuts (from someone familiar! Mary Ann can write an entire separate blog about HAIRCUTS ON THE ROAD!!), and just taking a little breather from the rolling lifestyle.

Watching movies in the apartment

The Portland Rose Garden

To catch up to the right now, we're spending the summer of 2016 in our western home away from home, Santa Fe. Good food, cooler weather (although, so far, it's been windy and warmer than normal), lots of hiking choices, and a chance to stay out of the way of the we've got two weeks to see four states crowd! Here are few more pics from the last couple years...

Mary Ann, the Tree Hugger, Redwood
National Park!

Hiking The Big Bend