Techniques and Tools

I'm going to  open this blog with some techniques and substitutions, before I get into actual recipes. These next few posts will be subject to changes.

Tools

-Plug in water Jug
For those who loooove noodles....

-Microwave
For Nuking on the go...

-Freezer
Storing meat and frozen dinners.

 -Refrigerator
Storing everything else that needs to be cold.

-Oven
For the slightly more daring. A small convection oven can be safely placed and run on a top bunk (with the matress removed). Can be used while the truck is moving provided a space is cleared around it, however most of the recipes will need to be cooked while the truck is not moving because of the amount of liquid.

-Electric Skillet
You can keep a small skillet on your truck. You have the choice between the regular wall plugin or the cigarette lighter plugin . Not recommend to be used while driving.

-Grill
Yes! You can in fact use a small George Forman Grill in your truck. Open your windows, plug it in and your good to go. They wipe down easily with hand towels or shop towels and your good to go. If you use these make sure you put something beneath it (a cutting board or something similar).

Other Useful Items

-Freezer Bags
Pre-cook and spice you meats and put them in single serving freezer bags for easy defrost and cooking.

-Steamer Bags
You can purchase these at any walmart or equivalent store. You can steam almost any vege.

-Its called a bacon plate
It's a plastic plate with a flat side and a grill lined side that you can put in the microwave and cook just about anything on (including bacon!) . We have used this for cooking pizzas on in the microwave - Totino's brand is the cheapest and because of the smaller size comes out the best. You can also cook Buffalo wings, hot dogs, etc on it.

-Plastic Rice cooker
These are great. You cook rice and pasta in it very quickly compared to just using a glass bowl. Can also be purchased at walmart.

-The Omelette Maker
Great for cooking eggs in the microwave. If you don't have access to meat they are a great source of protein. The stores sell eggs in a cartoon so you don't have to worry about your eggs breaking. sold at (guess where?) walmart.

-The spice rack
I love my spices, in fact I like to cook curry so I have looked for several ways in which to store them. I may do a post later on in which I come up with a final solution. Currently I have a large glad container in which i stand up their individual bottles in.

Techniques

1)Sauteing
You can saute a variety of items in the microwave.
You will need:
- a plastic container
-some butter (yes you can use the ones from restaurants with a bit of effort).
-whatever you would like to sautee ( I would not try uncooked meat, but have been told it possible). Ideas include: onions, bell peppers (capsicum), fresh mushrooms, broccoli.

2)Freezer bag cooking
This is a technique the army uses in there meals. You can put meat, spices, onion, butter or oil in a freezer bag and add almost boiling water and leave it to sit. I would recommend using pre-cooked. If you have pre-cooked meat stored in a freezer then defrost that meat and then add in sauted ingredients and let set for added flavor.

3) Sprucing up a box dinner
Various stores sell box dinners - some complete with meat. These are usually fairly boring, mundane and incredibly tasteless, however the one thing they do have is that they cook quickly (and as I said before meat that can be stored without a fridge). These dinners can be greatly improved by using the two previous methods to add in some important vitamins and veges (and meat if it doesn't have any). Also you can add canned veges to these meals my favorite would be rotel, a mix of peppers and diced tomatoes which adds spice.