Plane friendly food to save money on vacation with kiddos!

The kiddo and I just returned from a wonderful trip! I had a conference to attend that was conveniently located just a block from Disneyland. This happened to be a VERY kid friendly conference so he got to join me. We then added a day to our trip and spent two days enjoying the magic of Disney.

Anyone who is traveling on a budget knows that food can be a huge expense. Eating out can eat into your budget and may leave you with limited choices . And when traveling with a growing 4 year old, you need to have lots of snacks on hand. A hungry kid is usually a grumpy kid. We take much of our own food when we are on road trips (I need to do a post about traveling with my crockpot) but air travel can be a bit more challenging. 

When traveling by air, you have limited refrigeration options and are limited in the sizes of liquids and gels that you can carry. I generally do not check bags when flying but if flying with my kiddo I've found it to be a necessity. It is less to deal with in the security line and it allows me to pack some liquids/gels in the checked bags. 

I'm very pleased to have spent a whopping $15 on food in the parks over the two days (on foods I was really wanting to try) thanks to bringing food with us. We only spent another $11 in hotel food. That $26 in food over 4 days was due to some serious planning and hauling food with us. I should also note that the event we attended had lots of appetizer type foods which helped too.

Here is a quick list of what we traveled with to give you some ideas. 

Carry on that needs some refrigeration:

• Cheese - frozen so it keeps longer
• Gogurts - frozen 
• Uncrustables sandwiches (or homemade) - I pack just enough for day 1 and 2. They get dried out if they are defrosted much longer than a day. 
• Lunchables packages (or homemade) - I like to take home made ones with salami for something the adults can enjoy. Just know that with lunchmeat you need to be sure it is kept cool.

Carry on needing no refrigeration:

• Crackers - I like the small tubes
• Crackers with cheese or peanut butter filling
• Peanut butter (the little to go packages) - we add these to crackers and oatmeal
• Tuna salad kits - just don't open this on the plane, please.
• Goldfish crackers
• Almonds for Mom
• Cheerios or other cereal boxes - I have a tough time finding the boxes in non-sugary options so we just take a container of Cheerios. 
• Oatmeal packages - I always keep these in my carry on. You can use the hot water from the coffee maker to make this in your room. 
• Mac and cheese packages - I prefer the kind in a bowl so you don't have to worry about dishes
• Hot chocolate mix - end of day treat you can make with a coffee makes to reward food kiddos
• Snack sized treats - I found Disney themed rice krispies so those were a daily treat
• Chips 
• Fruit snacks - also found Disney themed ones. These should really be called sugar snacks, so don't think these are a substitute for fruit. 
• Fresh fruit - pack this carefully. We have had luck with bananas and apples. Berries don't handle the transport well. You also may be limited with fresh fruit if you are traveling out of the state.
• Protein bars for Mom
• Microwaveable popcorn - a great late night snack to enjoy while watching fireworks from your room
• Utensils! You do not want to forget these! We didn't need plates or bowls on this trip which saved some space. 

Checked:

• Apple sauce squeeze packets
• Mixed fruit squeeze packets
• Mandarin orange cups
• Green beans - now can be found in individuals cups! Corn is an option too.
• Microwaveable pasta/ravioli - the kind that are microwaved in their own package
• Juice boxes - for a traveling kiddo these can be a great treat to keep them hydrated

So what kind of meals did we make with this?

• We had oatmeal each morning with peanut butter added. We make it in the disposable hotel cups so the kiddo can eat it to go if needed. 
• I'm not sure that we ever had a sit down lunch in the 4 days we were gone. We did uncrustables for day 1 and 2 and then just snacks the other days. Especially while in the park, I gave him snacks while we waited in lines and while waiting for shows/parades. We did enjoy an amazing corn dog in Disneyland and a meat stick too. We did not buy any food at all while in CA Adventure (mostly because it was raining). Not having a sit down lunch also frees up time in the park to go other things. 
• For dinner we had macaroni and green beans one night, ravioli and green beans another and got a personal pizza at the hotel for the third night. 

Macaroni and raviolis do require a microwave. So they may not work for you if your hotel won't have one. Even if the hotel does not advertise a microwave, you can often request one.  

This isn't the most healthy food ever, but is probably close to as healthy (or better) as most fast food options you would find. I push the fruits and veggies first and the other snacks later. 

Have you ever had luck hauling food with you on a plane? I would love to hear what you took or your suggestions on what else I can take! 

Work travel essentials

I've traveled pretty heavily over the past 10 years. I have gotten better at it over the years and am proud to brag that I packed for a 10 day trip (including 8 days overseas) in a carry on. I'm not always awesome in my packing, but these travel essentials help keep me organized and ready to go.

1. Packing cubes

I'm pretty much addicted to packing cubes. I don't use them for short trips but if I am staying more than two nights I'm probably using them. I got a set for my mom, then one for myself and then a second for myself (and the boys too). I think they are fabulous! They make my bag so much more organized. I find that I forget fewer things if I use cubes because it forces me to organize. I usually make one bag for workout clothes, one for casual and one for business. With the kiddo his cubes are divided tops, bottoms, pj/undies and sometimes a bag of "nice" clothes. AKA ones to hide from Grandma in case we need to be in public at some point. :)

The bags pictured are ebags cubes but there are several other brands. You can buy them directly from ebags or on amazon.  They come in a variety of sizes but I mostly seem to use medium bags. I roll the clothes to fit the bag and then cram the bags into my suitcase. For the kiddo I use medium and the long sized bags. 

*A added my refer a friend link here because it should get you 15% off and I think free shipping. 

2. Reusable grocery bag (that squishes into a small space).

Notice the little red blob in the top right corner of the suitcase? That is a reusable shopping bag. I ALWAYS travel with one. Sometime I use it as a purse cover of sorts. Stick my purse in that bag and then under the seat in front of me. I also use it to have extra room on the trip home or to combine a shopping bag and my purse into one "small" personal item when flying home.

Also, more and more places charge you for grocery bags, so this helps with that issue too when you are away from home.

3. Dry shampoo

This is really targeted to the ladies. I became a dry shampoo believer about 5 years ago. It is a travel staple for me. I can easily get away with second day hair which is a great time saver during travel. Plus if you are only gone one night and don't need to wash your hair you can lighten your load of hair products to travel with you. 

4. Multi plug

Some hotels have one accessible plug near the bed and others hidden behind furniture or in the bathroom. I'm not a fan of charging my electronics on a bathroom counter. So I bring along a multi plug to turn one outlet into three. I used to bring along a power strip but this serves the same purpose and takes up less space. I found my current one from the Dollar Store but you can get them most anywhere.

5. Earplugs

I keep a set of disposable ear plugs in my carry on bag. I don't use them very often but on a late flight these are really awesome. Equally helpful if you happen to have a loud hotel. They hardly take up any space.

6. Oatmeal packet

Another item that takes almost no space but provides a great meal option. Heat water in the coffee pot and pour it into the travel cup usually provided in your room. Cover with the lid and let it cook for a bit. If you don't have a spoon the wooden stir stick provided for the coffee will do the trick. :) Quick, cheap and easy.

7. Tea bags

I have lived most of my life on well water. Chlorinated water tastes awful to me. So having tea bags with me is a great help in disguising the flavor of a bad hotel water. You don't want to get dehydrated on a trip. I've heard others mention this as a way to bring some sense of home with you. That can't hurt either.

8. Landry hamper







This is a fantastic find from the dollar store. It folds flat and takes up almost no space. It isn't the most durable thing ever but mine has lasted a year already. Totally worth the buck! I love having a place to keep dirty clothes away from clean ones. On car trips I have started just keeping the dirty clothes in the hamper and dumping it right in the washer when we get home. This is more essential for travel with the family than work, but sometimes those activities have some crossover.

9. Granola bar
Side story - when I was young some very close family friends got stuck in a snow storm in their car for several days. They lived off ketchup packets and miraculously survived. Since them my Mom has been a little crazy about emergency preparedness (and we keep ketchup packets in the vehicles still). Carrying a granola bar is a bit of that emergency preparedness. But you also might have a hangry mini emergency or get a bit nauseous and need something to calm your stomach. Granola bars last a pretty long time and take up hardly any space. So don't leave home without one. You can also sub a protein bar in here if that is more your thing.

10. Mint or peppermint candy
Peppermint is very soothing to a tummy and helps relieve nausea. Seriously it works for me. Especially on turbulent flights, mints are a must. I specifically prefer Mentos on flights, I swear it helps with ear popping since you kinda chew them.

11. Ready to go toiletries
This set of plastic bottles have been traveling with me since I was a senior in high school. These exact bottles. I try to fill them up when I remember after trips so that they are always ready to go when I leave. I don't have to worry about having to use hotel brand products and I don't have to purchase bunches of disposables. 

So, what do you think? What items are essential for your travel?

Growing Forward

Last year we were given a bag of sweet corn seed from Monsanto's Grow Forward program. Due to the drought and changes in our crop plans, we had to wait and use the seed this year.

The idea behind this program is to grow an acre of sweet corn to share. Share it and do some good in your community. Monsanto offered to provide the seed if the farmer would take care of the rest and do some good with it.

Beautiful baby corn plants!

The sweet corn seeds we planted and grew are GMO. They enable us to grow with limited herbicide and no pesticide sprayed. I'll try to do a post on why that works awesome. But today I want to tell you about how awesome this experience has been, in ways I didn't really expect.

The GMO sweet corn is on the left.

The sweet corn ripened pretty quickly and was delicious (seriously awesome)! We only have one food bank in our community and they are only open two days per week. So we had plenty of corn to share with them and more to share in our neighboring community. We made a total of four deliveries to our local food bank with my car full of corn. I also made a delivery to a soup kitchen in a neighboring community.

Fresh picked corn headed to the food bank

We have donated to food banks before and helped with food drives. But usually all non perishable goods and done when the food bank isn't open. In this case the food is fresh and needs to be delivered as they open (which is an interesting logistical challenge in providing fresh produce to those in need). I'm a mom and busy so usually I arrived a few minutes after they opened. This meant that for the first time I was seeing the people who are using this important service. Not only did I see the faces and the children, I saw the quantity of people who needed this food.

Check out this interactive map by Feeding America to see what food insecurity rates are in your back yard. http://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2013/overall/california.

1 in 7 Americans turns to the Feeding America Network for food assistance

Seeing the level of need in our community was striking. Almost every time I made a drop off there was a long line for people waiting to use the service. People of all ages and both genders and plenty of children. And as some of the volunteers noted, many people from working families.

It was so rewarding to get to drop off fresh food to people who need it!

Some friends stopped by to get corn and helped pick some extra boxes for the food bank.

This project was also a great way to visit with friends and neighbors. We invited people to come and pick and pick some extras for us to take to the food bank. We even had people bring boxes because we were quickly running out of containers! We also delivered sweet corn on the days the food bank wasn't open. Keeping up with an acre of fresh sweet corn is a challenge!

This was a really rewarding project. We are thinking about doing it again. We have friends in other parts of the country who are selling fresh corn and donating the proceeds. This allows the food banks to use the money for whatever their needs may be. With our food bank only open two days a week, this may be the better option. We have almost a year to decide but it sure has us thinking about hunger in our community and how we can help.

We really thank Monsanto for providing the corn seed!

Moving Backward: from owning to renting

We had been dreaming about moving back to the country for years.  Looking at houses and waiting for one to come on the market.  Less houses mean less go on the market.  What did come up in our price range either needed a complete remodel or went so quickly we didn’t have a chance. 

I changed jobs and had a 30 minute commute to and from work.  My commute was nice.  It was the opposite direction as traffic and I got to watch the fields grow on my daily commute.  It also gave my an hour a day to listen to an audio book or sing along to the radio. 

A year and a half later, Michael changed jobs which came with way less stress but also less pay.  His job was now very close to mine and although his commute was now 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes to an hour is was still long. 

His new boss asked him is we wanted to rent out his old house.  Michael was sold instantly – I was not. 

How could we go backward?  We OWN our house, why would we go back to renting? 

Then we sat down and mapped out this potential move.  We discovered we would save about half on our housing expenses (mortgage, insurance, and utilities) and the saving on our gas – no, sorry, FUEL (we have a diesel truck and car) was going to be significant too.  We also priced out rentals in our area and discovered we could rent our current house for enough to cover the mortgage.

Ok, that sounds good but still – renting is throwing your money down the drain, right?  Kind of yes but also no.  You are trading your money for a place to live.  That’s not a bad thing at all. 

Then there was the difference in the houses.  Our house has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, brand new windows, new flooring, a new master bathroom, a 3 car garage, a decent sized backyard, and we could modify it as we pleased.  It is situated on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs.  The potential rental is a modular – a trailer without wheels, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, awkward layout, mismatched floors, a pond behind the house, and literally 5 minutes from my work.  It is in the country close to the land Michael was going to farm and close to his dad and grandma’s house.   

Yeah, you read that right my husband wanted me to move from a house to a trailer and the crazy part – we did it!  Even crazier – we couldn’t be happier about our choice! 

We moved when I was 7 months pregnant, spent the 8th and 9th month of my pregnancy getting our old house ready to rent out while getting settled in our new place.  It was crazy but looking back it was all worth it. 

I have been writing this blog post in my head for over a year now.  I still have conflicting thoughts about it!  Sometimes I feel like we took a huge step back and might not ever live in a house we own again.  I long for the days when I can tackle projects to improve the house again.  Other times I know this is the best thing for our family right now.  We get more time together since we are spending less time commuting and we live in a much more peaceful area. 

I just did the math and I spend 11.5 DAYS (24 hour periods) on the road in my year and a half commuting to and from work.  When you look at it like that – WOW!

Maybe we did move backward, but as odd as it sounds sometimes you have to move back to move forward.  (At least that is what I am telling myself!)

Carrot Mac & Cheese

This is the easiest Mac & Cheese ever!!  You only need 3 ingredients and it is perfect for babies and toddlers.  It falls apart and is easy for little hands or little forks. 

You Need:

- Carrots (1 cup pureed – about 6 carrots)

- Pasta (2 cups dry)

- Cheese (I cup grated or cubed)

Seriously, that’s it!

Peel and steam the carrots then put them in a blender or use an immersion blender to create a carrot puree.

Cook the pasta.

While the pasta is still hot, drain the water out and throw in the carrot puree and the cheese.

Mix it all together and you are done!

You can serve it right away or put it in individual portions and freeze. 

I used an ice cream scoop (perfect portion for a toddler).  Put down some wax paper on a cookie sheet, make sure the mac & cheese scoops aren’t touching.   

Put it in the freezer overnight.  Put the frozen portions in a ziplock bag and pull one out at a time for a quick lunch or dinner. 

Yum!

Treadmill desk

Since I have been working from home I have dreamed of having a walking desk or treadmill desk. But, I'm cheap. Too cheap to buy one, until recently.

I started with a cheap stationary bike and jimmied up the handle bars to hold my iPad. This worked ok, but not very well. The toddler kept messing with my high tech jimmied work and since it is an upright bike I move around too much to type. So I could watch a webinar or something, but not really work. Maybe I just move around too much. 

In any event I bit the bullet this summer and purchased a light duty treadmill. I went back and forth on a few models before settling on this one http://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Power-Motorized-Electric-Treadmill/dp/B004TGWUPE/ref=lp_3407831_1_2?s=exercise-and-fitness&ie=UTF8&qid=1436332379&sr=1-2. It gets great reviews for working as a walking treadmill or for a walking desk. It is NOT for running. It is very narrow and a very jostling stop. It also turns off every 30 minutes. But it is affordable, compact and light weight. I would love it more it if folded easily. 

The second step in my master plan was to find a desk or shelf for it. I found a ton of ideas online. But they were either too expensive or too much work. I don't need a full blown desk, I just want a mini desk of sorts. Just for light computer work. This is what I ended up finding. http://www.walmart.com/ip/16503526

My plan was to get some pvc pipe to make legs. But as it worked out, I was able to simply zip tie it to my treadmill. 

Tada! Please ignore the junk on my floor. 

Now, I have not lost 50 lbs or anything but I really enjoy using this. I've been catching up on webinars while getting a few extra steps. Once the kiddo is back to preschool (and not asking to join me on the treadmill every 7.8 seconds) I hope to schedule a morning walk on it while reviewing my emails. 

Have you Heard of This?

A family member shared an awesome post of facebook the other day…

Dolly Parton has a program called the Imagination Library.  The Imagination Library sends a free book to a child every month from birth to 5 years old.  Like them on Facebook here.  As a teacher, getting books in the hands of all kids is something I think is extremely important.  The brain develops very rapidly between birth and 5 years old.  Reading and exposing children especially children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families to books is very important to their success in school and ultimately in life.  Children coming into school from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are already behind – they have about half the vocabulary of a kid the same age from a professional family.  Half the words!  Reading is important even at a early age!

Anyway, off my soap box … Dolly Parton is one of my favorite country artists but now I love her even more. 

This is not available everywhere (it’s not in my area unfortunately) but check to see if it is available in your area!  Then read to your child every single day!