Hotel Room Cuisine

I’ve been addicted to watching shows like Rachael Ray and The Chew. This is somewhat frustrating due to the fact we have been living in hotels for the last few months and I have no kitchen. The closest thing I have is a microwave and refrigerator. I love to cook and I want to make all those delicious meals I see them creating on their shows. Although cooking meals in a hotel can be challenging, it is not impossible. Nutrition is available without eating out every meal, which can get expensicve or having to eat every morning at the hotel provided carb-laden breakfast, which can get fattening and boring. Believe it or not, you can make scrambled eggs in the microwave. I simply scramble two eggs add a little milk or water, and sometimes a little grated cheese, and pour into a ceramic coffee cup (which I got at Dollar Tree.) You should spray the cup with some cooking spray, or I just add a little olive oil and brush around with a pastry brush. Don’t forget to cover with a paper towel. Cook in microwave for 30 seconds, stir, cook another 30 seconds, stir, and cook for a final 30 seconds. Microwave times vary, so you have to experiment with times. Sometimes we add some veggies such as green or red peppers, mushrooms, onions, jalapenos, etc, and I will add a few more seconds to each microwave cooking time. You can also mix all the ingredients and pour into a microwave steamer bag available near where you would find zip loc baggies at the grocery store. You just cook them in the microwave for a minute or two and you have an omelet. Never use a regular zip loc baggie to do this. Tortillas are one of my favorite staples to keep on hand as you will soon learn. You can wrap the scrambled eggs in a tortilla and add salsa. We have a portable, electric, non-stick grill I picked up at a second hand store for $6.50 that I use to grill meats on. It also works perfect for toasting bread, English muffins, or thin hamburger buns. We enjoy it with just jelly or add egg, cheese and turkey bacon. Another way to cook egg for a breakfast sandwich is to put a some ham or turkey on the bottom or a ceramic coffee cup or bowl, crack an egg on top, cook for a minute in the microwave, add cheese, cook for another minute and slide out onto toasted bread. I like to get fresh cut fruit, or fresh berries, and add to the side of my eggs, turkey bacon, and toast, and you have a nice healthy breakfast, and for a lot cheaper than what you would pay at Denny’s. Not that we don’t like to splurge on Denny’s occasionally. Other easy breakfast ideas are: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turkey rolled in a tortilla, Greek yogurt and fruit, and oatmeal. Dinners are another challenge. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, I managed to pick up a non-stick, electric grill at a resale store. It is absolutely my favorite purchase so far. My second favorite is my hand held mixer I got at Goodwill for $4. I use it to make my salsa, because I don’t like store bought salsa. But, let’s get back to the grill. I use it to grill chicken breasts, salmon, steaks, hamburgers, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, squash, asparagus, pineapple, and toast. I only have two spices that I carry with me at the moment, and they are not salt and pepper. Weber makes some delicious spices for grilling meats. My two favorites are Kick’n Chicken, and Garlic and Herb. They taste great on any type of meat whether is says for chicken are not. I love when I find a grocery or health food store that carries bulk spices. I can buy as much or as little as I want. So if I just need enough curry spice for one meal, that’s all I have to buy. I don’t have to buy a whole container. I like to use garlic and onion powder a lot, but hate to carry around a bunch of bulky containers. I just get small amount and keep it in the baggies that are provided. They barely take up any room. You can also sometimes find bagged spices in the produce section and they are a lot cheaper than buying the ones in the spice aisle. You just need to re-bag them in a zip loc baggie, because they’re not re-sealable. Another of my favorite ideas for dinner is to pick up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store and serve it with a side or some tomatoes and avocados. I like to get the cherry tomatoes, because they don’t require refrigeration. But I will buy the larger ones if I am going to cut the whole thing up and eat at dinner. Uncle Ben makes some delicious brown rice side sold in a steamer bag that goes straight into the microwave. Santa Fe flavor is our favorite, but I’m having a hard time finding it at Wal-Mart lately. There are also several frozen vegetables now sold in steamer bags as well. We like the broccoli and cheese. I put whatever is left of the rotisserie chicken in a zip loc baggie (how would I ever live without these things!) and serve it the next night on a tortilla with cheese, veggies, and salsa. We sometimes give in and get microwave TV dinners, but not often, because they’re loaded with sodium and controversial ingredients. Healthy Choice makes a frozen dinner line called Café Steamers. My favorite is the Chicken Margherita. Here’s a little secret: You can save the steamer bowl that comes with this meal and use it as a colander to rinse berries and canned beans. It works perfect and its compact. There goes my frugal side. We also like to occasionally get the lasagna dinners for two, but since we don’t get them very often I couldn’t tell you what brand we like. We’ve recently discovered that we love Campbell’s 100% Natural Mexican-Style Chicken Tortilla Soup. Sprinkle some crumbs from the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips on top. Delicious! Hotel room dining isn’t as boring as I once conceived. With a little imagination and ingenuity it can be pretty tasty.

RV Life

I haven’t been writing in a while, and I apologize. We didn’t have internet access about 75% of the time last year and I just got out of the habit of writing. I’m making an effort to get back into it. Last year we bought an RV. A 36 foot fifth wheel. I loved it. It was like taking your home with you when you moved. I loved the fact that I didn’t have to pack everything up in a suitcase and boxes every time we had to move. It has an island kitchen with plenty of storage and plenty of room to cook full meals. I even baked bread and made desserts. It boasts a large living area, a dining area, and a bedroom with a queen size bed, a vanity dresser, a clothing closet and a utility closet. It also featured a decent sized shower, sink, and separate toilet. This came in handy on a few occasions travelling down the road and couldn’t find a gas station or McDonald’s. We even had a satellite system with an automatic search. We did not however have our own internet access. Some RV parks do offer free wi-fi, but most of them you have to be in range of the modem. At one RV Park in Indiana we had to walk all the way up to the office, and sit in the rec center to get access. I usually did this on days I did laundry. When we first purchased the RV my husband was working in Oklahoma and we stayed at the State Park. They don’t offer wi-fi. Of course they don’t! You should be out enjoying yourself. I liked staying here, because we woke up to deer walking around every morning. They had a nice pool that offered water aerobics in the evening and several hiking trails I would go walk on in the mornings. I would also ride my bicycle a lot without worrying about getting run over. One of the drawbacks to staying at the State Park is you are only allowed to stay for up to 14 days. Then you have to leave for 24 hours before you can come back. Unless you get an extension, like we did. We were there for almost 3 weeks. But I went to the Park Ranger and explained to him that my husband was waiting on word to go to the next project site and we would need a few more days and he gave us an extension for another week. Next we were sent to Cheyenne, WY, right during Frontier Days. Which was an exciting experience, but most of the RV spots were reserved up to a year in advance. So we had to stay in an electric only area. So we weren’t hooked up to water or sewer. They would, however, fill up our water tanks, and empty our sewer water on a regular basis. But the electric was slowed way down by too many people on the system. So I would have to turn everything off to run the microwave or it would overload. We were not in range of the internet. So once again I was deprived of online socializing. But we did have plenty of entertainment. I had the opportunity to meet people who came from all over. I even met a gentleman from France, who was backpacking in the States. They have some amazing concerts during Frontier Days. We saw Mark Chestnutt and Jason Aldean one weekend, and Eric Church and Toby Keith the next. Cheyenne has a shuttle service that runs during Frontier Days and stops at all the hotels and campgrounds, and its only $2 to ride. If you decide to take a cab instead, I think its $8 to go anywhere in town. Cheyenne also has an awesome Farmer’s Market that runs most of the year on Tuesdays and during the summer on Saturdays. It’s a great way to get some local, organically grown fruit and vegetables. There are a couple of women who sell goat cheese and a gentleman who sells fresh farm eggs, but get there early, because he sells out quick. If you like organic meats, there are some people who sell grass-fed, organic, hormone free beef and chicken. However a whole chicken is about $12 and they don’t sell just chicken breasts, or thighs. If the Amish women are there selling their jam, be sure to try the Traffic Jam. It’s made with different fruit and tomatoes, and it is amazing. Again, get there early. It’s the first one to sell out. After a couple of months we headed to Indiana and we stayed at a place in Monticello, near an amusement park called Indiana Beach. If you arrive during the summer, it might be a fun place. We got there the week after Labor Day and everything pretty much closes down for the winter. There was one place called Jake’s Beach House we stopped at that was still open. It has a patio that overlooked the lake and we stopped in a couple of times and had a pizza and a beer. But, it closed the week after we got there. We stayed at a small RV park that leases out seasonal spots. They charge a small fee for the whole season, which runs from about April to the end of October. After that all you pay for is the electricity. We met a lot of people that live here the entire season, and then go south for the winter. I think this is the perfect retirement plan. We also met people that live within a few hours and just come on the weekends. It was a neat little place other than the fact I had to walk to the office to get internet, and do laundry. I wasn’t pleased with the water there, either. It was very hard. I was only there a few days when it already started staining my sinks and toilet. We had to change our filter on our hose about every week. Usually it should get changed once a month. Other than that, we enjoyed it there. They have several social events, and they had a big Halloween party and a hayride when we were there. We met a great group of people that entertained pretty much every weekend who received us into their group and made us feel welcome.

Having the RV has been my favorite experience being on the road. I met a lot of nice people, and had some great times and I always felt like I was at home. One of the drawbacks we found was that most RV parks, esp in the Northern part of the country, close at the end of October. So unfortunately we had to put it in storage for the winter, and its still there, due to the fact we need a little work done on it and haven’t been home long enough to take care of it. We are hoping to be able to retrieve it soon.