Travel food and snacks

As we speak, we are travelling to the airport to fly home to see our family. We live abroad and try to visit our friends and family at least once a year. Just to get to the airport it takes us 2.5 hours. Total flight time, I think, is around 14 hours plus a bunch of hours hanging at the airport. This calls for some serious snack planning! What travel food and snacks to bring? Let me share my tips and tricks with you!

Between airport food not being my favorite (processed, sugary, overly salty), it being expensive most of the time and the fact that my kids ask for something to eat at the most inconvenient moments, I usually end up bringing a variety of different foods.

Since we travel quite often I have become somewhat of an expert on what and what not to bring. Here we go:

What food and snacks to bring on an airplane?

Let’s start with what I stopped bringing on flights (with multiple legs):

• (Too much) fruit and veggies; not because it is not good and healthy for you (because it is!), but often you can’t enter another country with it. It has been taken from me several times now. Boo hoo.. And soft fruits, get smushed often and then are not so appealing anymore… My favorite fruit to bring? Apples; they survive every trip!
• Same for water. Bring as much as you need for the first leg of your trip (so enough until you get to customs). In a lot of airports there are fill up stations. I also ask the flight attendants to fill up all our water bottles right before we get off the plane. Basically we try to avoid buying bottled water; we are trying to not be wasteful.
• Large amounts of veggies sticks (like cucumber and carrots); first of all because of first mentioned point, but I also think they dry out after a while or the opposite, they get mushy and warm especially when you are travelling from a hot climate and you can’t bring a cooler.

So what travel food and snacks do I bring?

In general I bring:

• foods that won’t go bad (in your hand luggage, outside of the refrigerator). Like nuts and dried fruits;
• snacks that give you energy;
• healthy, whole foods, because there is enough crap food (sorry excuse my language) you get on a long flight.

So for this trip I packed:

• just a bit of fruit (only a few bananas, apples and some oranges) for the first leg of the trip. I stayed away from fruits that have to be slices or cleaned, that can get mushy or start to leak (for example strawberries).
• nuts; a ziplock of walnuts, almonds and pistachios. Nuts are a good source of fiber and protein as well as omega-3s and -6s. They contain a number of vitamins and minerals such as magnesium and vitamin E. They are easy to bring, won’t go bad and are wholesome. I always bring a variety of nuts on a (long) trip.
• homemade granola bars and wrapped them individually in wax paper and stacked them in an airtight container.

• breakfast muffins (I used my coconut carrot bread recipe for it!).
• a ziplock bag full of homemade granola to snack on.
• and a small container with a few chocolate chip cookies.

Do I buy anything at the airport?

Sometimes..

• I buy fruit like a banana, an apple or a fruit salad.
• and yogurt so the kids can put the granola we bring in it and some fruit.

(Long) road trip food and snacks:

Every year when we spend our summer in Europe we go camping on Corsica – a french island close to Sardinia – with our family for a part of it. We drive down to Southern France from the Netherlands and take an overnight ferry to the island. The same goes for road trips to surf contests; some are in Costa Rica so we are on the road for 6-8 hours. On trips like this we always bring a big cooler and pack a lot more food so we can picnic on route.

I usually bring things like:

• (more) veggies sticks;
• cheese (cut up in sticks);
• some good bread and/or homemade tortillas;
• a container full of falafel;
• and some dips like homemade hummus and romesco;
• freshly squeezed orange juice or an orange-banana smoothie;
• yogurt.

Key is to have a variety of foods so there is always something your kids feel like eating. Traveling takes a lot of them and if food can help to keep them happy I’d say go for it. Just make sure you don’t overdo it and end up hurting your back carrying all your snacks around (lol). Have your kids help you prepare all the travel food and snacks for the trip; for example cutting up vegetables, wrapping granola bars, filling up their own water bottles so they get in the mood for traveling and will be more likely to eat what you/they have packed for the trip.

Happy travels! Have a great summer everyone. I will report back soon from the other side of the world!

I hope my tips for travel food and snacks have been useful?

Let me know how you do. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I will answer them. Tag pictures of your packed travel snack bag @familicious.kitchen on Instagram and hashtag it #familicious #travelfoodwithkids

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