RPF0517-Cooking_on_the

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00:00:26.640 | From here to happy.

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00:00:29.800 | Today I'm going to fire up your creative juices so that you can fire up your taste buds cheaply

00:00:40.400 | while you're on the road.

00:00:57.840 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:01:00.920 | skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:01:04.760 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:01:08.400 | My name is Joshua and I am your host.

00:01:11.160 | This week we've had some pretty deep and heavy philosophical discussions.

00:01:14.000 | I wanted to switch it up right now and talk to you a little bit about how to save money

00:01:17.760 | while cooking on the road.

00:01:19.480 | I'm going to give you some very, very, very practical tips.

00:01:30.120 | I enjoy traveling.

00:01:31.600 | Sometimes I enjoy traveling more than others.

00:01:33.200 | There are times in which travel is a real joy and there are times in which travel is

00:01:37.040 | a lot of work.

00:01:38.680 | But I think most of us are going to engage in some kind of travel and that travel may

00:01:43.400 | be for fun and for pleasure because we're really into it.

00:01:47.120 | That travel may be because it simply is something that we should do and need to do to help our

00:01:50.360 | business, our career to expand.

00:01:53.680 | I make a recommendation to you that you plan to go to, say, about four seminars per year,

00:01:59.280 | one per quarter, seminars that are in your industry or the conventions that are appropriate

00:02:03.160 | to your work.

00:02:04.160 | Well, if you're going to do that, there's an expense associated with that and that expense

00:02:06.920 | can be very significant.

00:02:10.060 | It wouldn't be unusual for somebody who wants to attend a convention or a workshop or a

00:02:15.200 | class or a seminar that will help further their career.

00:02:18.760 | It wouldn't be unusual for that to cost a thousand bucks just for a two or three-day

00:02:24.360 | seminar.

00:02:25.360 | Maybe it's a couple hundred dollars for your ticket, a few hundred dollars for your flight,

00:02:28.200 | a couple hundred dollars for your hotels, and a couple hundred dollars for your food.

00:02:32.440 | That's really significant.

00:02:33.440 | And if you start doing that regularly, two, three, four times per year, that could add

00:02:37.300 | up to multiple thousands of dollars.

00:02:40.320 | And the same thing would apply if you're just traveling for fun.

00:02:43.080 | You want to go on a trip with your family, with your wife, with your husband, with your

00:02:46.760 | children.

00:02:47.760 | That can very quickly add up to significant amounts of money.

00:02:51.280 | And I want to give you some ideas to help you defray those costs because there is a

00:02:55.720 | certain amount of travel that I think is really important and valuable for you to do.

00:02:59.760 | And if you're going to go to a seminar, there's a big difference in your travel plans.

00:03:04.080 | If you're going to go to a workshop or a convention that's helpful to you in your career, there's

00:03:09.360 | a big difference in how you can approach that.

00:03:11.720 | So I've talked at other times about how you can minimize your costs.

00:03:15.600 | I talked about the idea of, for example, staying in your car.

00:03:19.880 | I've done that many times at conventions and workshops.

00:03:22.280 | I sleep in my minivan, put a nice mattress in there.

00:03:25.640 | That saves me hundreds of dollars on hotel bills.

00:03:28.600 | You might be adventurous enough to do that.

00:03:30.080 | Or maybe you have a small RV or you stay with a friend or you just get a good hotel deal.

00:03:34.180 | You can figure out ways to minimize those costs.

00:03:36.500 | You can always cut your costs of entrance to the seminar if you are a speaker.

00:03:41.240 | That's one of the most valuable benefits of speaking in public.

00:03:43.600 | I frequently, routinely speak at seminars.

00:03:46.480 | And my major, I don't necessarily always get a fee, but sometimes I'll do it just for entrance

00:03:50.960 | into the seminar.

00:03:51.960 | And that saves me a few hundred bucks.

00:03:53.200 | It's great.

00:03:54.200 | It works out fine.

00:03:55.200 | I don't mind giving a 30-minute talk or a 60-minute talk or participating in a breakout

00:03:58.960 | session or sitting on a panel if that'll save me a few hundred bucks.

00:04:01.600 | I'm happy to do that.

00:04:03.100 | And then especially if it's something that's in my industry where my opinion and advice

00:04:06.360 | is going to be useful, then that's the right context for it.

00:04:10.480 | And then the expenses of getting places, sometimes that's more straightforward.

00:04:14.720 | I think most of us do our best with shopping airplane tickets or driving there if you need

00:04:19.640 | to.

00:04:20.640 | But one of the things I haven't talked a lot about is food.

00:04:23.160 | And food can be a significant expense.

00:04:25.560 | It can especially be a significant expense if it's not just you as an individual.

00:04:31.440 | As an individual, especially if you're an adult individual, there are lots of things

00:04:34.680 | that you can do to save on your food.

00:04:36.920 | I frequently will engage in some simple strategies when traveling such as eating less frequently.

00:04:44.080 | I'll often only eat a couple of meals a day.

00:04:46.720 | Generally, we don't really need three meals a day, especially if we're not doing heavy

00:04:49.520 | manual labor.

00:04:50.520 | So a couple of meals per day will get you through.

00:04:54.040 | I'll frequently try to eat a breakfast at a place that serves a very large breakfast,

00:04:58.120 | maybe a buffet, and I'll intentionally overeat at breakfast time, so knowing that I'm not

00:05:04.720 | going to eat again until the evening time.

00:05:07.440 | As an individual, it's relatively easy for you to just take some basic snack foods, whether

00:05:11.600 | you travel with a bag of nuts when you are getting on the airplane so you don't have

00:05:15.440 | to buy airplane food, or if you make your own trail mix, or those types of tricks.

00:05:21.060 | Those are simple kind of entry-level stuff that you should be doing, and that's relatively

00:05:25.240 | simple to do as an individual.

00:05:26.440 | And frankly, as an individual, money is just—sorry, food is often not that big of an expense.

00:05:34.040 | In just about any city in the world, any American city, you could eat on $10 to $15 a day as

00:05:41.240 | an individual if you're willing to be flexible.

00:05:43.280 | Maybe that means a few dollars to pick up a breakfast sandwich somewhere.

00:05:48.420 | Maybe it means a few dollars for an inexpensive fast food hamburger or a couple of tacos from

00:05:53.840 | a taco truck.

00:05:55.440 | And then maybe you allow yourself one full restaurant meal.

00:06:01.440 | You can go into just about any city in the world in most normal environments, and you

00:06:06.960 | can find a mid-to-low-tier mass-market restaurant where you can purchase a hamburger and fries

00:06:14.800 | for $8 to $10.

00:06:16.960 | So you bring in a tip on top of that, drink water, and you can do it on $15 a day.

00:06:22.640 | $20 a day, very without a problem.

00:06:25.400 | If you're just going for a three-day convention, if you set yourself a food budget of $15 or

00:06:30.840 | $20 a day over three days, that's really not that disruptive to a budget.

00:06:35.240 | It's not, in the grand scheme of things, that big a deal.

00:06:40.040 | But all of that changes if you're not only one person or not only two people.

00:06:46.880 | And this is something that those of you who are single or who are simply married and operating

00:06:52.120 | as a couple, you may not appreciate this the way that those of us who have children do.

00:06:57.380 | People talk a lot about the expenses that children bring into your life.

00:07:01.000 | That's fine.

00:07:02.000 | I think it's fine to look at those things.

00:07:04.000 | I think many of those estimates that we read from time to time, "Children will cost you

00:07:07.640 | $150,000 to raise," are stupid.

00:07:10.920 | They're dramatically overinflated.

00:07:12.640 | Children will cost you as much money as you have or as little money as you have, and you're

00:07:16.560 | the one who decides how much they cost you.

00:07:19.000 | So I like to discard many of those things because the cost of children is generally

00:07:23.480 | not a multiplied cost.

00:07:26.640 | For example, it doesn't cost you if you have – let's say that you're married, you have

00:07:30.320 | a wife and you have two children.

00:07:32.300 | It doesn't cost you four times as much to have a house that can accommodate a family

00:07:37.300 | of four than it does for you to have a house that can accommodate a family-size unit of

00:07:43.480 | one.

00:07:44.480 | It doesn't cost you four times as much to do that.

00:07:47.680 | It doesn't cost you four times as much to drive around in a vehicle that can accommodate

00:07:53.120 | your family of six than it does for you to drive around in a vehicle that can accommodate

00:07:58.760 | your family of one or two.

00:08:00.200 | It just simply doesn't.

00:08:02.200 | Children don't cost – there's not a straight additional cost for each and every one of

00:08:07.040 | them in most categories.

00:08:10.120 | But there are a few categories in which children absolutely will multiply on a one-to-one ratio

00:08:19.000 | your expenses.

00:08:20.640 | And one of those categories is food, especially when it comes to food of eating out.

00:08:27.920 | Now there is an increased cost of food when you are buying groceries.

00:08:31.720 | However, that increased cost is not just times four.

00:08:35.160 | But there is an increased cost.

00:08:36.520 | But when you are going out to a restaurant, if you're going out with your family of four,

00:08:41.040 | especially if they are not children who are going to pick at a few bites and be done or

00:08:45.300 | to order off a kid's menu, there is a 4x cost for a family size of four that's different

00:08:52.900 | than one.

00:08:54.620 | Everything multiplies.

00:08:56.540 | Now everything doesn't multiply when you're doing groceries because you can purchase a

00:09:01.040 | larger quantity for just a little bit more money.

00:09:03.780 | There is a bigger quantity with the quantity of food.

00:09:05.700 | But frankly, the quantity of food, at least basic ingredients, for much of the food that

00:09:10.760 | most of us eat is really not that big a deal.

00:09:13.460 | There's a cost of heating up the food, cooking the food, the utensils, but those things aren't

00:09:17.220 | times four.

00:09:18.220 | But in a restaurant, they are.

00:09:20.580 | If you've got three teenagers in your household, you know that it costs you five times as much

00:09:27.180 | to go out to dinner with your three teenagers as it does to go out to dinner by yourself.

00:09:33.060 | Because the teenagers just aren't happy, like my children still is, picking off of my plate.

00:09:38.780 | That's not going to work with your teenager.

00:09:41.140 | Your teenager would prefer to have their own glass of strawberry pink lemonade, not to

00:09:46.140 | have a few sips from yours.

00:09:47.860 | And so it costs you five times as much.

00:09:52.340 | That can be a real problem when it comes to traveling.

00:09:56.140 | Now of course most of us with children learn new skills, and I'm in the process of learning

00:09:59.820 | those new skills to deal with it.

00:10:01.180 | You'll frequently find that families will approach things differently.

00:10:05.260 | And it's by necessity.

00:10:06.500 | If you're going to take a trip, whether that's your annual pilgrimage upstate to visit your

00:10:12.220 | family for Christmas, or if you're going to go on your weekend at the local resort or

00:10:17.460 | go down to Disney or wherever, you've got to learn new strategies to deal with it.

00:10:22.420 | And since the money is not infinite, many of those strategies involve saving money.

00:10:26.500 | So I want to give you some specific tips and tactics here.

00:10:29.900 | And I think these are really valuable because if you'll implement these, and if I can get

00:10:34.140 | your creative juices firing where you can start to plan ahead, if you'll implement some

00:10:37.540 | of these things, then they'll be helpful for you and will probably free you up to be able

00:10:42.260 | to get more value even out of your trip.

00:10:45.260 | I, like you, really enjoy the gastronomic experience of travel.

00:10:53.380 | It's super fun.

00:10:54.980 | That's part of visiting a place.

00:10:58.100 | Engaging with local cuisine, whether it's a down home Louisiana jambalaya or whether

00:11:03.160 | it's fried crickets, all of these are part of the fun of traveling.

00:11:08.700 | I love to get up early and go and sit by the fireplace and have a tremendous meal on a

00:11:16.220 | beautiful snowy day or to go to some great place that you've always wanted to go to.

00:11:22.180 | I think of many experiences that I've been fortunate to have.

00:11:25.140 | I remember I went to, in the James Bond movie, Casino Royale, which was one of the really

00:11:30.780 | popular James Bond movies a decade ago, where they were just changing the whole series over.

00:11:38.140 | The main hotel from that is actually a hotel called the Grand Hotel Poop in Karlovy Vary,

00:11:46.700 | Czech Republic, and poop is spelled P-U-P-P.

00:11:49.220 | The Grand Hotel, I think that's how you pronounce it, poop, Grand Hotel Poop, maybe pop, let's

00:11:53.660 | go with that.

00:11:54.660 | Grand Hotel Pop in Karlovy Vary, which is a little resort town in the Czech Republic

00:11:59.620 | that is famed for its, what is it, the spring water, the tonic, I forget what it is, but

00:12:07.380 | basically the water is supposed to have these tonifying effects.

00:12:11.300 | So it's this famous resort town where people would come from all over Europe to go there

00:12:15.220 | and it's a beautiful hotel.

00:12:17.220 | I was in the Czech Republic and of course we went and had a great big breakfast there

00:12:21.260 | and just to enjoy the whole experience of being in this magnificent, beautiful hotel

00:12:25.700 | that was used as the backdrop for the Casino Royale, the James Bond.

00:12:31.220 | I was single at the time.

00:12:32.540 | It was easy to do as a single man, but you know what?

00:12:36.100 | Even with my children, I still would want to do that.

00:12:37.860 | I still would want to enjoy those gastronomic experiences, but for me to enjoy those peak

00:12:45.100 | experiences, I'm going to need to minimize in some other areas.

00:12:48.540 | I don't want to just go to Ruby Tuesdays and eat out and have a breakfast at Cracker Barrel

00:12:55.180 | every single morning, which with a family of five, it'll cost you $70 and then go and

00:13:00.940 | have some mediocre, normal food experience at some mid-tier mass market restaurant.

00:13:07.820 | I want to enjoy the richest experience that I can.

00:13:12.220 | I want to go to the steakhouse on the 51st floor.

00:13:18.020 | I want to go to the Korean barbecue place that is just world renowned.

00:13:21.540 | I want to go and eat the xuelongbao, the Shanghai dumplings from the world famous restaurant,

00:13:29.940 | which in my opinion is one of the best places for you to go if you're traveling and if you

00:13:35.060 | have the chance to go to a city where there's a restaurant called Din Tai Fung.

00:13:40.940 | They're in Hong Kong.

00:13:41.940 | There are a couple of locations in Hong Kong.

00:13:42.940 | I think there's one in Shanghai and Singapore.

00:13:45.420 | They've expanded around the world.

00:13:46.420 | There may be one in Tokyo.

00:13:47.420 | We're in a place where you can get xuelongbao.

00:13:51.380 | It's the name of the specific kind of pork dumpling.

00:13:55.020 | It's a dim sum type of dumpling, but it's very intensive.

00:13:59.020 | Sorry, one of my favorite foods in the world.

00:14:03.340 | It's called xuelongbao, X-I-A-O-L-O-N-G-B-A-O, or you can just call it Shanghai dumplings.

00:14:10.340 | But it's this just delicious pork mixture that gets wrapped up inside of a wrapper and

00:14:21.620 | it gets cooked in a steamer basket.

00:14:24.100 | It just has this ... I don't even know how to describe it.

00:14:26.420 | It's amazing.

00:14:27.420 | So I want to take my whole family out and I want to go to Din Tai Fung and I want to

00:14:30.460 | spend ... It's not even that expensive there.

00:14:32.740 | I want to spend the money to have those peak experiences.

00:14:35.100 | I don't want to waste my money on mediocre food just to get the budget through.

00:14:40.260 | I want to enjoy that aspect of it.

00:14:42.620 | But in order for you to do that, you're going to have to cut back because most of us, you

00:14:45.540 | can't ... It's too expensive to do that all the time.

00:14:50.140 | And so the best way for you to cut back is to figure out some ways for you to cook some

00:14:55.700 | of your basic food for yourselves on the road.

00:15:00.260 | But this is going to require some planning.

00:15:03.860 | Now I want to ... There is a measure of simplicity to this that you don't really need anything

00:15:10.580 | more than me just to say, "Figure out how to eat cheap on the road by having your own

00:15:14.300 | food with you."

00:15:16.500 | You can take a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly with you and you can

00:15:22.340 | eat peanut butter and jelly three times a day and you can survive.

00:15:25.060 | And frankly, it's not that bad.

00:15:28.220 | But it does get really boring.

00:15:30.020 | And in terms of the richness of travel, there's a big difference for you and there's a big

00:15:35.860 | difference for your children of how good it feels to have a long day traveling, maybe

00:15:41.940 | a long day out sightseeing or a long day on the road, to come into your hotel room and

00:15:47.500 | to sit down and eat a cold peanut butter or a room temperature peanut butter and jelly

00:15:51.620 | sandwich.

00:15:53.260 | That's very different than if you can come into your hotel room and sit down for a nice,

00:15:58.060 | fresh, hot meal, maybe some hot rice, a fresh pork roast, something like that.

00:16:04.380 | There's a big difference to those things.

00:16:05.980 | And it's not that hard to cook on the road, but you got to have a little bit of gear.

00:16:11.980 | So that's enough preamble to ... Let's get into some of the ideas.

00:16:16.100 | Here's some things that I want you to think about.

00:16:17.580 | Number one, are you traveling in the car or are you traveling on an airplane?

00:16:22.500 | There's a big difference, of course, between these two in terms of the amount of gear that

00:16:26.180 | you can have and what you can bring with you.

00:16:29.460 | Don't think just because you're in an airplane you can't take things with you.

00:16:35.620 | You can.

00:16:37.580 | No matter whether you're flying from New York City to Paris, you can still take food with

00:16:43.220 | you, food and cooking utensils.

00:16:46.900 | You may have to take a much more basic kit.

00:16:50.300 | You may have to really streamline, simplify, lighten and minimize what you're doing.

00:16:57.100 | But you can still take things with you in an airplane.

00:17:00.540 | It is, of course, easier to take things with you in a car.

00:17:03.700 | And many of the times with families, you'll wind up traveling in a car more.

00:17:08.260 | One of the other areas where kids are absolutely five times as expensive is when it comes time

00:17:12.660 | to buying airplane tickets.

00:17:14.940 | Pretty easy for ... I live in Florida.

00:17:17.740 | There are cheap tickets all the time up to the Northeast.

00:17:19.620 | Pretty easy for me as a single man or my wife and I to pretty much grab a ticket up to the

00:17:23.580 | Northeast any time.

00:17:24.620 | That's cheap.

00:17:25.620 | When you multiply that times five, all of a sudden you need a really good ticket deal

00:17:30.980 | in order for that to be the best move.

00:17:32.500 | And it becomes a lot cheaper and easier just to maybe just get in the car.

00:17:35.060 | I had a day on the road and you can get somewhere.

00:17:37.100 | So that's why families will tend to use more car travel.

00:17:40.540 | The great thing about car travel is it does give you the ability to carry more stuff with

00:17:44.300 | you generally.

00:17:46.000 | But don't think that it's just one or the other.

00:17:49.660 | If you are traveling on an airplane, you're flying somewhere, staying at a resort, staying

00:17:55.020 | at a hotel, renting a cabin, getting an Airbnb, or you're renting a car there, still seriously

00:18:02.780 | consider and add to your packing list some cooking gear that you may or may not need.

00:18:08.260 | Many times a family will choose to rent a place that has equipment such as renting a

00:18:12.300 | house or a cabin or an Airbnb facility where they're going to give more equipment.

00:18:16.820 | One of the benefits is that you can cook for yourself more easily than if you're in the

00:18:20.620 | best Western.

00:18:22.260 | But even if you're in the best Western, I want to give you some ideas.

00:18:25.100 | If you're flying on an airplane, don't be scared to take an extra bag or pack an extra

00:18:29.060 | bag.

00:18:30.060 | And there is this place, I think this is the place where checking bags is really great.

00:18:35.340 | Everyone has a different philosophy on checked baggage.

00:18:37.380 | I know people who refuse to carry on baggage and I always admire how light and free they

00:18:41.740 | are when you see someone walking on an airplane and they got nothing more than a book under

00:18:45.420 | their arm.

00:18:46.580 | I've always operated under the assumption that there are two kinds of baggage, carry

00:18:51.220 | on and lost.

00:18:52.940 | And so I've always carried on and I've always tried to have the smallest bag possible because

00:18:57.420 | that makes you much more mobile.

00:19:00.020 | But that has to change.

00:19:01.620 | That changes when it's just me versus when it's me and multiple other people that I'm

00:19:06.380 | responsible for.

00:19:08.260 | In order for me to handle things and be adequately prepared, there comes a place to check the

00:19:12.580 | bags.

00:19:13.580 | And I'm not scared to check a bag full of cooking gear if that's what it comes to.

00:19:18.740 | The two basic things you need to plan for is how to keep your food and how to cook your

00:19:24.340 | food.

00:19:25.500 | Now there are many options and you can choose something that is as simple or as gourmet

00:19:32.860 | as will be appropriate for you and your family.

00:19:36.540 | There are plenty of ways that you can eat without any need to keep food fresh.

00:19:43.660 | You can eat peanut butter and jelly.

00:19:46.100 | And yeah, they say refrigerate after opening with a jar of jelly, but you can keep a jar

00:19:50.060 | of jelly unrefrigerated for a week and it's not going to have a bit of a problem.

00:19:54.700 | So you could just take your peanut butter and jelly and there's no need to refrigerate

00:19:58.580 | it.

00:19:59.580 | You can take a bag of almonds and soak them a little bit to soften them up and you don't

00:20:02.740 | need to put yourself in a situation where you don't need refrigeration.

00:20:07.860 | You can get vegetables and they can go many days without refrigeration and be perfectly

00:20:13.220 | fine.

00:20:14.220 | So you don't always have to keep your food.

00:20:16.660 | The big thing where you usually will wind up keeping your food is if you're getting

00:20:20.260 | into something that involves meat.

00:20:23.220 | Meat is basically really the only guaranteed thing that you're going to need to keep it

00:20:29.020 | cool or eat it.

00:20:30.620 | But even meat, there are other options that you could do.

00:20:33.460 | So here's some ways that if you are, for example, traveling on an airplane and you don't have

00:20:37.860 | the room to bring a separate cooler with you, then don't forget about the fact that you

00:20:43.420 | can always use canned meats or bottled meats.

00:20:47.820 | You can also use dehydrated meats.

00:20:50.580 | And canned meats, bottled meats, dehydrated meats, all of these types of ways will allow

00:20:54.660 | you to have meat on the road without the need to engage with refrigeration.

00:21:00.580 | This could also just be the time to go ahead and embrace your vegetarian side.

00:21:05.060 | I've been learning how to do more vegetarian cooking, pulled back a lot on the amount of

00:21:09.500 | meat that we've been eating, and it's a skill set.

00:21:12.760 | But the great thing about vegetarian food is that much of it can be stored and kept

00:21:19.700 | for a very long period of time without refrigeration.

00:21:24.300 | Meat is where you really get into it, where you need that refrigeration.

00:21:30.160 | If you're actually going to cook something, then I think your best bet, if you want meat,

00:21:35.420 | is probably to learn more about some of the dehydrated meat options.

00:21:41.660 | There are canned meat options as well.

00:21:44.260 | But generally, you're going to need to look a little bit and practice a little bit to

00:21:47.200 | find it.

00:21:48.660 | Canned tuna is, of course, crazy easy to find, and canned chicken, of course, is relatively

00:21:55.180 | easy to find.

00:21:57.300 | You can actually can lots more kinds of meat, but there's not a huge commercial market for

00:22:02.100 | it.

00:22:03.100 | If you wanted to have bacon, you can buy canned bacon.

00:22:06.860 | And you can buy many more kinds of canned meats.

00:22:09.260 | They're just not as prevalent as things like tuna and chicken are.

00:22:13.420 | But look into that market and see what your options are.

00:22:16.640 | You can also find some kinds of meats that are, say, packed in a foil pouch or a plastic

00:22:21.900 | pouch and by virtue of their method of preparation don't require refrigeration.

00:22:28.140 | Obvious thing would be jerky or things like smoked salmon.

00:22:30.820 | There are various options, things that are smoked and dehydrated that will provide options

00:22:36.240 | for you.

00:22:37.540 | One of my goals is to eat more and to learn how to cook with more dehydrated foods and

00:22:44.780 | freeze-dried foods.

00:22:45.780 | There have been major breakthroughs in the last decade with the technologies of freeze-drying

00:22:50.460 | and dehydration, where at this point today you can purchase from many manufacturers dehydrated

00:22:58.920 | meats and freeze-dried meats and everything else as well that are really good and seem

00:23:04.920 | to have really good results.

00:23:06.480 | So don't be scared.

00:23:07.900 | Even if you don't have refrigeration, don't be scared to look around and learn a little

00:23:11.380 | bit.

00:23:12.380 | Many things that we think need to be refrigerated don't.

00:23:14.740 | Eggs, you can keep eggs for, well, if they're fresh eggs, you can keep them for many weeks

00:23:20.300 | without refrigeration.

00:23:22.180 | The sailors all have learned how to, if you're going out on a sailboat, you're provisioning

00:23:26.660 | a sailboat, you can take eggs with you on the sailboat.

00:23:30.100 | The key, if you're going to keep eggs without refrigeration, is a fewfold.

00:23:33.540 | Number one, they need to be relatively fresh and the mass market eggs that many times that

00:23:38.180 | we buy from the supermarket are already a few weeks old.

00:23:41.420 | So if you are going to be traveling without refrigeration and you want to have fresh eggs

00:23:45.820 | with you, then your best bet is to get the freshest eggs as possible so that you can

00:23:54.420 | keep them, that they'll be good for a longer period.

00:23:57.860 | Incidentally, a little trick for you, using fresh eggs for hard-boiled eggs is where you

00:24:04.580 | wind up in a disaster.

00:24:06.180 | So I don't know if you've ever been in this situation.

00:24:08.780 | If you find yourself hard-boiling eggs and the eggshell won't separate from the actual

00:24:14.380 | flesh of the egg, it's probably because the egg was very fresh.

00:24:18.240 | The best types of eggs to hard-boil are eggs that are old, that have been out for a few

00:24:23.960 | weeks and have had some age to them.

00:24:26.060 | I don't know why.

00:24:27.060 | I've never researched the actual molecular science of what's going on, but it's one of

00:24:33.940 | the reasons why you know that your eggs that you buy standard are a few weeks old, because

00:24:39.100 | they hard-boil really well generally when you get them from the grocery store.

00:24:42.300 | But if you're going to be keeping eggs for a long time, one of the things that the sailors

00:24:45.400 | teach is you want to, from time to time, rotate your eggs.

00:24:48.740 | So you flip them upside down and you keep moving them upside down.

00:24:52.060 | They used to do things, I think they call it Isinglass, where they would go and create

00:24:55.280 | a brine, basically, that you would put the eggs down under for extra long storage.

00:25:00.600 | And then if you're doing things like that, say keeping eggs without refrigeration, then

00:25:04.180 | you want to add another step to your cooking process, where instead of breaking all of

00:25:09.020 | your eggs into a single bowl all together, you never know if you might run into a rotten

00:25:14.500 | egg.

00:25:15.500 | And so crack your eggs one at a time into a separate bowl.

00:25:17.980 | So that way, if you do have an egg that's rotten, your nose will tell you, your eyes

00:25:21.040 | will tell you.

00:25:22.300 | God gave you a good eyes, a good nose, and a good sense of discernment about food.

00:25:27.260 | You know when the food's bad because it's disgusting.

00:25:30.380 | So you'll know if you crack the egg if it's rotten, and that's the one that you throw

00:25:33.660 | away.

00:25:34.660 | You don't eat that.

00:25:35.660 | Just trust your eyes.

00:25:36.660 | So many people are so squeamish and throw food away because it's reached its expiration

00:25:40.620 | date or throw food away because it's been in the fridge for three days, and this is

00:25:43.580 | absurd.

00:25:44.580 | It's a waste.

00:25:45.580 | Your eyes work well, your nose works well, and that's about all you need to figure out

00:25:49.220 | if you should eat something or not.

00:25:50.700 | Follow your gut.

00:25:52.200 | So there are ways.

00:25:53.780 | You can keep many foods without refrigeration.

00:25:55.620 | It's just for a shortened lifespan.

00:25:58.460 | Now if you do have refrigeration, probably your best, easiest move is to just have a

00:26:03.900 | cooler.

00:26:04.900 | Coolers are easy to get.

00:26:06.780 | They're cheap to get.

00:26:07.780 | You can get the cheap ones, and they're relatively easy to service.

00:26:13.500 | You can buy a bag of ice at any gas station nearby.

00:26:17.280 | If you're staying in a hotel room, just about every hotel is going to have an ice machine,

00:26:21.200 | and so your most sensible option is to carry a cooler with you, use the ice machine in

00:26:25.540 | the hotel, and to just keep your cooler fresh.

00:26:32.940 | Now a couple thoughts on coolers.

00:26:35.460 | There has been tremendous breakthrough in cooler technology over the last few years

00:26:39.180 | with the development of roto-molded coolers and what they call it, roto-injection.

00:26:44.380 | I think there's two technologies, something like that, but basically the Yeti style of

00:26:48.820 | cooler.

00:26:49.820 | The first big brand to break into the market in a big way was the Yeti cooler, and there

00:26:54.780 | have been a bunch of other ones now that are available as well.

00:26:57.300 | You can buy high-end ones.

00:26:58.740 | You can go down to your local Walmart, and Walmart now sells roto-molded coolers under

00:27:04.780 | the Ozark Trail brand.

00:27:06.280 | You could buy an Ozark Trail brand of these coolers at your local Walmart.

00:27:12.740 | They have a superior technology where instead of being the old-style technology of plastic

00:27:17.560 | with a foam core, which would give you a few days of coverage, the roto-molded coolers

00:27:23.460 | have a superior technology where they're insulated much better.

00:27:26.780 | Of course, if you're a DIYer, you can always enhance that insulation yourself.

00:27:30.500 | Wrap a blanket around that cooler, make sure it's always in the shade, maybe adhere on

00:27:35.140 | some insulation to the outside if you need to do that, but you can do that with a cooler

00:27:39.520 | and you can keep yourself going.

00:27:41.580 | In a hotel room, there's no reason not to have a cooler.

00:27:44.820 | Grab a luggage cart to get it in and out of the hotel room.

00:27:47.540 | You got fresh ice every day.

00:27:49.020 | Bathtub you can pour the water into.

00:27:51.220 | It'll work really well and it'll expand your options to give you options on some of the

00:27:55.100 | things that you wouldn't otherwise have the chance to use.

00:27:59.060 | You have to ask the question of do you have electricity or not.

00:28:01.500 | In a moment, we'll talk about cooking, but there are many times when you need to make

00:28:05.980 | sure that you plan ahead of whether you're going to have electricity available.

00:28:11.020 | If you don't have electricity available to you at all, ice is, of course, a little bit

00:28:15.900 | harder to generate.

00:28:18.300 | If you're out in the woods and you're not going to have access to a refrigerator or

00:28:22.180 | a freezer, then one of the technologies that you could consider doing is consider, if you

00:28:29.500 | have a car, consider getting one of these small countertop ice makers and ice machines.

00:28:36.100 | The great thing about a small countertop ice maker is that it's very efficient from an

00:28:41.220 | electricity perspective and it's very, very fast.

00:28:44.840 | The reason it's efficient is because the way that they create ice is they put the water

00:28:50.700 | directly in contact with, basically they have little metal fingers inside that have a coolant

00:28:56.100 | going through them, and they put the water directly in contact with that.

00:29:00.520 | That's a very, very efficient way of making ice.

00:29:03.660 | Many of these countertop ice makers, if you get one and you turn it on, you can go from

00:29:08.700 | water to a half a dozen to a dozen cubes of ice in six to 10 minutes.

00:29:15.600 | Very quickly, with a small machine, you can create a significant amount of ice.

00:29:20.180 | That means that if you're in the backcountry and you need ice to keep your cooler cold,

00:29:26.400 | one of the things that you should consider is grab an inverter to hook up to your battery,

00:29:30.920 | to use the battery in your car, and then use that, plug in your countertop ice maker, use

00:29:38.340 | some of the water that you brought with you, and have that create some ice for you, and

00:29:41.920 | then dump that ice into your cooler to keep your food cold.

00:29:44.620 | That would be a good way, if you didn't have electricity available, figure out a way to

00:29:48.760 | use your battery or your car or a small generator to run one of those countertop ice makers

00:29:53.400 | to keep your cooler.

00:29:54.960 | Of course, if you have the money or have the gear, you can purchase an electrical cooler

00:30:03.280 | or refrigerator or freezer.

00:30:05.560 | There's been some great breakthroughs in these in the past years as well.

00:30:09.900 | You can purchase fairly inexpensively a cooler that will run on 12-volt electricity for your

00:30:16.020 | vehicle.

00:30:17.020 | It's not a true refrigerator, it's not a true freezer, but it's a cooler.

00:30:20.480 | That can help too.

00:30:21.480 | They sell it in truck stops and you can find them easily if you go and look online.

00:30:26.240 | Or you can plug into a cigarette lighter socket on your car, and that's the technology that

00:30:30.640 | you use for keeping your drinks cool in your truck while you're driving down the road.

00:30:35.480 | There are also 12-volt coolers that are well-liked in the traveling and overlanding marketplace

00:30:41.280 | now, which are very, very efficient.

00:30:44.760 | They are legitimate refrigerators and they're legitimate freezers.

00:30:48.200 | You can keep your ice cream cold, you can keep your beer cold, you can keep your ice

00:30:52.240 | rock hard, you can keep your meat cold.

00:30:55.080 | They really, really work well.

00:30:56.600 | They're so efficient that you can actually practically use them with a normal vehicle,

00:31:01.800 | a normal 12-volt battery system.

00:31:03.760 | You don't have to have some triple battery backup system.

00:31:07.080 | They're very, very good and they're very efficient now.

00:31:10.040 | They're also very, very expensive, anywhere from $600 to $1,000 and up.

00:31:14.680 | So this is serious.

00:31:16.680 | You would have to really be sure that you were going to get benefit from them by owning

00:31:22.320 | them for a long time if you were to pursue that path of option.

00:31:27.240 | So that's some ideas on keeping your food cool, on cooking without cooled foods.

00:31:35.200 | You can do it in any circumstance.

00:31:37.380 | If you're traveling to the hinter boonies in Africa, then go ahead and just toss in

00:31:44.280 | some – all you need to do is toss in some freeze-dried meals, maybe some backpackers,

00:31:49.520 | mountain house type of things that are ready in a foil pack and grab yourself one of these

00:31:54.040 | little folding stoves that you can fold up into a little flat sheet of metal about the

00:31:59.520 | size of your palm.

00:32:00.800 | And when you get to the hinter boonies in Africa, grab some twigs off the ground, stick

00:32:06.920 | that in there, borrow a pot from somebody, heat up some water and pour it into your mountain

00:32:10.600 | house.

00:32:11.640 | You can eat well in that context.

00:32:14.680 | If you're just loading up your family in the minivan and going to stop at the Best

00:32:19.720 | Western tonight or the cheap hotel on the road while you're on your way to grandma's

00:32:23.840 | house, you can eat well.

00:32:24.840 | So let me go on to cooking and give you some ideas on cooking.

00:32:29.320 | There are about a bazillion options that you have.

00:32:31.600 | Again though, you want to think through whether you have electricity or you don't.

00:32:35.360 | Let's start with electricity though because that's the situation that most of us are

00:32:39.320 | going to be in.

00:32:40.320 | I'm primarily thinking about you actually being in a hotel room on the road.

00:32:44.640 | Now first, if you don't have any gear, you could actually figure out how to do some stuff

00:32:50.200 | even with what's standard equipment in a hotel room.

00:32:53.840 | This is in a way harder than it was before but you could figure out how to do some stuff.

00:32:58.800 | You could use the iron.

00:32:59.800 | I've seen people do this where they'll take the iron and they'll use the iron as a hot

00:33:03.920 | pad or a hot plate of sorts.

00:33:06.600 | Turn the iron on high.

00:33:08.100 | You better have some aluminum foil but if you put a little bit of sheet of aluminum

00:33:11.080 | foil down on top of a high iron and crack an egg on that, you can fry up an egg on top

00:33:15.360 | of your iron.

00:33:17.000 | You can just toss a piece of bread on that iron and you can toast a piece of bread directly

00:33:20.840 | on the iron.

00:33:21.840 | I've seen people take aluminum foil, wrap up a couple pieces of bacon and cook it with

00:33:27.880 | the iron on some aluminum foil on top of the ironing board.

00:33:31.640 | So you can do that.

00:33:32.640 | You can use the iron and in a pinch, that may be what you're doing.

00:33:37.160 | I think that's more of a gimmick than anything else.

00:33:39.040 | I'm not going to cook for my family of five with an iron, at least not effectively and

00:33:45.120 | not in anything except an emergency.

00:33:47.040 | But it's kind of a cool gimmick and it might be fun for you to do sometime to fry up an

00:33:50.700 | egg and a piece of toast on your iron.

00:33:53.280 | Another actually more practically useful one would be the coffee maker.

00:33:57.400 | This is harder to find than it used to be.

00:33:59.560 | In years past, it was relatively easy to find a full-size coffee maker with a carafe in

00:34:04.880 | a hotel room.

00:34:05.880 | And that's a very useful tool because a coffee maker will easily heat water.

00:34:10.440 | Once you have hot water, you can use that for oatmeal.

00:34:13.080 | You can add instant oatmeal and whip up a pot of oatmeal in your coffee maker pot.

00:34:17.920 | You can use hot water for cooking some eggs.

00:34:21.000 | You're not going to be able to hard boil them because it doesn't ever actually boil.

00:34:25.520 | But you can drop some eggs into the pot, put some hot water in there, let them sit for

00:34:30.880 | 10 minutes or so and you're going to have some nice soft or medium boiled eggs.

00:34:35.400 | That's perfectly reasonable.

00:34:37.300 | So the coffee maker can be used to do all kinds of things.

00:34:40.720 | Mostly, at least in the hotels that I've stayed in in the last few years though, those old

00:34:45.120 | style of carafe coffee makers have given way to an individual cup style of coffee maker.

00:34:52.680 | And frequently, the coffee service comes with a small pouch of coffee grounds, an individual

00:34:59.800 | serving size cup and that's about it.

00:35:02.640 | Lot harder to do something with that.

00:35:04.640 | I've never tried it.

00:35:05.640 | Maybe you could still soft boil an egg, one egg in each cup, but it's just not quite the

00:35:10.200 | same ease of use.

00:35:12.680 | But don't be scared to use what is actually in there because I think there are options

00:35:18.480 | that you could pursue.

00:35:22.560 | Now I think it's more practical for you to bring some gear with you.

00:35:27.520 | And you can go from very simple to very complex.

00:35:31.540 | This would depend on, in my opinion, how much you were traveling for, how long you were

00:35:36.520 | traveling for and what you actually needed.

00:35:39.360 | There's no reason if you're just going to make one or two meals at a quick stopover

00:35:43.000 | in a hotel on your way somewhere, on your way to grandma's house and way back, keep

00:35:47.500 | it simple.

00:35:48.680 | But if you're going to be living in a hotel for two weeks, take some gear with you so

00:35:53.000 | you can have some variety.

00:35:54.120 | Your children are going to want some variety and so take some gear with you.

00:35:58.220 | Now the first place I start when it comes to gear is to serve up power.

00:36:03.240 | And I think it's very valuable for you to consider just taking a power, a spare extension

00:36:08.200 | cord and a power strip with you.

00:36:10.560 | Frequently, what I have found is that the way that I want to set up my stuff, if I'm

00:36:14.920 | going to be in a hotel room for a little bit, doesn't necessarily align with the way that

00:36:19.640 | the original person said that they wanted to set up my stuff.

00:36:23.360 | If you're staying in a business class hotel, it's relatively easy.

00:36:26.520 | They have the lamp that's the hotel style lamp with the power outlet right in it, right

00:36:31.900 | on top of the desk.

00:36:32.900 | That's a good place for you to plug in your cell phone charger, your laptop charger, etc.

00:36:37.260 | That's fine.

00:36:38.500 | But if you're staying at the cheapo place with the cigarette burns on the, what's the

00:36:47.660 | thing called that goes over the bed?

00:36:49.780 | The comforter or whatever that thing is called.

00:36:52.180 | You know, where the cigarette burns there and you don't want to walk around with your

00:36:55.820 | feet off, with your shoes off because you're worried about the creepy crawlies in the carpet.

00:37:03.140 | When you're staying in one of those places, usually they're not set up quite so nicely.

00:37:06.580 | And so I always like to travel with a small extension cord and I will also set up multiple

00:37:13.540 | power strips.

00:37:14.840 | And so when I go to a hotel room, one of the things that I've found very convenient to

00:37:18.140 | do is when I first get there, just I plug in my extension cord.

00:37:22.300 | Usually the outlet is hidden behind the bed or something and I set up my central station.

00:37:26.820 | Extension cord goes right where I want it.

00:37:28.380 | I plug in all the travel with a four gang USB strip so I can charge multiple things

00:37:35.060 | when I'm charging camera batteries, cell phone batteries, various gear, plug in the laptop

00:37:39.860 | charger, whatever gear that I'm traveling with.

00:37:42.140 | And it takes about 45 seconds to set up a station that makes the whole experience much

00:37:47.740 | more pleasurable.

00:37:49.260 | Instead of having to reach over behind the TV or reach over behind the refrigerator

00:37:53.460 | to plug in this dinky little three foot Apple power cord that they gave you and you got

00:37:58.220 | your ear down while you're trying to make your calls.

00:38:00.100 | A lot easier just to go ahead up and set up a station.

00:38:02.300 | If you're planning on cooking, then remember to take a power cord.

00:38:05.500 | In that case, I wouldn't take one of the small gauge ones that I carry for just simple

00:38:11.860 | electrical stuff.

00:38:12.860 | If you're going to be plugging in a hot plate or a rice cooker or a hot pot, then I would

00:38:21.180 | take one that's a full gauge.

00:38:22.660 | I take one with a strip.

00:38:24.180 | So that way if you're in a place where the power outlets aren't set up right, you can

00:38:30.860 | still cook in a place where you have a flat surface.

00:38:33.380 | Safety is going to be really important.

00:38:35.260 | And if you don't think ahead and carry with you a power cord and maybe a power strip if

00:38:39.820 | necessary, then you might wind up cooking in a wrong place where it could be safe.

00:38:44.300 | And if you've got children, you don't want to run the risk of having a hot plate or a

00:38:49.660 | hot electric frying pan or something like that.

00:38:53.580 | And it's in a place where the children could reach it or it could be danger.

00:38:56.900 | So be very, very careful with that.

00:38:58.700 | Also consider carrying a small table with you.

00:39:01.000 | You can purchase small, lightweight, plastic collapsible tables, which would be very convenient

00:39:07.100 | in many hotel rooms.

00:39:09.700 | Again, depending on the class of hotel, frequently if you're in a business class hotel, you're

00:39:14.860 | going to be staying in a place that has a nice desk.

00:39:21.580 | Frequently there'll be a nice table, a nice place for you to put your suitcase.

00:39:24.500 | If you're staying in a cheaper hotel or maybe a hotel in a different country with a different

00:39:29.220 | standard, then there may not be quite so much of a place for you to work or for where you

00:39:33.300 | – for you to be.

00:39:34.480 | And so consider carrying with you a small collapsible table that you can set up and

00:39:38.860 | that you can use.

00:39:39.860 | That'll make a big difference in your experience.

00:39:42.860 | In terms of gear, there are various options.

00:39:45.440 | But I think essentially you want to just talk about ways of heating things up.

00:39:49.340 | And you basically have either the need to heat water, which you can do a lot with, or

00:39:55.380 | you can do – or you basically have the idea of heating up the food directly.

00:40:00.480 | So these can be mixed and matched depending on what your approach is.

00:40:07.880 | As with anything, you can have as many gadgets as you want or as few.

00:40:13.480 | You could, for example, carry with you a single hot plate, an electric hot plate, an electric

00:40:19.240 | burner that just simply plugs into the wall.

00:40:23.040 | It gives you a single burner and you could do everything on that single burner, whether

00:40:27.080 | that's through – with a small frying pan or a small pot that you just simply use.

00:40:31.520 | You can use that to heat water.

00:40:32.660 | You can use that to cook food in.

00:40:34.400 | You could do everything with a small individual hot plate.

00:40:38.040 | I think that's a really intelligent place to start if you have electricity.

00:40:41.800 | And you can buy those very inexpensively.

00:40:43.360 | I've not shopped much for them, but I've seen 10 bucks.

00:40:46.900 | You could buy a super cheap one at your local Walmart.

00:40:49.160 | So if you find yourself in a bind, maybe trot down to Walmart, pick up a $10 hot plate and

00:40:54.360 | pick up a cheap little pot to cook in or a little skillet to use.

00:40:59.360 | That can be effective.

00:41:00.360 | If you don't have electricity, the non-electric version of that is just to carry with you

00:41:05.760 | a small single burner butane stove.

00:41:09.440 | A small single burner butane stove is so handy.

00:41:12.480 | It works phenomenally.

00:41:14.400 | You can get great cooking results.

00:41:16.840 | If you look in a nicer hotel that sets up in the morning, Omelette Station, you'll

00:41:23.120 | usually either see that they're cooking on a single electric hot plate.

00:41:28.080 | Sometimes that'll be an induction with induction technology or sometimes it'll be just an electric

00:41:32.600 | hot plate.

00:41:33.600 | But very frequently, I see them set up their omelette, the cooks set up an omelette station

00:41:38.580 | with a single burner butane stove.

00:41:41.240 | They work really well.

00:41:42.600 | You can get world-class results from a single burner butane stove.

00:41:47.160 | And yet the whole thing packs down into something the size of a large square book.

00:41:52.560 | I have one that I use that has its plastic case.

00:41:56.560 | It's maybe, what, 12, 14, maybe 14, 16 inches by 14, 16 inches and about three or four inches

00:42:03.040 | thick.

00:42:04.040 | That's very, very simple.

00:42:05.040 | I toss it in a bag.

00:42:06.040 | And frequently, I use that for something like I toss that in the bag and put in a small

00:42:10.280 | French press.

00:42:11.480 | And so if I'm on the road and I want to have a cup of coffee, then I can make my own coffee.

00:42:16.200 | Now, that's not necessary.

00:42:19.200 | It's relatively easy to find a fairly inexpensive cup of coffee on the road.

00:42:23.080 | But sometimes it's nice to do.

00:42:24.480 | I've done that where I go ahead and I'm going to pull up at a rest stop, especially if I

00:42:29.080 | was staying in the car, stay at the rest stop, get out.

00:42:32.800 | I just set up my little butane stove right on the picnic table, put my pot of water on,

00:42:36.960 | heat my pot of water, pour it in the French press, and you've got a cup of coffee there.

00:42:41.200 | Don't forget, by the way, if you're traveling, don't forget about the value of instant coffee.

00:42:44.160 | Instant coffee is there's some really phenomenal instant coffees now that are really good and

00:42:48.760 | very, very convenient.

00:42:49.760 | That's a time-honored tradition that works really well.

00:42:56.160 | So get yourself a little single burner butane stove.

00:42:58.920 | You'll need to carry with you a couple extra butane canisters.

00:43:01.600 | That won't work if you're flying.

00:43:03.460 | You have to check into that, but it'll work fine if you're in the car.

00:43:06.680 | So a hot plate, I think, is a really good place to start.

00:43:10.280 | A second tool that I think is really worth your considering would be a, I'll call it

00:43:17.040 | a hot pot, but basically an electric water heating pot.

00:43:22.800 | Again, these range from the cheap and simple to the very complex.

00:43:29.240 | You probably have one of these already in your house.

00:43:31.720 | Just grab that one off the counter.

00:43:33.480 | But an electric kettle or electric hot water heater where you just push a button and it

00:43:37.400 | raises the water temperature to a boil for you is so useful.

00:43:42.180 | You can use that to create all those things, to create hot water for you, which as we talked

00:43:46.800 | about you can use for soft-boiling eggs.

00:43:49.380 | You can use for adding that to cooked spaghetti and you can use that for heating up, you know,

00:43:57.000 | making oatmeal or making a pot of ramen noodles, whatever you want to have.

00:44:02.920 | That hot water heater will just be great and simple.

00:44:05.160 | It's very, very safe.

00:44:06.760 | It's effective and it works well.

00:44:09.520 | If you put together a hot plate with a skillet and a hot pot electric water kettle, electric

00:44:20.320 | kettle, that gives you a really powerful way to do those two things together.

00:44:29.080 | That's really, really good.

00:44:30.800 | And I think those should be considerations.

00:44:32.560 | You can cook directly in a hot pot.

00:44:35.600 | Think carefully before you do that with your $90 one that gives you your 170-degree tea

00:44:41.480 | water, your 185-degree for black tea water, your 212-degree boiling water.

00:44:48.120 | I wouldn't feel all that good about dumping pasta sauce into one of those.

00:44:52.480 | But you could do it with a cheap one and if that's what you've got to cook in or to cook

00:44:57.280 | your oatmeal directly in, then go for it.

00:45:00.280 | I think you can clean those things out perfectly fine.

00:45:04.400 | The next tool that I think deserves a really valid consideration would be a crock pot.

00:45:12.480 | Now there are two approaches that you could take here and with here we'll move into the

00:45:15.680 | more fancier gadgets.

00:45:18.020 | But an old crock pot is easy to find.

00:45:21.000 | And if I were traveling across, let's say I were traveling with my family across the

00:45:25.520 | country, I wouldn't hesitate to travel there and swing by just about any thrift store and

00:45:32.560 | pick up some cheap old crock pot for $8 or $10.

00:45:36.240 | A crock pot gives you the ability to have just really useful, delicious meals that can

00:45:42.800 | be done for you without you sitting there intending it.

00:45:46.640 | It's entirely safe for you to set up a crock pot in your hotel room.

00:45:51.040 | Let's say that you're at a convention or a conference.

00:45:55.080 | In the morning you go ahead and just like you do at home with your crock pot, you go

00:45:58.200 | ahead and if you had some meat, go ahead and brown your meat in your skillet, put it in

00:46:02.720 | the bottom of the crock pot.

00:46:04.040 | Or even if you didn't have any meat, you put your potatoes in, you cut that up and even

00:46:08.520 | if you couldn't brown the meat, you just toss it in there, put in a chicken, hit start,

00:46:12.760 | go off to your conference all day and when you come back that night, you're ready to

00:46:17.040 | go with your crock potted meal.

00:46:19.320 | Pair that up with a rice cooker that you can come home, you can set all the ingredients

00:46:23.440 | and if your rice cooker is fancy enough to have a timer, you could set that so that's

00:46:26.840 | done for you.

00:46:28.000 | And you can come home to a delicious, savory, satisfying, comforting, warm meal that you

00:46:34.560 | can all enjoy in the hotel room or somewhere nearby and that gives you the option of having

00:46:43.280 | it ready to go.

00:46:44.880 | Crock pots are wonderful and I think that they deserve your consideration.

00:46:51.520 | Heavy, heavy and bulky, so won't work very well to fly with it but if you've got a space

00:46:57.560 | in the car, consider putting in your crock pot.

00:47:00.760 | The modern take and change on the crock pot is of course the world famous instant pot.

00:47:09.240 | The instant pot technology is basically a pressure cooker, an electric pressure cooker

00:47:14.000 | which has taken over, it's very, very popular and it's very, very popular among many travelers.

00:47:18.920 | Many RVers for example who face this challenge of how do I cook in a small space while I'm

00:47:24.600 | traveling around love their instant pots.

00:47:27.520 | And the instant pot has the benefit of having multiple functions.

00:47:32.200 | They say it can be a rice cooker, you can brown your meat, saute your vegetables, all

00:47:36.760 | in the same thing and then turn it into a crock pot.

00:47:39.000 | So the instant pot advertises itself as having these multiple benefits that you can do it

00:47:43.860 | all in one pot.

00:47:45.220 | We recently got an instant pot during one of the Amazon sales.

00:47:48.960 | We finally went ahead and tried one and got one.

00:47:51.440 | I haven't learned how to cook with it yet.

00:47:53.140 | My wife has done it a few times and it's on my list to learn more of the instant pot recipes.

00:47:59.960 | There's a huge enthusiast, there are a lot of enthusiasts around the instant pot brand

00:48:05.000 | and around that approach.

00:48:06.480 | People who work to use the instant pot to make all of their meals or to make some of

00:48:12.880 | their meals, I just simply am a neophyte when it comes to actually using it.

00:48:16.360 | I need to learn some new approaches before I can competently discuss how to actually

00:48:24.040 | use it.

00:48:25.040 | But those resources are out there.

00:48:26.540 | Just start looking and you'll find people who will want to teach you how to use an instant

00:48:30.900 | pot.

00:48:32.060 | One trick that I don't currently have but I intend to get is something called a thermal

00:48:37.940 | cooker.

00:48:39.380 | And the thermal cooker is a very old technology.

00:48:41.980 | And basically the idea is how can you cook something without using a lot of fuel?

00:48:47.620 | Well the cooking process involves two things.

00:48:50.580 | It involves heat and it involves time.

00:48:54.340 | And for just about anything that you cook, there is a certain temperature that you need

00:48:59.020 | the food to reach for a certain amount of time and that'll vary with everything that

00:49:03.900 | you're doing.

00:49:04.900 | But you're manipulating these two variables, what temperature for how long.

00:49:08.420 | And so you can cook something at a very high temperature for a short period of time or

00:49:14.700 | you can cook it at a lower temperature for a longer period of time.

00:49:18.860 | And so there have been many times in the past where people have learned how to cook using

00:49:23.780 | this lower temperature but long duration cooking methodology.

00:49:29.260 | You could cook a pig in the ground in a pit at the beach.

00:49:33.100 | Many many tropical cultures have developed this technique where you dig a big giant hole

00:49:40.660 | in the beach.

00:49:42.940 | You start a big old fire.

00:49:45.220 | You fill that fire with as many rocks as you can find and you get those rocks as hot as

00:49:50.580 | you possibly can.

00:49:52.020 | You take your big giant hole that you dug in the sand.

00:49:57.040 | You line it with leaves like banana leaves or whatever you've got but big fat leaves.

00:50:02.460 | Banana leaves work great.

00:50:03.740 | And then you dump your pig in there and you dump your rocks in there on the outside of

00:50:09.100 | it and you dump your pig and your rocks in there, wrap it all up with leaves and then

00:50:14.980 | pour dirt over the top, make a big giant mound and go fishing all day.

00:50:19.100 | You do that first thing in the morning.

00:50:20.740 | You come back at night.

00:50:21.740 | You dig the top off the pit and your pig should be cooked.

00:50:26.940 | And it's that you've taken the heat source, the heat sink, the thermal mass which is the

00:50:32.460 | rocks and you've put them in a hole to help with insulation and then because it's been

00:50:37.860 | left for so long, it can cook over time.

00:50:40.980 | The old-fashioned version of this for individuals who aren't going to dig a hole in the beach

00:50:45.260 | and cook a pig in it is something called the hay box where you could take and let's say

00:50:50.320 | you're going to make something in a pot.

00:50:52.740 | You take your pot on the stove, you put it on the stove, you heat the pot of soup up

00:50:57.940 | or whatever it is that you're cooking, the stew.

00:51:00.500 | You heat it up until it's boiling and then you turn the heat off and you put that pot

00:51:08.860 | into a bunch of towels and then you put it into a big box and oftentimes they would use

00:51:14.820 | a box with hay and basically an insulated box.

00:51:18.180 | And you put it in that insulated box and you cover it up and you leave it alone for a long

00:51:21.600 | period of time.

00:51:23.060 | There's enough contained thermal energy in the pot of soup that as long as it's well

00:51:28.860 | insulated and it doesn't cool quickly, it can sufficiently cook the contents of the

00:51:32.980 | soup.

00:51:33.980 | That saves you the benefit of having to constantly keep that pot going by adding constant amounts

00:51:39.820 | of food.

00:51:40.820 | Now you can rig this up yourself.

00:51:43.800 | Some people will do this in a cooler.

00:51:45.460 | You can accomplish a similar effect.

00:51:47.060 | I frequently, when taking food to somebody's house, I'll frequently get it nice and hot

00:51:52.060 | then you take it off the stove, wrap it up in towels or a blanket and then put it into

00:51:57.220 | a cooler and you can transport the food and it's very, very stable.

00:52:00.540 | It'll keep it hot, it'll keep it fresh and it won't overcook it because you're not adding

00:52:04.700 | more heat.

00:52:06.460 | And as long as you haven't overcooked it to begin with, generally it's a very safe way

00:52:09.820 | of keeping your food hot just like the caterers do when they're serving food.

00:52:14.420 | But there's also a, they've developed commercial products that are related to this called thermal

00:52:19.060 | cookers and I've never owned one but I intend to buy one.

00:52:23.420 | And basically a thermal cooker is a very well insulated crock pot that doesn't have a heat

00:52:29.420 | source and usually there are a couple different ways that they approach them but it's basically

00:52:34.140 | a very well insulated pot.

00:52:36.660 | And where these are really valuable would be in a place where you have to be very conscious

00:52:40.980 | of your fuel.

00:52:41.980 | So in the sailing community, many people in the sailing community like a thermal cooker

00:52:47.140 | because if you're going to cook something you can just use a little bit of your gas

00:52:49.540 | to heat it up and then you put it in the thermal cooker and it'll cook all day.

00:52:53.380 | The big benefit that I see with a thermal cooker is to have the benefit of being able

00:52:58.540 | to carry it with you without needing electricity.

00:53:02.420 | Now if you've got an inverter in your car, you may be able to plug your crock pot in

00:53:05.420 | and crock pot your food while you're driving down the road.

00:53:07.820 | That's fine and that's good.

00:53:09.460 | It's hard to get an inverter in the car because you can't draw enough wattage out of the cigarette

00:53:14.100 | lighter.

00:53:15.100 | So you need a big inverter.

00:53:16.100 | Those need to be plugged into an actual battery.

00:53:17.940 | So unless you have a second battery or you can figure out a way to rig that up, that's

00:53:20.860 | a little hard to do.

00:53:22.080 | But if you can carry a thermal cooker with you, you can just fill that thing up with

00:53:25.340 | food and in the morning you can get it nice and hot and then you wrap it up and it'll

00:53:32.340 | sit there and it'll cook all day while you're driving down the road.

00:53:35.540 | And you can do this with all kinds of food.

00:53:38.060 | You can do this with fresh food.

00:53:39.800 | You can do this with freeze-dried food.

00:53:43.420 | But you can set things up so that it'll work really well for you while you're traveling

00:53:48.580 | and while you are going down the road.

00:53:52.460 | There are people that I found, especially from the prepper community.

00:53:57.980 | What is her name?

00:53:59.980 | The best one I know is her name is Chef Tess Bakeress.

00:54:02.860 | Her website is cheftessbakeress.blogspot.com.

00:54:12.940 | Chef Tess Bakeress.blogspot.com.

00:54:14.700 | She has a whole cookbook.

00:54:15.700 | She has a bunch of them, but she has a cool cookbook that's focused on how to cook what

00:54:21.260 | she calls her meals in a jar.

00:54:23.700 | And it's a really wonderful technology.

00:54:25.420 | What she does is she creates these meals that are all with freeze-dried food.

00:54:31.740 | And so you have, again, I alluded earlier to the value of the freeze-dried food and

00:54:39.420 | dehydrated food.

00:54:40.820 | But you can basically have really good quality vegetables.

00:54:44.980 | You can have good quality even eggs, dairy, butter, meats.

00:54:50.220 | And you can put all these things together and make your normal recipes.

00:54:52.700 | And so what she does is prepares them, put them dry into a canning jar, and you prepare

00:54:57.660 | a meal in a jar that has everything together.

00:55:00.500 | And then you can just get some hot water.

00:55:01.840 | You add some hot water.

00:55:02.840 | You toss it in your thermal cooker.

00:55:04.580 | And when you get where you're going, you're ready to go with a pan of lasagna or a Louisiana

00:55:10.100 | chicken gumbo.

00:55:11.420 | And everything's ready to go, a fresh spaghetti and sauce that's all done.

00:55:14.780 | And it was all, none of it required refrigeration.

00:55:17.500 | There was no urgency to use it.

00:55:18.820 | So if you decide that you're going to go out to eat tonight, you didn't waste your food.

00:55:23.820 | It's easy to make while you're traveling and relatively inexpensive.

00:55:27.260 | The freeze-dried food, of course, would cost you a little bit more than fresh ingredients,

00:55:32.260 | but you make it up in convenience, storability, the lack of spoilage and waste, et cetera.

00:55:40.060 | And so I think that's really worth looking into.

00:55:43.180 | So I'm excited about in the future getting a thermal cooker.

00:55:48.540 | So when I can actually have a need for it, then I'll get it.

00:55:52.500 | But I think that's a really wonderful technology.

00:55:54.860 | And so let me just explain one practical way of approaching this that would be very, very

00:56:01.900 | normal I think for a lot of us in terms of actual usage.

00:56:06.660 | Let's say that you're going to take your family and you're going to go on a week-long family

00:56:10.140 | vacation.

00:56:11.320 | So you think things through and you make a breakfast menu.

00:56:15.100 | Breakfast is simple.

00:56:16.700 | And one day you want to have some cereal.

00:56:23.060 | Your family enjoys eating cereal.

00:56:25.460 | I like to buy a bag of granola.

00:56:27.820 | Costco has a good bag of granola.

00:56:29.740 | It's all wrapped up.

00:56:30.740 | Of course, it's granola.

00:56:31.740 | It's easy to carry with you.

00:56:33.320 | So what I do is what I've done is grab a bag of granola that is a hearty and granola still

00:56:42.540 | has sugar, but it's less sugar than Froot Loops or that type of thing.

00:56:46.320 | So you get a bag of granola and then get some dried milk.

00:56:50.500 | And the dried milk, people used to complain about dried milk.

00:56:55.140 | I know that used to be kind of the classic tightwad way to drink milk.

00:57:01.140 | But dried milk, you can get some really good dried milk.

00:57:05.540 | I found some locally at a food supply store.

00:57:08.520 | And I always try to keep it on hand because we don't drink a lot of cow's milk.

00:57:13.820 | We don't drink cow's milk in our family really.

00:57:15.420 | We use it for baking.

00:57:17.100 | And the problem that – the fight that my wife and I have, she doesn't drink milk

00:57:21.580 | at all.

00:57:22.580 | I enjoy it.

00:57:23.580 | I don't drink it, but I'll have it on things like cereal or something on occasion or if

00:57:26.100 | I'm having a brownie.

00:57:28.260 | But I can't stand to buy small quantities of things because I can't stand to pay the

00:57:34.260 | higher unit price.

00:57:35.260 | I don't want to buy a half gallon of milk.

00:57:37.140 | When we first met, she would buy her milk by the pint and I used to make fun of her.

00:57:41.420 | I was like, "Who buys milk by the pint?"

00:57:43.220 | She's like, "Well, I only needed a cup for a recipe."

00:57:45.580 | I'm like, "Still, you're buying a pint of milk.

00:57:47.500 | It doesn't make sense to me.

00:57:48.500 | I'd buy a gallon."

00:57:49.500 | The problem is that we don't need a gallon.

00:57:50.860 | So then if it starts to go bad, then I start drinking milk or using it more unnecessarily.

00:57:56.980 | And so what I've mostly settled on is we'll get milk occasionally, especially if I know

00:58:00.660 | I'm going to be doing a lot of cooking or cooking things that are going to use milk.

00:58:04.460 | But I like to buy dried milk and then the dried milk can easily make up a quart jar

00:58:09.220 | of it.

00:58:10.460 | And for the best taste, you make up a quart jar of it, you put it in the fridge overnight,

00:58:14.740 | that lets the flavors really meld together and there's nothing objectionable about it.

00:58:20.200 | And so you can get yourself some dried milk.

00:58:22.800 | There's nothing to store.

00:58:23.800 | When you get to the hotel room at night in preparation for breakfast tomorrow, if you

00:58:27.600 | have a refrigerator in the hotel room or if you have a cooler, then go ahead and get a

00:58:32.260 | quart jar, measure in your dried milk.

00:58:35.340 | It's with the stuff that I get.

00:58:36.740 | It's a one and a third cups of powder and then you add water to that, shake it up and

00:58:41.220 | then put it in the cooler.

00:58:42.700 | It's easy, refresh your cooler.

00:58:44.700 | So fill it up with ice so it'll get it nice and cold and let that sit overnight.

00:58:48.300 | Then the next morning when you wake up, you'll be ready to go with fresh cold milk, a quart

00:58:53.980 | of it, which is probably just enough to go on everybody's breakfast cereal.

00:58:58.860 | Now you can have a bowl of granola with some milk for breakfast.

00:59:06.020 | Or if you don't care to use the dried milk, then get yourself some UHT ultra pasteurized

00:59:11.020 | shelf stable milk.

00:59:13.020 | Parmalat is the brand that we usually see here in the United States.

00:59:15.940 | Throughout the world it goes under various brand names.

00:59:18.620 | But get some of that.

00:59:19.620 | It comes in a Tetra Pak size that doesn't need any refrigeration.

00:59:25.260 | Same deal, go ahead and chill it down on ice or toss it in the refrigerator in the hotel

00:59:30.300 | room and it'll be cool in the morning.

00:59:33.780 | For the first night, bring some bananas.

00:59:35.460 | Those work really well.

00:59:36.940 | You've got granola, you've got bananas.

00:59:39.700 | That'll set you up for an inexpensive breakfast that is easy, has minimal preparation.

00:59:47.980 | Of course your first day, maybe you go ahead and make something from home and you just

00:59:50.500 | bring some pre-made sandwiches with you for that first lunch and then something for the

00:59:55.900 | dinner.

00:59:56.900 | Let's say that you go ahead and you have a little bit of time on another day and you're

01:00:00.680 | going to cook, then here's how you can integrate some of these things together.

01:00:04.580 | You have a hot pot and a hot plate and a thermal cooker.

01:00:10.660 | So you use your hot pot to go ahead and boil up some eggs inside the pot and then you use

01:00:17.460 | the water from that to go on some oatmeal.

01:00:20.540 | So you can have a nice hot breakfast.

01:00:22.780 | And meanwhile on your hot plate, your electric burner, go ahead and put the thermal cooker

01:00:28.940 | pot there and you can work on browning your meat and then adding in some other ingredients.

01:00:35.980 | Maybe you're making a chili or maybe you're making a stew.

01:00:39.700 | Maybe you're adding some potatoes, whatever you're doing.

01:00:43.380 | Go ahead and add those things in and bring that up to a boil.

01:00:47.780 | So you can simultaneously cook a hot breakfast and go ahead and bring your evening meal and

01:00:53.220 | get that ready to go while you're preparing it there in the hotel room.

01:00:58.020 | Maybe you've got the kids making sandwiches for lunch as well while you're cooking up

01:01:04.260 | breakfast and dinner.

01:01:06.340 | Well you serve the hot breakfast, take your pot, get it up nice and hot, put it in the

01:01:10.300 | thermal cooker, close that up, clean up your stuff, pack it away.

01:01:14.420 | You have your hot breakfast there in the hotel room.

01:01:17.820 | You've got your sandwiches ready for lunch and then all day while you are touring the

01:01:22.500 | theme park or touring the national park or going to the zoo or you're out on the boat

01:01:26.820 | fishing all day your food is cooking there and it's ready to go so whenever you get to

01:01:31.980 | the end of the day and you're ready to eat it you've got a nice hot meal.

01:01:36.220 | And obviously you can diversify your actual experience a little bit and who wants to sit

01:01:42.340 | around in a hotel room all the time and eat food on the floor?

01:01:45.340 | You go to a local park, you've got your thermal cooker with you, set it up for a picnic and

01:01:48.580 | you can have a picnic with hot and delicious food in your local park and enjoy the beauty

01:01:53.020 | of where you are.

01:01:55.120 | So if you're going to plan these things out for your whole trip then you just think through

01:01:59.040 | the different options.

01:02:00.440 | In the beginning of the trip perhaps you are preparing your meat.

01:02:03.640 | You're going to eat meat so you freeze your meat, put it in a nice Ziploc bag or maybe

01:02:08.000 | vacuum seal the bag, freeze your meat, put it in the bottom of the cooler and you have

01:02:12.660 | meat for the first couple of days and your recipes for lunch and dinner revolve around

01:02:17.800 | that meat, that fresh meat.

01:02:20.520 | Then after that you go to your plan is your dinner plans go to a vegetarian option, a

01:02:26.040 | quinoa or rice, a vegetable or something that's just a vegetarian, dried beans, lentils, that

01:02:31.920 | kind of thing that's easy to store, doesn't require any refrigeration and that'll be the

01:02:36.640 | foundation of your meals towards the end of the week, the spaghetti and the sauce that's

01:02:41.720 | canned that kind of thing.

01:02:43.680 | So you can plan to have your cooled things up front and your non-cooled things towards

01:02:48.700 | the end of the trip or maybe that's where you start to bring out your freeze-dried recipes

01:02:52.280 | and you've prepared your freeze-dried meal in a jar.

01:02:55.640 | For your breakfast and lunch options you plan out fresh fruit towards the beginning.

01:03:01.760 | You bring some bananas, you bring some fresh apples, those things for snacks but then go

01:03:05.720 | ahead and bring some cans of fruit to get you to through the middle towards the end

01:03:10.120 | of your trip or you do the same thing with vegetables.

01:03:12.240 | You have your fresh vegetables in the beginning and you bring some cans of vegetables to get

01:03:15.600 | you through towards the middle and the end of the trip.

01:03:18.440 | The point of all of this is to say that a couple little things with you, a few little

01:03:24.640 | pieces of gear will dramatically open up your options and expand the things that are available

01:03:30.360 | to you.

01:03:31.360 | It can result in you being able to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

01:03:35.440 | You don't have a thousand dollars to go to that super important conference where all

01:03:39.600 | of your people in your business are engaging but you can get there with, but you do have

01:03:44.440 | $200 to buy the entrance fee and $150 for the hotel fee.

01:03:50.520 | Well, with these ideas that I'm telling you about, you can get there and you can afford

01:03:57.240 | to eat while you're there.

01:03:59.440 | Or if you're traveling with your family, these ideas give you the ability to eat cheap food

01:04:05.440 | when there's nothing that would be a real gastronomic or cultural experience available

01:04:10.240 | and then when you get to where you want those peak experiences or those really fine dining

01:04:14.440 | or, it doesn't have to be fine dining, but just the rich cultural experience, then you

01:04:19.760 | have the option to have the money still to be able to afford those solutions.

01:04:27.200 | I think I'm going to quit with just a couple more things.

01:04:30.320 | I had more on my list but I don't want to belabor this subject much more.

01:04:37.840 | Couple of very quick options, especially if you are going to be traveling internationally.

01:04:43.120 | Here I'm thinking of you're vagabonding around the world by yourself type of thing.

01:04:48.240 | This is a little bit harder to do on the scale that you need for a family.

01:04:52.760 | But if you're vagabonding around the world by yourself, then here are a couple of things

01:04:56.680 | for you to consider.

01:04:58.840 | Number one, they sell an immersion heater that you can pick up.

01:05:04.040 | These are much more popular in other places around the world than the US.

01:05:06.400 | But in the US you can find them at least online.

01:05:08.200 | I've never really seen them in stores, although I've never really looked.

01:05:11.480 | But you can get an immersion heater.

01:05:13.120 | And essentially what an immersion heater is, it's an electric coil that is connected to

01:05:18.080 | a wire and it can be very, very small.

01:05:20.680 | There's nothing, it would basically be, they can be from the size of perhaps a small pill

01:05:29.560 | bottle, a little bit longer, to perhaps the size of something like an electric hair straightener

01:05:34.320 | or curling iron, that type of thing.

01:05:37.640 | And you can get them from anywhere from tiny, they'll just go into a cup, like a mug, to

01:05:44.280 | something that'll go into a pot.

01:05:46.560 | Or you can get large ones that'll heat up a five-gallon bucket of water or even a bathtub

01:05:50.760 | full of water.

01:05:51.760 | It just depends on what you need.

01:05:54.040 | People use these in home brewing.

01:05:56.320 | They use them in many contexts.

01:05:59.920 | But if I were backpacking around the world on a budget, I would want to make sure that

01:06:03.560 | I had some way of heating up some water for myself.

01:06:07.880 | And frequently, if you're staying in a hostel, you can have access to the kitchen.

01:06:13.040 | But sometimes you don't have a kitchen and you just have a shared room in a hostel, you're

01:06:17.720 | out of money.

01:06:19.040 | Having a small immersion heater would be really, really important and really valuable.

01:06:24.040 | Gives you the ability to cook up a hot pot of rice 'cause you can heat up water.

01:06:28.060 | Gives you the ability to make some noodles, that type of thing, where you can have some

01:06:31.240 | hot food that's inexpensive.

01:06:33.640 | You can boil vegetables, you can do those things, and it'll get you there.

01:06:37.740 | You can do it in a makeshift container.

01:06:40.040 | Maybe you are traveling with a stainless steel water bottle and that's what you go ahead

01:06:44.040 | and use.

01:06:45.040 | So you use your stainless steel water bottle with your little immersion heater down in

01:06:48.680 | it and use that to heat it up and cook some rice for yourself or to cook some vegetables

01:06:52.840 | or some oatmeal so that you can enjoy a nice hot meal.

01:06:57.300 | That changes your attitude.

01:06:58.840 | When you're traveling on a budget, you're vagabonding, you're in some random hostel

01:07:02.120 | sharing the room with three other people, stretching out your $15 a day budget.

01:07:07.680 | It's nice to have that and that's worth considering.

01:07:10.480 | If you're traveling in the United States in a car, the space is not such a big value.

01:07:16.000 | I'd rather just have a hot pot.

01:07:17.520 | But if you're getting in a backpack and traveling the world, then that would be worth doing.

01:07:22.120 | If you don't have access to a hotel room, maybe you're camping or you're in a more remote

01:07:26.260 | or rural place, electricity is not a certain.

01:07:28.380 | By the way, that technology, it's one of the things that they use in prison.

01:07:33.800 | When the guys in prison want to heat up their food hotter, in prison commissaries, prisoners

01:07:39.460 | in the United States are able to buy ways of heating up, be able to buy pots, electric

01:07:47.880 | hot water kettles, but they have a lower boiling temperature.

01:07:52.120 | They don't actually boil the water.

01:07:53.720 | They're regulated and governed to not boil the water, lest that boiling water become

01:07:58.560 | a weapon for somebody who wants to commit violence against another person.

01:08:03.800 | And so what they do is they have to figure out a way to do it themselves.

01:08:07.160 | And so the solution is to make your own DIY immersion heater.

01:08:12.200 | They call it a stinger.

01:08:13.640 | And so what you do is you take a cable, you strip an electrical plug, which has a plug

01:08:19.560 | in one end.

01:08:20.560 | You strip the wires, you cut the cable off and you strip the wires off the other half

01:08:24.160 | and they take fingernail files and break them in half so you have nice metal contacts and

01:08:31.880 | connect them up, wire them up, solder them up so you have the ability to solder, but

01:08:34.880 | connect it up to make an electrical contact.

01:08:37.700 | And then you plug it in, you throw the ends in a cup and that creates basically an immersion

01:08:45.020 | heater, but the jail style, the jury rig jail style to heat up your pot of water.

01:08:50.280 | And you can boil the water right fresh and use that boiling water for the recipes that

01:08:54.240 | you want to actually have.

01:08:57.560 | So that's that immersion heater.

01:08:59.320 | If you don't have it, you can rig it up for yourself.

01:09:02.840 | Back to traveling in a remote area.

01:09:04.440 | If you're traveling in a remote area, you're traveling on the cheap, take a serious look

01:09:09.040 | at some of the mini stove options.

01:09:10.960 | Of course, if you're backpacking, you can get the fancy ones that come with gas.

01:09:15.160 | A little hard to get on an airplane with a propane or a butane bottle.

01:09:20.040 | Of course, those are super convenient.

01:09:22.320 | They work fast and there are a bunch of them that are even self-contained ones.

01:09:26.040 | Some of them have the built-in jet boil system where it's built in with the water and the

01:09:30.240 | gas system all built in.

01:09:32.400 | But if I were traveling in a remote area, I would carry with me I think something like

01:09:37.000 | a small stove and there are a couple of versions of these.

01:09:40.160 | There are just very, very simple stoves that you can find.

01:09:42.760 | Firebox is one brand, but there are others that basically provide the same functionality

01:09:49.440 | as that you could rig up for yourself, a little campfire with something over it, but it's

01:09:53.560 | held in the context of a stove.

01:09:55.200 | That's good.

01:09:56.200 | There are also some with a rocket stove technology, which are very, very efficient.

01:09:59.360 | You can get these tiny little rocket stoves that fold down into their own little cook

01:10:04.560 | set, own little pot, and they come in one tiny little thing.

01:10:07.880 | You can set up a rocket stove, which you can feed with basically any burnable organic matter,

01:10:12.520 | so some twigs or some scraps of wood or some cow chips, whatever you can find that you

01:10:18.760 | can feed this rocket stove with, and you can use that to give you your cooking ability.

01:10:24.000 | So study what the backpackers do, study what they use, and then consider integrating that

01:10:28.720 | with yourself.

01:10:29.720 | The benefit of going that way is you don't have to carry fuel with you.

01:10:32.920 | You don't have to buy things like charcoal.

01:10:34.520 | You can figure out some branches or some twigs or some just random detritus that you

01:10:39.720 | find to heat your water and/or cook on, and they're very effective.

01:10:45.520 | Carry with yourself a small little backpacker pan, and you have the ability now to cook

01:10:50.080 | a legitimately delicious meal while you are traveling.

01:10:55.840 | So with that, I think I am going to quit for the day on this topic.

01:10:59.400 | Hopefully that you enjoyed it.

01:11:00.640 | I hope that you found it to be practical.

01:11:02.160 | I'm trying to be very practical here, and I hope that I've opened your eyes to some

01:11:06.440 | things that you can do to lower your costs.

01:11:13.640 | I'm no expert in all these things, but these are real life new things that I'm facing.

01:11:19.560 | I don't have a long history of cooking on the road like this.

01:11:23.480 | Generally, it was just me.

01:11:26.680 | If you're a single person, it's relatively inexpensive of just traveling every now and

01:11:31.800 | then to just buy your own food.

01:11:34.320 | But there are times where I've eaten fast food multiple times in a day, two, three times

01:11:37.000 | a day.

01:11:38.000 | You can feel sick at the end of it.

01:11:39.760 | And if you're really hardcore and you're really serious about your frugality, these types

01:11:44.160 | of things could be really, really useful for you.

01:11:46.240 | I know a guy who, he lived on the road.

01:11:50.800 | He was constantly traveling, and his employer would give him a per diem allowance.

01:11:56.540 | But some of these types of things, you're traveling with a simple pot, a simple pan,

01:12:01.080 | and being able to cook in a hotel room gives him and would give him the ability to save

01:12:05.960 | an extra $40 a day by not using his full per diem at restaurants.

01:12:13.720 | Hotel restaurants are expensive, and they got you tight because if you don't have a

01:12:18.000 | car, you don't want to go out.

01:12:19.240 | Sometimes you can't find better deals.

01:12:21.400 | So I hope that they will find these things are practical.

01:12:23.160 | But I don't like the idea of limiting the things that you want to do just because it's

01:12:28.920 | expensive.

01:12:29.920 | I don't like to go on a trip, family vacation, or go travel, or go to a conference.

01:12:33.080 | I don't like the idea of limiting it just because it's more expensive.

01:12:37.360 | Figure out a way to make it cheaper.

01:12:39.760 | And here's the thing.

01:12:41.660 | We have become, in our modern world, we have become so soft with the stuff that we're willing

01:12:47.620 | to do.

01:12:48.620 | We've become so flabby and lazy.

01:12:51.560 | And this is all an artificial construct.

01:12:54.320 | My dad, my grandparents grew up in, my grandmother was from California, grew up in Los Angeles,

01:13:02.360 | California girl through and through.

01:13:04.000 | And my dad grew up on a ranch in Colorado.

01:13:10.120 | But they would travel back and forth from Colorado to California sometimes for annual

01:13:18.880 | vacation or things like that.

01:13:21.160 | And when they were doing that, they didn't have a hotel, they stopped at, they didn't

01:13:25.520 | have the money.

01:13:26.520 | They didn't do all these fancy things.

01:13:27.880 | What they would do is they would just pull over to the side of the road and one or two

01:13:33.360 | would sleep in the car.

01:13:34.840 | My grandmother, I think, would sleep in the backseat of the car.

01:13:37.640 | And my grandfather and my dad and his brother would go and lay out a blanket, lay out a

01:13:43.560 | bedroll on the side of the road.

01:13:46.860 | And this is the days of kind of what you think about when you think about Route 66.

01:13:51.060 | There's no interstate system.

01:13:52.460 | There's just a normal two-lane road or a four-lane road.

01:13:55.980 | You just pull off the road, roll out your bedroll on the side of the road and go to

01:14:00.380 | sleep.

01:14:01.380 | No tent, no fancy mattress.

01:14:03.900 | You just roll it out and go to sleep.

01:14:07.140 | And that's the way that that was normal.

01:14:10.700 | That was not weird.

01:14:12.520 | That was relatively normal.

01:14:16.620 | That was the way that a family would travel in those days.

01:14:20.860 | Now today, I would feel a little bit like I was committing like spousal abuse if I told

01:14:26.260 | my wife, "Hey, you go sleep in the car and we're just going to park here on the side

01:14:29.620 | of the road."

01:14:30.620 | I'm not – obviously, that's not abuse.

01:14:33.180 | But like I would feel that way because our whole society has changed.

01:14:36.540 | But that's a construct.

01:14:37.540 | That's a social construct, a social idea.

01:14:41.640 | And you can change that.

01:14:42.700 | You could do that today.

01:14:44.500 | You can carry a tent with you.

01:14:45.840 | You can find – don't do it on the interstate but you could pull off on some road and walk

01:14:50.860 | across the ditch and roll out your sleeping bag and your bivy sack underneath the tree.

01:14:55.220 | You could do it.

01:14:57.140 | I've traveled in some places and some places when I've been out – we were preaching

01:15:02.220 | in Asia one time.

01:15:03.780 | And when you're traveling, there's people coming in from all kinds of churches in the

01:15:07.020 | local area, coming into the – to nearby.

01:15:09.500 | Nobody has money for a hotel room.

01:15:10.900 | Nobody has money for those things.

01:15:12.660 | And so you just lie down on the floor.

01:15:15.580 | And sometimes there's a bed, sometimes there's not.

01:15:17.660 | Sometimes there's a foam mat or a bamboo mat, sometimes there's not.

01:15:20.500 | You just lie down and sleep.

01:15:22.060 | Now, my bottom gets a little bit sore for a while because I'm out of shape with that

01:15:26.300 | kind of approach.

01:15:27.300 | But you do it for a while and you start to recognize, you know what, we can still be

01:15:31.500 | resilient.

01:15:32.500 | So don't let the cost of traveling keep you from traveling if you want to do that.

01:15:36.860 | Don't let the cost of restaurant food keep you from showing your children what the Grand

01:15:42.700 | Canyon looks like.

01:15:44.300 | Load them up in the car, cook on the road, do it cheap, but take them to the Grand Canyon.

01:15:51.300 | That's it.

01:15:54.180 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.

01:15:59.820 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.

01:16:29.780 | S-U-I-T-E-H-O-P dot com. It's more than just a ticket.

RPF0517-Cooking_on_the_Road