cooking in the truck

You can use it on salads too.

 

I make bacon in the oven, 2 pounds at a time. 375, 15 mins for half, 20 mins for the rest. The soft (15 min) bacon goes in a plastic tub in the fridge; the crunchy bacon goes into a zip bag and crumbled with a rolling pin (once it cools) for bacon bits. It keeps longer than I can keep it around...

 

Hungry for Bacon. Or is it Beggin Strips? I wont know the diff.. It's BACON..!!!!

 

Good for 10 years.

 

We had a large refrigerator on our truck. It was the type with a freezer on top that had a separate door. It was $299.00 at Lowes. The freezer kept things frozen well. Even ice-cream, meat or anything else that needed to be frozen. Haagen Dazs was a must out on the road. LOL It is rare to find a truck stop that sells Haagen Dazs ice-cream plus it is a lot cheaper at Walmart.
I would buy at least 6 pints of it when I bought food and supplies for the next 3 or so weeks on the road.

Once the food and supplies would run out, we would hit a Walmart while we were on the road to cover the next week or so until our next break.The freezer was big enough to also hold bottles of water that would freeze and I would take out every day so we would have really cold water all day and replace them with new ones. This was always good when we were in really hot weather. I also took at least 2 gallons of milk, sometimes 4 which fit into the fridge with lots of room left over.
We had a large inverter on the truck which everything ran off of.

When we shut down for our breaks, the refrigerator would continue running off of the inverter which was running off the batteries to the truck. I would usually have to get up at least once in the middle of our sleep time to idle the truck for 45 minutes to an hour to recharge the batteries. There was a safety feature on the inverter that would cause it to start beeping if the batteries were getting too low which would be our warning to idle. At the point of the beeping, there would still be enough battery to start the truck to idle. It was usually always me who had to get out of bed to start the truck. In the beginning, we mistakenly thought it would be OK to ignore the beeping. We had dead batteries when we woke up. We had to call break down to get someone out to us for a jump. That only happened once. LOL
We also had a microwave, rice cooker, electric tea kettle, large crock-pot, toaster, coffee pot and a 2 burner hot plate. We kept a few different sizes of pans and also cooking utensils and knives on the truck.

I had a large duffel bag that I kept the hot plate, pans, utensils, knives etc in.
Duffel bags work well to keep things in order on a truck. You can find duffel bags at Goodwill, St Vincent De Paul, etc for a fraction of what they cost new.
We would keep a lot on the top bunk and the rest in a tall cabinet on one side of the truck. The other side had the refrigerator and microwave. You can buy these special plastic devices at Walmart and other stores that cook eggs in a microwave. We had one that would make a half omelet and another one with 2 sections which fits one egg in each side. If you have English muffins, sausage or some other kind of meat and cheese, it makes a quick and easy breakfast. I toasted the English muffins in the toaster. As far as eggs, I never bought regular eggs in a carton. Too messy. I would buy the 6 pack of cartons of eggs out of their shell in liquid form at Costco or sometimes the quart size at Walmart or other stores. It is much easier to cook eggs in this form on a truck and much easier to store without the eggs breaking or dealing with egg shells.
Sometimes, I would buy a big pack of flour tortillas and a bag of shredded cheese and canned re-fried beans. It is really easy to make burritos with these ingredients. I usually also had fresh tomatoes, onion, salsa, sour cream, and a can of black olives that I would open and put in a quart size freezer bag for storage. I usually bought a lot of this at Costco and the rest at Winco which is a store in the Western states. I would buy most of the paper and disposable supplies at Walmart.

In the crock pot, I would cook meat along with onions, fresh garlic, yes I had a small cutting board for that, and would add vegetables toward the end. I would do chicken or roast, sometimes meatballs, which I bought at Costco in a large bag which I kept in the freezer. If you have rice cooked up and stored in the refrigerator, it goes with any of the foods that were cooked in the crock pot or on the hot plate.
I would do the cooking in the crock pot and rice cooker while the truck was rolling.
The crock pot we bought at Lowes and it has latches on both sides that keeps the lid down and tight with a rubber seal.
I left it sitting on the floor as the food was cooking while the truck was rolling.
I would also make beans in the crock pot, adding fresh garlic and onions, and sometimes canned tomatoes. I would always make enough that it would last for several day and we would have a variety of different cooked foods to choose from.
As far as storage, I would use gallon size freezer bags, sometimes the quart size. You really have to make sure you have the seal tight to prevent spillage. I would then put that in double plastic shopping bags and tie it up in a slip knot just to be on the safe side in case of spillage or anything. It helps contain everything and prevents a huge mess in the refrigerator if it did leak.

We used paper plates, paper bowls and plastic eating utensils. It really cuts down on washing dishes. I did have 2 large plastic eating bowls though in case we wanted to use those instead or for in case we ran out of paper bowls or plates.

It was always easy enough to add a little bottled water and wipe them out with paper towels for the next use. Sometimes, after I put a little water in the bowl to clean it, I would put the bowl in the microwave to heat the water which made it easier to clean the bowl.
As far as cleaning the pans, I would heat a little bit of bottled water in the electric tea kettle and pour it into the pan and clean it out with paper towels. If you do it right away, it is a lot easier to clean.
We had a 13 gallon garbage can on the truck and bought garbage bags for it. When I cleaned the pans, what little bottled water I used to clean them out with paper towels would be dumped into the garbage cans so I was able to do everything on the truck and didn't have to go outside for this part.
When we were at a company yard, we would park by the electrical outlets they would provide for trucks and we would use a long, heavy duty extension cord running out of the window so that we could cook without idling the truck.

We also kept salt, pepper, garlic powder and Asian garlic chili sauce on the truck which always made the food better.

The rice cooker we bought at Walmart is the type that also stayed sealed with a latch while it was cooking the rice.

Paper towels are a must on a truck, especially if you are going to be doing cooking. I always bought the type that had half sheets that tear off. It made them last twice as long. I would buy it in 8 packs.

I would only use the 2 burner hot plate when we were parked. It would just be too dangerous to cook like that with the truck rolling. It ran off of electricity also. I would usually use it to cook chicken breast or chicken thighs with fresh garlic, onions, canned tomatoes, Okra and sometimes other types of frozen vegetables. Sometimes I would make steaks and baked potatoes.

Because the driver was African, he liked an African food called Nshima made from corn meal which I cooked plenty of each time and it would also last for several days. He ate this with almost every meal. It is the equivalent of Americans eating bread, or Mexicans eating tortillas. It was a staple food in Africa.

All of the food I made was always enough for a meal that day and enough left over that I could bag it up to last for the next several days. I had a fold up wooden table that I kept behind the drivers seat and would use it to put the hot plate on while I was cooking. We normally had to idle while I was cooking on the hot plate, while we were parked.

The driver, my boyfriend (ex now-long story) was probably one of the best fed and best taken care of drivers on the road.
He didn't have to want for anything. He didn't even have to get his shower supplies and clean clothes out because I did that for him too. I had him spoiled and he got too used to me doing everything without truly appreciating it. Little by little, he did less and less. I guess that was my fault for allowing it to get so bad for so long.

I managed the truck, his job, our lives and everything else very well, keeping everything stocked that you could possibly ever need on the road.
In a nut shell, I did EVERYTHING except the driving. He did almost NOTHING but the driving.
With a CDL, I could do that entire job myself better than he ever could alone. In fact, when I left the truck, and him, he quit the job 3 months later when I still didn't go back to him when he was practically begging me to return to him saying he would change his behavior toward me.

I did everything from the tandems/adjusting weights, routing & directions, calculation on how much fuel we could put on, almost all of the Qual-com communications including loaded and empty calls, any phone calls needing done even sometimes to his DM, opening/closing trailer doors, lock/seal, getting weigh slips, going into the shippers and consignees when we arrived, helping fuel on my side, helping him unload 2 different plant loads going to 3 different consignees each time (those loads with thousands of plants going to Home Depot suck-they can't touch freight so we had to unload)
And I did many other things. While unloading the plants, he took a break every 5 or 10 minutes while I continued working without breaks, I wanted it done and over with. It wasn't even my job!

This was along with all of the cooking, feeding him, yes I would literally stand and feed him while he was driving so he "wouldn't have to stop", keeping the truck neat, clean and organized, taking the trash off daily, keeping paperwork in order, faxing his trips so he gets paid "HIS" paycheck. If you detect a little sarcasm there, it was meant. LOL
I always wondered how I could do all that I did daily on that truck, yet the paychecks were 100% his.
And he also wanted me to do all that I did and get my CDL and drive half the time which I can't do due to a medical condition.
He wasn't happy that I did all that I did every day, took care of him in every way you can imagine and did half or more of his job.
He wanted even more out of me. I was at his beck and call. I treated him like a king. I truly did, at the expense of myself.

I learned where his priorities were and it wasn't me and after he changed drastically from the person he was before he started driving for the first time 18 months prior and I started to experience extreme verbal and emotional abuse from him along with many other things I wouldn't even want to go into in this forum, I made the decision that I was better than being treated like that.

I loved the traveling and I really miss trucking but unless you have a true partnership as a couple and respect for each other, it just doesn't work.
I had been trying to write a book during those 18 months on "the trucking life" but couldn't concentrate long enough to get past the chapter titles because of all I had to do daily along with the treatment he was giving me.
He called it my "stupid book". Real support there.
So, now that he is history, I am working on my "Stupid Book". LOL
If anybody has anything they want to contribute, you can e-mail me at [email protected]

I am interested in anything from supplies/tools/electronics you carry, cooking on the truck, recipes, health, nutrition & exercise, team driving and how that works out, couples on the road, partners at home supporting their husbands, wives, partners etc who are on the road alone, pet stories, children riding on the truck, riders on the trucks, truck stop brawls, angels on the road whether it was somebody helping you or an actual Angel story where you think you were helped by an Angel, accident stories, advice & tips for new comers or even for those who are veterans of the road, accident stories, worst and best companies to work for and why.
I also want stories on lot lizards. I wasn't going to include this chapter but it is real and it is out there so I decided to include it. I have heard some funny stories already but would like to know more. I also plan on getting lot lizard information from the lot lizards perspective. Any information can be anonymous. It won't be linked with actual names in the book. Where are they the worst as in a lot of them, what do they charge, how do you get rid of them? Do you get rid of them or use their services?
I love the wives/girlfriends chasing them away stories whether it's with just standing up in the truck and making your presence known or anything a bit more drastic. They always changed directions when they were heading to our truck and I would walk to the front of the truck, inside still and look them in the eye and give them that look, like that's as far as you need to come. They usually know better than to mess with a truck with a woman in it but then I have heard stories where they offer themselves up to the man and woman so I would like to hear any stories you have. Don't worry, I can take it. It doesn't need to be censured. LOL

I have much more I want to know about other topics too but these are to start.

If you e-mail me stories and information and want to contribute more, I will let you know what the other topics are or post it in this forum as far as what information I am looking for or needing still.
Maybe one day I will be able to get back on the road while I am writing my book so I can actually talk to people in person too
along with getting the information e-mailed to me.

 

wow hope rider, you sure you were in a truck and not an rv? lol, just kidding. i was raised by my mother who took care of us three kids herself, while holding a full-time job, and while my father was on the road usually for mounths on end, and i must say that when a man mistreats a woman, espically when she "babyies" him like you seem to do it really pisses me off. good for you to work up the courage to not deal with it anymore, and thanks for the advice on cooking in the truck, hope i can get a truck with a real freezer and fridge. take care and god bless, keep your head up.

 

The only way to keep frozen food frozen to have an actual fridge/freezer installed, which they make for RVs and can work in a big rig, however it needs to be professionally installed and you have to be sure to get one that fits in the space that you have. The thermolitic coolers work well to keep things cool, but do not freeze anything, but the fridge I have works pretty well, though space is limited in it. As far as the cooking goes, I've used a single burner stove which works well, but I found that I have been using a 12 volt lunchbox oven which works very well. I've been able to make bread, muffins, stews, baked potatoes, made rice and noodle casseroles and various gouloshes so far. I'm still experimenting with it, but with a little creativity, and some spices, you can eat well in a truck, and healthy too. I have raw vegetables and fruit that I keep in a basket at the foot of my bed and I restock it every week when I pass either a store or a WalMart.

 

Thank you for your encouragement. I finally came to the realization just what a mama's boy the driver was. He lived at home in Africa until he was about 30. He never really had to become a man and take care of himself before. He took advantage of how thorough and responsible I always was and he never appreciated all that I did managing our lives, doing his job and how well I took care of him, like a king. Even though I was only a rider and not supposed to do even one thing related to the job, I was on top of everything related to his job and even when we had emergencies, breakdowns and many flats, I was always out of the truck, triangles laid out and getting back into the truck to send in a breakdown call before he even started to get out of the truck. Other drivers used to think I was the driver until I told them otherwise. I would always say "I don't drive, I just do everything else." It's too bad he turned out bad. I really miss the road!
We may have had a lot on the truck, but I kept it organized at all times and the driver ate healthful home cooked (or rather truck cooked) meals most of the time.
It was a very busy life, at least for me. If I ever had down time where I could read, be on my laptop etc, while he was driving, he always told me that I had it made, was living off of him, used him, was on vacation, etc. I could never figure out what world he was living in to think like that considering everything I did daily. He was so lazy, he would wake me up to ask what time it was when we were sleeping. He didn't want to open his eyes or reach for his cell phone to check it himself.
Yes, I had to end it. He didn't deserve me!

 

Hey, umm, If you want to get back on the road, I've got an open seat and all the stuff you'd need to do the cooking, right down to that little folding table. Oh, and I'll split the lumper fees 50/50 so you could get a paycheck

 

Wont last a day in this Truck..It's BACON!!!!