By Bob Wells

The Kitchen: Cooking and Cleaning

The key to our new lifestyle is frugal living. If we have to eat at restaurants and fast
food because we don't have a kitchen, we might as well stay in a cheap
apartment. Fortunatley it is very easy to cook in your van. If you have ever
backpacked or car-camped you are ahead of the game.

The easiest and healthiest thing is to eat raw foods like fruits, vegetables, salads,
nuts and trail mix. With these you don't have to do any cooking. Adding
sandwiches to the menu gives a lot of extra variety without any cooking. A loaf of
bread and some can of tuna, lunch meat, or peanut butter is all you need. The
problem with most store bought luncheon meats is they contain a lot of salt and
chemicals. One solution is to buy your meat at the deli counter where they slice it
right in front of you. A litle more expensive, but much healthier.

Even for this simple cooking we need refrigeration for the vegetables,lunch meats
and salad dressings. A cold drink on a hot day is real nice as well!! I recommend
an extreme cooler. Many companies make these now. They have extra insulation
so they will last five days in hot weather. I bought one that had a spigot on the side
at the bottom. Make sure you can screw a regular garden hose onto it, makes
draining the water much easier. Leaving the water in helps it to stay colder up to a
certain point. Once enough ice has melted it is better to drain off the water.
Keeping food in the water is a bit of a problem. I have used double-bagged
Ziplocs but eventually, after a few days, the water always seems to get in. You can
get Tupperware and Rubbermaid containers at thrift stores that work well. I like
using one block of ice and one bag of crushed ice, seemed to be a good
compromise between space effeciency and slow melting. The fuller the cooler is,
the longer it will stay cold. With a cooler, we can buy a milk and have cereal, one
of the simplest meals, and with the right cereal, very healthy. Transfer the milk into
a couple of insulated containers and it will keep much longer and water won't get
in.  

Since our vans tend to get pretty hot in the summer, I recommend adding extra
insulation to your cooler. Go down to Home Depot and buy one or two (depends
on the size of your cooler) sheets of blue styrofoam insulation, 2 foot by 8 foot. The
blue kind won't be damaged by getting wet and is tougher. Cut them with a
kitchen knife to fit your cooler on all 6 sides, making sure that the lid will hinge
open. Also, cut openings for the handles and spigot. I just used superglue to
attach mine and duct tape at all the corners to be double safe. Never had any
problems with it. I measured how tall my cooler was (and the Rubbermaid tote I
used for the rest of the kitchen stuff) before I built my bed out of 2 X 4's and
plywood. I made sure they would slide underneath for storage. I slide it out when I
need something out of it. The styrofoam takes up a lot of space. An alternative is
to use Reflextic insulation you get from any hardware store. Just wrap it around
the sides and glue it to the top and bottom.

Many of us are going to want to do some actual cooking for a greater variety of
meals. This is no problem of all. I used a Coleman 2 burner propane stove. Why
use a stove that big? While I have never used both burners, I wanted the extra
stability it provides. When the lid is up it provides security on three sides so it is
very unlikely to tip over and spill. I don't want to loose the food but more
importantly I don't want to catch the van on fire! If space is at a premium, you can
use a backpacking stove. You just have to figure out a way to stabilize it so you
can't accidentally kick it over. I personally would not use one that burned white gas
or Coleman fuel. The flare up in the van would scare me.

Next thing we need is pots and pans. I like a 12 inch Teflon frying pan and lid. I
can fry hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, or make a Hamburger (or Tuna)
Helper meal. I can fry up a couple pounds of hamburger for tacos or sloppy joes. I
prefer to cook extras and put the leftovers in the cooler for a later meal. That
minmizes the cooking and cleaning I have to do. A 2 quart pot with lid can be
used for mac-n-cheese, stew, spaghetti, chili, or boiling eggs. Basically anything
you can make on your stove top at home you can make in your van with these two
pans. Add a few plates, bowls, spatulas and utensils, and you are good to go.
They are going to get some rough treatment so plastic picnic plates (frisbee?)
and bowls are good. A Lexan knife, fork and spoon and a plastic spatula won't
scratch your Teflon.

Cleaning:

After we cook we need to clean. Again, this is no big deal. Go to a thrift store and
buy a tub large enough to hold your pans one at a time. Go to Walmart and buy a
1 quart spray bottle that people use to mist there plants with. While there get a a
dish scrub brush that holds the soap in the handle and has a sponge cleaner, and
a small bottle of anti-bacterial dish soap. Next we need water. You can buy it at
the grocery store in 2 1/2 gal jugs but that will get expensive. I generally just go
into a public restroom and get a quart or two at a time. The smaller containers are
easier to fill in bathroom sinks and don't draw attention to you. To wash the
dishes, fill a squirt bottle with clean water and the scrub brush with soap. Use a
paper towel and wipe off excess food. Hold your pan over the empty tub and
squirt it until it is wet all over. Clean it with the scrub brush. Rinse it thouroughly
with the squirt bottle. Dry and put away. That used maybe a cup of water. Wash
your plate and utensils in the same way, except now you have soapy water in your
tub to use. Find a good place to dispose of the water. It is very simple as long as
you do it right away. If you wait long enough for the food to harden then you may
have to let it soak which will use a lot more water. I try to wash as soon as I'm
done eating.

I keep all of these things in a Rubbermaid tote that I store under the bed. When I
want to cook, I slide it out, empty it, turn the tote over and cook on top of it while
setting on the bed. This has worked very well or me and hopefully will work well for
you.