Originally Posted by
BigBlueToe
Where are you touring? ......... I buy enough food for dinner and for "first breakfast" the next day - some oatmeal or bagels and cream cheese (I'm diabetic and can't eat most granolas.) I cook my dinner. In the morning I have coffee and first breakfast before I pack up and leave my campsite. Then I look for a town within 10-20 miles, where I stop at a restaurant for "second breakfast" - ham, eggs, hash browns, etc. - something hearty. Around lunchtime I look for another restaurant, or a grocery store with a deli for a sandwich. Then I find a grocery store in the afternoon and repeat the whole process.
If I'm going to be away from stores for awhile I have to stock up. There are lots of choices. One thing I like to have if I have room is a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, and some sugarfree jam. I've lived for two days straight on nothing but PB&J sandwiches, and done just fine!
I am also an IDD and have been for 44 years now... When I bicycled in outback Australia for about 6 weeks I was totally self supporting during July/August 2006.
I drank 5 liters of H2O a day and used some additional for cooking. The rivers/creeks were fine to drink out of although I did bring a filter and boiled water for tea/coffee. Porridge, rice, lentils, etc worked as did some fresh meat that I would use up in a day or so. I had some canned sardines etc. I made whole wheat "scones" when I could and that was the basis for PBJ that worked really well as I snacked along. Dried fruits and even cheese were snack foods (but not processed sliced plastic cheese - just the real stuff). I brought eggs and they DO NOT need refrigeration. I kept them for a week sometimes and started putting cooking oil on them when I bought them to seal the pores on the shells, but after a week or?? of travel I stopped doing that with my next purchases because it did not help - the eggs were still nice for frying, boiling, etc and provided a nice change when put into the instant noodle soups (ramen)...
Oh, one more important point about sweating and salting food: several times my legs started to cramp up in the afternoon and I just took some salt (NaCl) into my palm and put it in my mouth and guzzled down some water. A bit of a rest and then several dried apricots/raisins/dates and I was fine. I boinked several times in the first 2 weeks because I was not paying enough attention to what my body was saying and was trying to look at scenery and maintain a certain speed/timetable.. Dried druit, water and a couple of hard candies solved the issue fast. I made sure I stopped for a half-hour to rest my body as well when that happened. In those cases porridge and lentils and some sardines were also taken at the evening meal, BUT I did not OD - just made sure I rested for perhaps 10 hours ( 7 pm to about 5 or 6 am) so I could maintain some cadence the next day..
OTOH, I never missed a pub and a "counter lunch" if I bicycled into some small town (Croydon, Borroloola, etc..). It was a good psychological break from pedalling for several hundred km on a dirt/gravel road.
It seemed also a common courtesy for the local Australians to stop and ask "D'you need wattah?" or "You 'right?" Some even offered a cold "beeah" after a bit of a talk at the side of the road surrounded by gum trees and spindly grass.... The Australians are sure concerned about safety in the outback as anyone can have a mechanical breakdown and be stuck..