I always carry cooking gear. I don't mind eating at a restaurant occassionally but that gets old pretty fast. And there's lots of places where the nearest restaurant is more than a few miles away Missoula Montana to Kamiah ID comes to mind. There's not a lot of places to eat along the western side of Iowa either.

I have several recipes that I use at home that are pretty easy to fix on the road. They are good and filling and don't require too much preparation. But I only cook an evening meal. I've found through many bad experiences that riding and heavy eating don't work for me. So during the day I use granola bars, fruit bars, cookies (fairly low fat ones), etc. to keep me fueled. My evening meal is to recharge what I've used during the day.

Breakfast is always cold except for a cup of coffee. I hate cleaning up dishes in the morning while trying to break camp.