Trailer Cuisine

You may recall from last year’s posts that we spent the summer as the lucky beneficiaries of the Tower Falls Employee Dining Room, where all of our meals were lovingly curated by professional chefs! Although their idea of a healthy diet didn’t always match mine (read: 100 continuous days of beef), I was super happy to eat pretty much whatever was being offered at the low, low price of only $75 per paycheck, as I personally have not cooked anything in a few years (read: take-out and frozen meals). But this year is different. We’re on our own with respect to cooking and grocery shopping and we do actually have a fully-functioning kitchen in the Airstream. Which means we’ve had the chance to get creative with meal planning and preparation. And I don’t have to endure a continuous diet of beef!

While cooking in the trailer has its challenges, I have been completely amazed by the results. In the early days of our rehab back in 2022, we made the decision to completely rip out the leaky propane lines and go all-electric. Our reasoning was that we would typically be plugged into power at campgrounds or would just cook over an open fire or our mini propane grill if we were boondocking. So Rob drew on his years of experience as a professional sourcer working in food preparation equipment to design our kitchen! He found an apartment-size refrigerator that fit perfectly into the space that was previously occupied by the electric/propane fridge from 1975. He replaced the non-functional three-burner propane stove with a two-burner induction cooktop, which hides away when not in use so we can pile stuff on it. And as his pièce-de-résistance, he found a combination microwave, air-fryer, and convection oven that perfectly fit where the 1975 Amana microwave had been.

I don’t even recall microwaves existing back in 1975, and I certainly did not want to use one that was almost as old as I am. But the multi-function oven that we now have has been completely amazing! We’ve been able to use it for all the typical microwave functions: frozen lunches, microwave popcorn, re-heating leftovers. And with the convection oven setting, we’ve been able to bake a quiche, or heat up a frozen pizza–things that need to be able to brown. We have yet to use the air-fryer and don’t know any good air-fryer recipes. But if you have a favorite, by all means please pass it along in the comments!

We’ve also had great results with the induction cooktop! From heating up soup on our maiden voyage out to Yellowstone last year, to frying up omelets for breakfasts at our current trailer site, this appliance cooks things quickly and without burning. We’ve also been amazingly fortunate to receive farm-fresh eggs on a regular basis! Our warehouse boss has a neighbor who keeps chickens and has more eggs than he knows what to do with. So our boss gifts us a dozen or so every few weeks. I’ve become quite adept at making quiches–usually broccoli/cheddar or asparagus/swiss–that keep us eating at home for many days out of the week. Didn’t they recently publicize that eating eggs doesn’t impact your cholesterol? You might think that I’d look this up but I really just don’t want to know!

There’s a decent amount of storage space in the kitchen, enough for dishes, cookware, utensils, and a limited amount of non-perishables. We’ve rigged a hanging fruit basket above the dish drainer for extra storage, and packaged almost everything in plastic containers to avoid attracting mice or ants. And so far, we’ve been successful! We’ve had just one “mouse” so far this year (I think it was actually a ground squirrel) and I managed to figure out where he’d gotten in after he had miraculously left for the day. I plugged the hole with steel wool and he hasn’t been seen or heard since! We wind up having to move a lot of things around if we want to cook anything, but that’s a small sacrifice to be able to make delicious food on our own!

Who knows? Maybe I’ll start cooking things again once I’m back on terra firma. For now, cooking in the trailer has turned out to be a fun experiment, punctuated liberally with going out for dinner. Hope you enjoy the photos!