Food Sourcing on the Transamerica

 I have what I call a very clean diet. I eat lots of salad with lots of fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, multi grains and lean meat. I usually steam or boil my food and I don't use many sauces. This adventure has opened my eyes to "new" ways of getting food.

Here are 4 ways we get our food supplies. 

1. Convenience Store (CS in bike tour lingo!) Food:   I am still shocked by what I will now buy at Dollar General or a CS - Top ramen, Knorr soup mixes, peanut butter, tuna and chicken packets, canned green beans, tortillas, instant oatmeal packets and trail mix. I don't even like peanut butter, but there is no such thing as almond butter in Dollar General. The one time I asked a store manager if they had hummus he didn't even know what it was. 

2. Hotel food:   When we do stay overnight in a hotel that has a free meal, the breakfast buffet is a foraging event. Everything is part of breakfast. Every salt packet, every pepper, every creamer packet, every butter packet. We eat everything we want and can. Then we pack up everything we want and can take. This usually consists of bananas, apples, oranges, extra biscuits that we make into sandwiches with any leftover eggs, sausage, bacon- anything. 

3. Restaurant food:  This is somewhat similar to hotel food except that we order what we want to eat and then we pack everything else we can take. We always ask them to fill all of our water bottles and coffee cups.  All creamer, napkins and packets go.

4. Grocery Store:  This the jackpot and also where our eyes are bigger than our panniers. Carrots, fruit, packaged ready-to-eat meals, fresh sandwiches, fried chicken, fresh vegetables, watermelon have all been loaded in our panniers or tied on.