/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>5178901
salt/pepper
hotsauce
that's about it
if there's a spice/seasoning that you use almost every meal then buy it otherwise you dont need it

>>5178901
Garlic, ginger, chiles, soy sauce, vinegar, olive oil.
Thyme, cumin, clove, allspice, cinnamon, citric acid and sodium nitrite would be good too, oh and sugar.
In all they should fit inside a 4 quart container unless you buy gigantic bottles of soy and vinegar so I guess they shouldn't be much of a hassle to keep inside a van.
With these you have bases for many of the world's style of flavors.
I omitted salt and pepper because they are pretty much obvious.

>>5178901
Dehydrated onions, mushrooms, and potato flakes can help stretch food or at least break up the routine some. Is it cold or hot where you are

>>5178901
definitely pick up some bullion cubes if you want to make any soups or paella.

bouillon powder. it makes cheap food so much more bearable. Spices I use in almost everything are onion, garlic, and celery powder.

>>5178901

Make sure you leave a window open, yes?

>>5178901
Vanbro here. Lived in an extended cab E-350 for eight months when money was nonexistant.

If you're mechanically inclined, you can build a refrigerator using your van's air conditioning. I did it in a very nigger-rigged way, I'm sure there are better ways, but I got some hose and piped the air out of one of the vents down into an insulated box. Do not expect it to stay super cold, but it can keep food from spoiling too quickly in the summer.

Dried beans and lentils are your friend, they last forever. Rice too, and quinoa, oatmeal, etc.

You can keep a surprisingly large amount of spices in a van. Salt, pepper, basil, rosemary, cumin, thyme, cayenne, and a few others. They don't weigh a lot, so you can suspend them from the ceiling if you put them in a bag, or just shove them underneath something.

If you want meat, eat it that day. Next day if you have my refrigerator. Keep some oil around for frying. You can keep butter around, but you will need to have a refrigerator.

You can get an energy star toaster oven that doesn't pull a lot of power, and that lets you bake and toast things as well as stove-topping them. With a toaster oven and camping stove, you'll have almost entirely replicated a bare bones kitchen.

Get the half-dozen packs of eggs and they'll keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. That should be enough to eat six eggs.

Hot sauce and salsa keeps well, especially in the fridge. Speaking of the fridge, you can make a far more professional refrigerator using automotive AC, and if I was going to live in a van long-term I would definitely do it, but it would require significant skill and would be an unholy pain in the ass.

>>5179304
Canned pasta sauce will keep for a while, just be sure to eat it quickly. This pattern holds for a lot of things; don't expect momentary variety in your meals. If you buy some food, expect to eat that food every day, sometimes multiple times a day, for a few days. This sounds worse than it is, because you get used to it and time flows together pretty badly when you live in a van anyway.

Power is a big inhibitor. One of the advantages of a one-ton van is they usually have two batteries as opposed to just one; this gives you twice as much free play until you draw the battery too far down. You can mitigate this by driving the van a lot and thus giving you power off the alternator, but that costs gas and if you're living in a van your money situation isn't going to be very flexible.

Space is the biggest problem. I had the foresight to find the biggest van I could find; an 18-passenger cargo van with an extra foot and a half headroom at the top. This is what made it all tolerable; that's a lot of space. It's about the size of a studio apartment. Set up an air mattress with plenty of blankets (one of them was electric for heat in the winter) and you can sleep comfortably.

Store things everywhere. Make totally optimal use of your space. If you can, don't get a van at all, get a box truck. They don't require commercial drivers licenses to operate and then you can stand up in your own home. Don't just use the floor; use the ceiling, use the walls, use everything. The ceiling is what everyone forgets about; a lot of things are flat and thin and they store up against the roof just fine. Your knives in particular are perfect for the roof; get a big magnetic strip to adhere to the roof and adhere the knives to that. Sheath them in canvas or plastic or something to prevent injury if they fall.

>>5178901
protip: put a car cover on so cops don't hussle you for sleeping in your vehicle

>>5179343
Get a cheap gym membership for showers and fitness; even if you don't work out, start, because it's very easy to lose your mind living in van and exercise keeps you grounded and gives you a place to go besides sitting in the van all day. They're used to gym rats coming in and not leaving for three or four hours. Go hiking a lot; find parks and trails nearby and spend a lot of time there. Go to food pantries; both the bag-of-government-cheese kind and the cafeteria-lunch kind. The latter is important because they can give you food you don't get too often at home.

Hang out with friends as much as possible, but even if they offer to let you stay, do not couch surf. Nothing destroys a friendship faster than that. The biggest problem with living in a van really is time; it's easy to forget how much free time we really have because there's always something to do; some place to be. When home is a van, that goes away, and you will be bored as ever loving shit. Get on 4chan a lot; the hotel I lived at had free wifi that extended out to the parking lot. You can charge your laptop off an inverter.

>>5179346
Cargo vans do not have windows. This is a good thing.

This is an important point actually. Living in a van is illegal and the police will take you to jail for vagrancy. You need to prevent people you don't know from finding out; keep on top of repairs to the van, keep the van locked at all times even when you're in it, get some window tint for the door windows and get one of those sun-shade things for the windshield. For light, get some low-power lights like CFLs or LEDs, but for your own sanity's sake make sure they're warm lights; low kelvin. *white* lights as opposed to the soft-yellowish of incandescents prevent you from sleeping and can mess you up in the long run if that's all you see at night.

>>5179393
>>5179381
>>5179343
>>5179304

moar. I love these threads on /out/.

Your staples should be as followed:

Instant rice ~1000+kcal (just heat spiced water once a day, don't do anything stupid and convoluted)
Canned red kidney beans/black beans, alternating. ~440 - fibre
oats ~ 300kcal (should be enough, eat more if you want, consider mixing them with a 30g portion of protein powder)
canned sardines or salmon (you absolutely MUST eat either a can of sardines or a tall can of salmon at least twice a week for the vitamins and fats)
A can of spinach once every 4 days, and a can of carrots and peas every second day
2 vitamin c drops with meals (buy these cheap at a drug store)
salt/potassium salt as needed (make sure you're getting at least 1g sodium from your food)
Consider getting some of your calories from almonds, but watch out, as they're pretty sharp.

If you take the powder you won't need to eat stupid shitty tuna every day, and you shouldn't, because it'd do you harm. Consider a multivitamin, I guess. I don't need one because I eat beans, spinach, carrots, c drops, oats, rice and tinned fish and either a chicken breast or a shot of powder every day. I can't stress to you how fucking important sardines are for maintaining your health. They have niacin, b6, b12, EPA+DHA and protein. Get them in water, eat them out of the can and toss it.

>>5179393
Dude keep going. Expand on the couch surfing bir

There is a TV series I've been watching that is all about a man living in a camper van.
He forages for herbs and mushrooms and stuff and cooks it up.

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/185/One-Man-and-His-Campervan

>>5179474
>>5179453
Okay, but I kind of said everything I had to say. The couch surfing bit is just something I've noticed; some people decide to live with friends, and often those friends will offer that. Take them up on it for a night, but only a night. Do not stay later, even if they offer, and don't do it again for a month at least. The stress of a friend moving in with you can and will shatter friendships.
"Oh, yeah, Kevin stays over every once in a while" is fine, "Kevin's been living with me for a while" is not.

One tip I can share is that the best vehicle possible is the vehicle I had. Full ton, XL, extra-headroom van. Trailers are nice for storage space, box trucks are better to live in for the 3D nature of them as opposed to a van which is mostly 1D, and RVs are a full-on apartment on wheels, but all of them suffer from problems that a big damn van doesn't have. It's hard to find parts for them when they break down, it's hard to find places to park them, but the main reason is that people notice them. Box trucks and trailers and especially RVs are things people pay attention to. They're things people start getting suspicious of when they see them in their parking lot overnight, or when they see again and again. They're things hotel managers snoop around when they see it for the third night that week. They're things police get called over.

Featureless work vans are invisible. No one notices them. No one pays attention to them. No one thinks anything of them when they stay in an out of the way spot in the parking lot all day. They're so unnoteworthy that most people don't even know they're there. Convienence wise, every Autozone in the country carries parts for an E-350. When your RV breaks down may God alone help you.

>>5179500
>but I kind of said everything I had to say
t-this isn't copy pasta? you brave, kind anon

I know this old dude that sold his bricks and mortar home and bought a Toyota Hiace camper van and now he just cruises around without a care.
His camper was fitted out with a shower in the back that pops up when you open the back door.
Last I heard he backed his van into a bollard so he can't open the back door and he hasn't been able to shower since.

>>5179381
>Get a cheap gym membership for showers and fitness ... They're used to gym rats coming in and not leaving for three or four hours
/fit/ here. Between all those beans/lentils/eggs and being a gym rat all day every day, you would get fucking ripped.

We have a thing called cocoon mode where you cut off all contact with the outside world and just obsess over fitness; that's pretty much what you'd be doing. A year of that and you'd be a shredded.

>>5179584
>We have a thing called cocoon mode where you cut off all contact with the outside world and just obsess over fitness; that's pretty much what you'd be doing.
That's pretty sad. But hey, maybe it'll get you laid lol

>>5179584
How do you achieve cocoon status

>>5179584
>>5179600

>How do you achieve cocoon status
>>We have a thing called cocoon mode where you cut off all contact with the outside world and just obsess over fitness

Are you retarded?

If you aren't broke but are just looking to save money on living, buy a lot. A tiny, undeveloped piece of land somewhere. They're cheap as fuck; almost all of the price in real estate is the house. Buy that lot for like $10k or whatever, and now you have a home base. Now you have a place where no cops will come after you and nobody will hassle you. Now you can buy a mobile home and start talking about sewage, running water, and electricity. Now you're a homeowner; albeit a fucking shitty-off one.

Bills are nonexistant. Living like a hobo means no utilities (YET!) and the property tax on an undeveloped lot is like $30 a year.

dehygroginated brits the lot of you, all useless to us in The USA!

atassowe saccacharine
:brits as verif
: " atassowe saccacharine
|

>>5179623
That all depends on where you buy land though.
My house isn't that flash but my land and location push my rates and water bills through the roof.

>>5179614
Well there must be different ways of doing it

>>5179630
You should look up USA land grants and the difference in taxes. If you're here you should look it up since you claim so much.

verif: ndsharir zealand
NZ :-)

>>5179623
>Buy that lot for like $10k
That's a big damn lot you're buying for that much! Just checked landwatch, you can get some buildable lots for $2000 where I live.

>>5179630
But you actually have a house. I'm talking full on, buy a square of grass and plop a trailer on it. A trailer is a vehicle, not a house, so until you run the water and power, it's non-livable, and the taxes are barely there. One acre of non-livable undeveloped land is worth half of nothing in taxes.

>>5179634
>>5179645
Hmm, I got a water front property on the east coast of australia, even 1/8th of an acre here will outweigh the price of any home you could fit on it.

>>5179647
>water front property on the east coast of australia
Holy fuck, man, no wonder. I'm talking about a corner of satan's ass crack outside city limits somewhere.

>>5179584
>/fit/ here. Between all those beans/lentils/eggs and being a gym rat all day every day, you would get fucking ripped.
>We have a thing called cocoon mode where you cut off all contact with the outside world and just obsess over fitness; that's pretty much what you'd be doing. A year of that and you'd be a shredded.
so that is what 80% of the gym fags on hm are doing along with the 25% assistant coaches,.
the 12% perpetual roid rats/lifters who think they look impressive and the 5%future wba or womens volley ball coaches who couldn't count over 100.between them .

salt, (pepper), powder stevia, chillis

Hobos pls die

>>5179979
>stevia
fuck off