January 23, 2023
If you haven’t already, check out part one of the Cooking While Travel Nursing series! In Part one, I talk about what kitchen supplies we bring with us, what we are hoping to bring with us going forward, and what we tend to buy while on contract. For this post, I’ll be focusing on where we shop and what I make while we’re travel nursing.
One fun, but also challenging, aspect of travel nursing is getting to know the different local supermarkets and options for grocery shopping. Depending where you’re from and how far you’re going from home, you may have some stores that you recognize available to you, but you may not! Some stores are consistently available pretty much everywhere like Walmart and Target (maybe Whole Foods also). For the most part though, you’ll probably find the best deals and variety at more local supermarkets.
While we were in Maine, we were close to home and able to stick with Market Basket (very budget-friendly) and a local farmers-market-style store right down the street from us. In South Carolina, we mostly shopped at our local Food Lion (also a budget-friendly option) and Lowes Foods (not to be confused with Lowes Hardware). Here in Phoenix, we’ve been going to the local Walmart Neighbourhood Market and Sprouts Farmers Market (a supermarket, they just call it a farmers market).
It may take some research to get to know the local grocery stores and where to find the best deals. Asking around is another great way to get recommendations and find out about smaller stores that may have more fun offerings and good deals. We’ve also tried online grocery and meal services which are available pretty much across the country depending how rural an area you’re in.
In Myrtle Beach we had fun trying out Hello Fresh, but ultimately decided it was a little too expensive for us. There are TONS of meal kit options out there for all different budgets and diets, and they can be a fun way to simplify some of the work of grocery shopping and cooking if you’re pressed for time or need some help learning how to cook or learning more recipes. Some other companies that we’ve heard of are Home Chef, Blue Apron, and Green Chef, but there are a bunch more! So far, we’ve only tried Hello Fresh and Good Food (only in Canada).
We may try some new ones eventually, but because I only work sporadically while we’re doing travel nursing, I have the time to cook from scratch and I love doing it! In general, we like to do what we can to save money on food unless it’s to buy organic versus super processed foods. For us, the meal kits are an unnecessary added expense so we decided to cut it out.
Recently, we’ve been trying to transition to eating organic foods pretty exclusively and have been trying out Thrive Market to help with that. They’re not a meal kit delivery service, but instead they deliver groceries which are primarily organic and discounted. So far, we’ve noticed that things aren’t always cheaper than our local health foods store (Sprouts), but they do price-match which helps make up for that. They offer pantry goods, freezer items, and beer/wine, but no produce or dairy that requires refrigeration, so it doesn’t completely cut out the need for your local grocery store.
All in all, we find that it still saves us a lot of grocery-shopping time which is helpful now that Dan is working days. We share a car so when he’s working I’m a bit land locked at the house and can’t go grocery shopping. Back when he was working nights, I would often get the grocery shopping done when he was sleeping during the day before and/or after his night shift. Being able to cut down on the time we spend grocery shopping helps us to have more time to explore and do things together, so for us it’s definitely been worth it!
As I mentioned before, I make most of our meals and other than going for organic foods (especially animal products) we try to save money when it comes to our food budget. We decided to stop using Hello Fresh because while it’s fun, it definitely isn’t a way to save money. We also try to save eating out for when we take trips or when we have people visit us. Although, this past weekend we actually ate out twice which is unusual for us, but one of them was Torchy’s Tacos (a semi-fast food place) so it didn’t exactly break the bank.
When it comes to Dan’s work days, I’ve cycled through some different recipes that are convenient for me to make in bulk and easy for him to eat at work. In Myrtle Beach, I started out making him quesadillas loaded with meat and veggies, then switched to omelets similarly loaded with veggies and some meat. He loved the omelets so we stuck with that all through the time we spent in Maine. Since being in Phoenix, he’s switched to a sandwich with some dried fruit, nuts, and a hard boiled egg. Then for breakfast before he heads to work, I make ahead a bunch of scrambled eggs with sausage and a bunch of veggies and cheese.
The biggest thing I look for when it comes to deciding what to make for him is, as I said, meals that I can make a ton of and freeze. That way, I can focus my regular cooking efforts on dinner and he can have something that is quick and easy to grab and go before work. Turns out eggs freeze wonderfully, both as omelets or scrambled eggs! Honestly, when Dan was working nights he had more like two meals a day because of the weird schedule so I made him food to bring to work and then before he left, we’d have whatever I made for dinner. Now that he’s working days, I meal prep breakfast and he packs a lunch the night before.
For days when he isn’t working, we mostly have leftovers for lunch, or Dan will often make a sandwich, and breakfast is pretty simple to. Typically, we have cereal, english muffins, smoothies, or oatmeal. I love making a bunch of pancakes or waffles and freezing them, or packing individual smoothie bags, to have a quick and easy breakfast option ready to go.
Dinner is where most of my cooking time goes and where I have the most fun coming up with tasty and (mostly) healthy recipes.
In general, to stick with our goal of saving money on food, I have to limit myself when it comes to trying out new complicated recipes. I LOVE Half Baked Harvest and trying new recipes from her site or cookbook (check out some of my favourites here), but most of the time I end up spending a lot more on groceries whenever I do. It obviously depends on the recipe, but I find that I often have to buy things I don’t typically use and then I have a good amount of leftovers of those ingredients that I don’t always know what to do with. I find that problem solving fun, but it can sometimes lead to unnecessary food waste/spoilage which I’ve really been working to minimize.
All that to say, I try new fun recipes about once a week, and otherwise stick to my tried and true recipes. Some of these include:
Last week for my fun, out-of-the-box dinner I made buffalo tenders and this week I’m planning to make chicken & shrimp alfredo.
Check out my post about Meal Planning from a couple of weeks ago!
Dessert is another area where I like to get creative, but not too often especially while travel nursing. That said, I’ve been having a blast making homemade marshmallows which are delicious on their own or in hot cocoa. They’re super easy and we have all of the supplies we need to make them here so why not?! I’ll share my recipe for those tomorrow!
PLEASE COMMENT BELOW