Cooking for Two in Your RV 

Most RV’s have a small kitchen space.  We know that when we purchase our rigs. But it is an ongoing process of learning and refining our cooking skills in an RV. Moving our kitchenware from our homes into our RV for long-term traveling or full-timing doesn’t always work out the way we plan it.  Often we have to adapt and purchase new, smaller, compact items to replace the ones we have used in our homes. This will better help us cook as we are used to doing. Check out this post about 10 Must-Have Items for your RV Kitchen for a few things I can’t live without.

You will refine your process as you use your kitchen.  Don’t give up!  Move in with what you have and slowly purge and replace the things you use most for smaller, more compact items.  Another thing to do is, rethink your methods of cooking your favorite foods.  Can you grill it outside instead of using a skillet or baking sheet in the oven?  Can you pressure cook it in your new Instant Pot instead of cooking it on your stove top and heating up the RV?

Finding multi-use kitchen appliances can save on storage space. Maybe you don’t need a whole place setting of dishes for 12 or even 8 anymore.  I only have place settings and drink glasses for 4 now.  If we have people over, I buy paper plates and plastic ware or tell them to BYOP!

You can have all the right things in your RV kitchen and still not enjoy or feel successful in your cooking endeavors.  My biggest obstacle is not being prepared for mealtime.  I wait too long to figure out what to cook.  Then everything is frozen, we are hungry and we go out to eat. Then we blow our budget (both financial & calorie) by eating out too much.  Can anyone relate?

I have found a meal planning online solution that helps me be more consistent and overcome this obstacle in my life.

I use $5 Meal Plan.  This meal plan subscription takes the indecision of what to cook away.  Some days I just can’t decide what to cook.  Bryan and I have created bad habits of eating what we are in the mood for instead of what we have to cook or should eat for our health.  $5 Meal Plan is a weekly meal plan service, complete with 7 planned meals with recipes and a shopping list.  They have a couple of plans to choose from classic or gluten-free.  Once you sign up, you can make a meal plan from your many different weeks of recipes, so you don’t get bored.  There is a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out at no obligation if it doesn’t work for you.

This resource takes the “what’s for dinner?” obstacle out of the equation and puts wholesome, good food on your table while saving you money.

Get your free trial here! At $5/month for my sanity….it’s so worth it!

When you are used to cooking for a family, it is often difficult to get used to preparing less.  Most recipes come in serving sizes of at least four or more. Cooking for two is hard when you have to cut all your recipes down.

To overcome this obstacle, I found an awesome resource. It’s called Plan-to-Eat.  You can put in your own recipes and meal plan for the week in the software and it will spit out your shopping list.  The only thing it doesn’t do is actually grocery shop for you!

You do have to take some time to put your recipes in the program but you only have to do it once and you're done.  You won’t lose the magazine article or recipe card anymore.  Just log in and voila! your recipes are there for you to read, print, or tweak.  It has an awesome feature for your computer called add to PTE bookmarklet.  Your store the bookmarklet on your toolbar in your browser.  Whenever you are searching the web or on Facebook and find an awesome recipe to try, just click on it and it will save the recipe into your Plan-to-Eat recipe book!  This is my favorite feature!  So I can continue to save my old recipes by entering them and new ones as I find them.

The other thing I like is that while I am cooking for two in my RV, I can adjust the recipe by changing the serving size and it will scale the recipe and the shopping list for the appropriate amount!  I love this!  I can enter in a recipe that serves 8 and when I want to cook it, scale it for just two of us!  This saves on food waste tremendously!  On the flip side of that….if we get invited to a potluck….I can scale the recipe up to feed more people. For $39/year…this is a real deal!  Check out this great meal planning resource here.

All of the resources I described above, also overcome another obstacle.  The small fridge syndrome.  Not all of us have a full-size fridge in our RV.  If you meal plan and shop just for your weekly items, you will reduce food waste, save money and save space in your refrigerator.

I use both Plan-to-Eat and $5 Meal Plan in my cooking for two RV life.  I love the flexibility of being creative and saving recipes with Plan-to-Eat program and the decision already made for me help I get from $5 Meal Plan. They both have a place in my recipe arsenal.

Cooking for two in your RV doesn’t have to be challenging.  Using these great tools to meal plan, save money, space and reduce waste can be a win, win!  You might actually enjoy getting food on the table again!