Vegan Cooking in an RV as a Solo Woman Traveler | Presque Isle 

I have more cooking coming up soon. There seems to be an interest in how I cook while traveling especially as a vegan.

Hey Joanne - Glad you like my channel! I understand the nervousness. I think we might all go through that - at least I did. But it's just fear of the unknown and you'll figure it out as you go. Trust me, if I can do this, so can you. Have you seen my video about fear and traveling as a solo woman (or even a man)? Here's the link. I think you might like it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5bmzstAMzN4.html

Yes, thank you.

😁

Hey Carole! Thank you on the compliment. Hopefully we see each other on the road. Still want to scope out your beautiful van!

I should own stock in Instant Pot! I suggest it to everyone. It's my goto! Ahhh..Lily girl is such a sweetie and a good traveler.

Sandra Block - yeah she's my sweet girl that loves traveling. You just mention, "You wanna go for a ride?" and her ears perk up and she hops in the passenger seat ready to go.

You're so welcome!

Hi Cheryl and thank you so much for sharing so much of your life as well with me and your observations. I find your story to be similar to most people, when you live in one area you sometimes never fully explore it. I grew up in the Dallas, Texas area and never explored Texas. I had little appreciation for it and I moved away in my mid 20's. Now that I'm RVing I have a stronger desire to explore and wow talk about the beach camping!! Yes go out and explore. You don't have to dive all the way in to full-time RVing to take an extended weekend and explore your area. The northeast is so amazing and beautiful! Oh yes I've seen Ausia's dog. So sweet and a great channel. Before I started my RV living I also researched a ton and watched videos all the time to just gain more knowledge before I actually hit the road. There's so much to think of in the beginning and you don't know what you don't know. :) I would love a composting toilet as well but just haven't gone down that route yet. We'll see. I've seen people use them in their sticks and bricks home and it sure helps conserve water and more environmentally friendly. Have a great week!

I've been thinking about not wasting water, for decades, & have been collecting rainwater to water my outdoor plants & use it on my indoor plants, when there's enough to share - for at least that long. When my dishwasher stopped working, I chose to use the space it was in to store things instead. Then, due to my ongoing awareness surrounding how we waste so much fresh water, I've found ways to use much less water when washing & rinsing the dishes, doing them by hand. So when learning about the composting systems - so far only one person has mentioned this important detail. If the liquid & solid waste are kept separate, it reduces the odor significantly. So good composting toilets have a funnel that directs liquid waste into a collecting bottle. Solids get turned into the medium, like coir, pet bedding, or sphagnum peat, or wood shavings. Once covered, the smell is reduced & the solids get dried out by evaporation. Most people who use them or are around them claim these toilets do not smell. I'm assuming this means they're dumping the urine & composted solids pretty regularly. Then I heard people saying they dump / refresh them every few weeks!!!!! HUH???!!!!! UH - I don't see any reason to let it accumulate like that - but that's just me . . When boondocking, presuming there are no dumpsters to toss solids collected in bags into, as the non-composters do, with the simple bag in a bucket method, why not use some medium in there? So, even if just bagging & tossing solids, by adding in the same mediums ( mentioned above) as used with the moderately priced ones to the expensive ones - priced from $300 to nearly $1,000 , you can create the same conditions the official composting toilets do. The physical comfort might suffer a bit - between a bucket with a toilet seat set on top - & a high end composting toilet - but the contents sure don't know the difference. The composting medium used will dry out the solid waste & so the medium can be used several times, by just keeping a container of sphagnum, pet bedding, wood shavings, or coir, & adding some more on top as you go. You can also scoop out the dried up solids - as with a cat litter box, & toss the dried poo into the weekly trash & continue with the same medium - as long as it doesn't smell. The solids wouldn't have a smell by then, so would be far less noticeable to put out on the curb than a trash bag filled with dirty diapers or an entire tray of used kitty litter ( again: wet + dry smells worse). As far as I know, especially if diluted with water, human urine can be poured onto the root areas of plants - shrubs, trees - and actually feed them nitrogen, etc. The roots take it up, then rain or a 1/2 bucket of gray water from doing the dishes or a shower can be used to dilute the scent & other properties. If dumping out a weeks worth of urine, you could dilute it & spread it around ...no harm done. I'm convinced - but just haven't bought the apparatus... I have seen RU-vid people making their own, so - any day now.... I forget - but do think of all the water we use daily just to flush away our liquid waste! Proportionally - a water closet on the back of a toilet flushes out about 6 gals of water! That's overkill for a bit of pee! We pay for water in + water out - so could save on almost 1/2 of that water bill equation, just by using a composting toilet. The solids can also be dumped other ways, but I need to look into that more. Once dried, it could go into the compost pile & like any other material tossed into my compost pile, it would be broken down , become just more food for the microorganisms turning my yard & veggie waste into compost i could use to top dress shrubs, feed flowers, but i wouldn't feel right using it on veggies.

Totally amazing that you are already so conscious of conserving! 🙂

Well, still haven't turned that corner, of getting a few composting toilets - with the 1st going out back for when I'm working in the yard. Since my daughter moved back home & we have just one bathroom here, I am considering the issue of composting toilets & water conservation daily... Now got another nudge when I read that my city is having a big meeting soon, since they need to repair/replace a lot of the old pipes, etc. Using fluoride - which is highly corrosive on the pipes means that at least one other chemical has to be added to help mitigate that corrosion problem. Our city has consistently refused to add fluoride, so hoping that doesn't change. We'll all be bearing some additional costs, which is why they're convening a meeting. I hope to go & it has occurred to me - there's probably lots of info on file I could read to get up to speed on areas they intend to cover.. As much as I'm in favor of composting & plant watering with diluted human pee....I think I'll restrain myself from standing up & publicly expounding on the virtues of those topics, but might bring up saving money by reusing gray water, which would mean individuals using fewer harsh chemicals for cleaning. That might help the new pipes have a longer life...but I'll need to do some reading & soon! Most likely I'll just sit & listen. We have lots of ponds, lakes, bogs & swamps around here, so keeping ground water healthy is critical to our wildlife! Our community did learn that too many were feeding bread to the ducks at city parks, which was inviting too many Canada Geese, which are prolific poopers, which people step in & in addition to the bread being dumped into the water, was harming the water & killing fish & other critters - literally being killed by kindness. This community also has a yard waste drop off. Once collected, it's composted & regularly tended & turned. Then we can get that beautiful highly nutritious aged compost to use in our gardens, for free! That alone makes me long for a pickup truck. Not too far from here is the Quabbin Reservoir. Now THERE'S an interesting story about collecting rain water! Back in 1930 - '39, they flooded a few small towns to collect enough tap water to serve Boston + several surrounding towns. It's huge - about 40 sq mi - @ est. 412 Billion gallons, but of course, just big in scale for this part of the country. Once established it was stocked with several great local fish: Largemouth bass, Smallmouth bass, Lake trout, Yellow perch, & White perch.There are some great fish in there. I chould learn how to fish, but I would hate to have to kill them...I used to keep fish in tanks & learned they have personalities, can be loving, sweet & playful. You can also tell when they're not feeling well. Later, in the '80s, conservationists began a program of reintroducing Bald Eagles. It was a big success.They take 5 years before they produce offspring, So the fact that their numbers have increased continually & have spread out across this & neighboring states is due to the large wooded areas, lots of water bodies, & many food sources, including those fish which were stocked & flourished at the Quabbin. A few years ago, a water main burst & flooded an area at the foot of my hill. That burst water main was 150 years old & had been in use since the Civil War! Well, now you know just about everything I know about this - oh - also, the former owners of this house used gray-water to water their huge veggie gardens.I've lived here for over 20 years & while I do use my garbage free gray water for watering indoor & outdoor plants by hand, they had a more extensive system that had been removed before we moved in. Now there are better systems & materials to be used. I'm hoping to get one going this year - and it's time I get a solar water heater too!

+Cocominga Handmade Cards thank you and yes I will keep sharing more videos on cooking soon. ❤️

Hey there Mary Jane! Thanks for the follows on both channels. So LuLu unfortunately wasn't a good fit for our house. Poor Lily was suffering from LuLu's high energy and Lily was shutting down. LuLu knocked Lily down the stairs 3 times when I had my house from tackling her and busted her teeth out. Lily would always walk around with her tail tucked under and head down. I felt so bad for her. But LuLu was a sweet girl and super smart so I was able to rehome her to a place that would be better for her and for us. I was super sad and cried for days over it. In total I'm down about 60 lbs, but ate a little too much while on the East Coast and stayed stagnant for awhile. It doesn't bother me. This is life and I just keep pressing forward. I don't diet anymore and my mind is so free from it and I no longer judge myself for what I eat or my weight. I just love me and that's that. :) Thank you so much Mary Jane and hope you're doing well!

Thank you.

+Diana Long ☝️☺️

Tracy it really depends. I average 1500 miles at most a month, but sometimes I stay in one spot for awhile and sometimes I can travel 400 miles in a day. Generally speaking, I don't like to travel more than 200 miles in a day. It takes 2-3 times longer for me in an RV over what Google maps states. 1) Google uses the posted speed limit to determine how long it will take to get to your location and I drive at most 60-65 mph whereas the highways can be 70-80 mph 2) I stop frequently and site-see. I'm learning more to just enjoy the ride and the places around rather than just hustle through quickly. It was hard to slow down at first when I initially started to RV.

Diane Rich 😀 No not always, but I'm no longer vegan now either. I like it but it didn't like me. I just commented on your other message on a similar topic. good luck with yours.

Oh yes lots more videos coming your way! I have a whole summer and fall worth of videos to catch up on! LOL - at one scene I actually pointed right at it when I was pointing towards the cutting board. I just about died and thought of taking the video off, re-editing, and then repost, but alas it's JUST a bra! haha. I switched out the wet cell (golf cart) batteries for 4 AGM batteries and 720 Watts of solar on top. I didn't do it myself since I know nothing about it and was really scared of botching it. I know a lot of people research and self install, but I ended up having a company in Eugene, OR do the install. Top notch too! Are you looking into solar on your RV?

Yes, my long-term plan is solar but budget constraints allow for progress in stages. Need to get batteries and inverter. Then save for the solar panels. Thank you for sharing your set up. Looking forward to more of your great videos! 👍

I'm assuming you already have a house battery so you can actually buy solar panels now and the inverter and then when you save for the AGM's you can switch out the batteries. You don't have to have the AGMs though. Wet cell batteries will work, just a little more heavy and it has more maintenance, like making sure it has enough water. You could even purchase solar panels that you don't mount, just yet to the top of the roof, and make it more portable.

Yes - rv came with one 12 v house battery - wasn't sure I could run a decent size inverter (1500w) with it since I've heard they drain really quick. Trying to research how big of solar panels I'd need to run a 1500w inverter without draining the battery in a day. I'm thinking 1500 watts would work for my needs. Ugh! so much to learn!

You can have as many solar panels you want with a 1500w inverter, but the battery storage is key. For instance if you have 720 watts of solar, but one 12v house battery then your solar has the ability to pull in more energy, but you won't have enough storage to hold all of that energy. It doesn't hurt anything - you just won't be able to use all the potential energy coming in. So therefore it would be pointless to have 720 watts of solar panels unless you had enough battery storage. Also the inverter is independent of the whole system as well. The inverter wattage of 1500 or 2000 or 3000 is the amount of watts you can run simultaneously. So for instance the big ones are hair dryers, blenders, or any appliance that runs off of electric. I choose to not use my gas stove most of the time because I have enough stored solar power so I bought a stand along induction cooktop. That thing draws over 1500 watts by itself so if you had a 1500 watt inverter, you would go over and your inverter would self protect and shut down. Or if you were running several items like a hair dryer and coffee pot and TV at the same time, you might go over that wattage. So you'll want to take a look at how much power your consuming simultaneously and what the gross wattage is of your appliances. I've been using the 2000 watt pure sine inverter with no issues, but that's based on my consumption and typical use. Hope that helps.

Tracy it's not really. I mean going out to eat can be difficult sometimes, but I enjoy cooking for myself and most of the time I can find foods on a menu that work. I also scout out vegan friendly restaurants on the road. There's apps for that too! Ahh...variety. Well there's more diversity actually in plant food than meat surprisingly. When I was a meat eater I thought the same thing, but once you discover all the yummy plants out there and change up your cooking you discover there's actually more variety.

CHAMWNG NWNGMONG Thank you so much and glad you enjoyed my videos. 😌🙏