It’s time to open up the caravan cookbook again and add a few more ideas to the choices of quick food to prepare on holidays, from a caravan.

Summer holidays means sourcing new salad recipes, ones that can be a meal in themselves and any other light, quick recipes that don’t take a lot of effort or need too many ingredients. I put together a book of favourites with photos of the places we’ve been to, but for everyday use in the van I have a soft folder of full of plastic sleeves with heaps of recipes in it.  The pages get moved in and out depending on popularity and success and I’m always adding to it.

Here are a couple of my favourites that never fail.

Roast Vegetable Salad:

This is super easy and perhaps just a little bit healthy too. I use whatever vegies are on hand but usually: potatoes, pumpkin, carrot, red capsicum, zucchini, mushrooms, red onion and baby spinach leaves.

All you have to do is roast all the vegies, put quicker cooking ones in a bit later than the others, and when all done put in a bowl while you make the dressing. The dressing is 1 teaspoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon of honey, mixed together and poured over the vegies.  Toss together gently and throw in some baby spinach leaves for colour and texture and you’re done.  This is nice warm or cold.

Rice and Corn Salad

This is another colourful and tasty salad that I love. You’ll need to cook a cup of rice, then when cooked and drained but still warm prepare and mix together the dressing of 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, ½ cup of mayonnaise and 1 teaspoon of French mustard and salt and pepper. Mix this through the warm rice then add 3 sticks of celery sliced, 1 green and 1 red capsicum diced and 300gram tin of corn kernels. Mix them all through and that’s it! I’ve had this recipes for years and don’t remember where it came from but it tastes and looks like summer in a bowl.

And something sweet that I would call the easiest cake ever!

I’m going to call this a healthy cake too, (as far as cakes go), and especially if you use wholemeal self-raising flour. Why is it the easiest cake ever? Because all you have to do is preheat an oven (or covered BBQ) to 180 degrees, then in a bowl combine these ingredients:1 cup SR flour,1 cup shredded coconut, ¾ cup raw sugar, ¾ cup dried apricots diced, then gradually stir in ¾ cup of milk, pour into greased loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes.

That is it and it tastes incredible and uses ingredients that are easy to carry and easy to store in the van.

Enjoy, and don’t spend too much time in a kitchen!

Glenys