Looking for ideas to meal prep at home to eat in my van during the week. I stay in it during the week because I do heavy construction and usually the job site is like 150 miles or more away from home.
I have a small fridge, microwave and a single burner but I have to cook outside so it can be a pain. Looking for ideas that I can eat cold or just heat up in a microwave.

This week I was going to make a meatloaf, a bunch of chicken thighs, and a couple of packs of beer brats. Couple that with a bag of salad greens, bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes for dinner.

>>21452915 (OP)
Your work doesn't put you in hotels?
Get a better employer

>>21452921
Not OP but honestly I’d rather stay in a decked out van that’s mine than be put up in a shitty motel.

>>21452921
They don't put me up but I do get $110 a day of tax free per diem.

>>21452925
This. I did the hotel thing but it gets old fast. In my van I have my own shit, in my own space. I get to stay in beautiful campgrounds instead of off the highway, I don't have to listen to people fight or fuck, I don't have housekeeping banging on my door when I'm on nights.

>>21452915 (OP)
Without a decent freezer space in a typical mini fridge, most of your prep coupld just be cold salad kits with good expiration dates. The lettuce-y versions days-1-3, cabbag-ey slaws go longer. Frozen precooked baby meatloaves, burgers, sausage patties, grilled chicken breasts, omelet-y eggs in muffin cups,

Invest in a microwave pressure-cooker device for rice, which cooks and steams like a champ. Little toaster or mini waffle maker or sandwich press would you get you hot bread items for soup nights.

Cooked hard boiled eggs go a literal week unshelled in the fridge several days. So, peel and chopped end of week with onions pickles celery, both egg and tuna (from the can) make fresh salad on days 4-5. Soft long shelf life bread or crackers.

Also end of week is tubbed hummus day, taboulleh/couscous salads w/carrots, cucumber, olives, feta. Cooking couscous in the microwave is a simple as heating water in a measuring cup or bowl and soaking it 2mins

>>21452937
>Also end of week is tubbed hummus day, taboulleh/ couscous salads w/carrots, cucumber, olives, feta.

This is a great idea. I have an electric kettle and would be a perfect way to use up the vegetables i have left over from the rest of the week. Plus everything packs easy and doesn't take too much space in my tiny fridge. Definitely adding it to the list.

Also, pic related is from the website of the fridge I have. This is the amount of space I'm working with.

>>21452946
Fresh lemon makes it all delicious.

>>21452963
Honestly if you have a microwave the sky is the limit. Don't think about it as some sort of reheating device, think of it like an oven that cooks very intensely. Don't just nuke things, play around with power settings, tempering what you're cooking, and control of hydration levels with glasses of water or wet napkins.

Make sure you get some frozen veggies either way.

>>21452967
Realistically, I don't have the battery capacity to run my microwave much more than a couple of minutes a day. It's no issue when I am in a site with shore power but 99% of the time I sleep in a cheap tent site and toss out my portable solar to top up a little, or I sleep in the job site parking lot where I have to be more discrete. Most of the time, I just dot have the power to use it for anything more than a reheat machine and if I was in a spot we're I could learn to actually cook with it, I'm just going to set my burner up outside.

>>21453175
Don't overlook thermos cooking, tons of easy recipes and will expand your space a bit, hell you can just bring boiled water and save your battery/microwave for better things if you're doing ramen or rice or pasta.

>>21452915 (OP)
Do you park at the job site, a nearby street, Walmart parking lot, or somewhere else?

>>21453915
Couscous works for this too
Fast and easy

>>21454161
It varies from job to job. Usually I scout out the area in advance. You can tell a lot about a neighborhood by close observation of the local schools. Like, after all the school buses have left, are there any kids waiting for a ride? What happens if a dude in a van pulls up and starts talking to them? If that's OK, then a little extracurricular parking is probably OK too. If you have any doubts, go into the neighborhood one night and start screaming like a wounded animal. If no cops show up within 10 or 15 minutes, you're probably OK to park overnight for a few days. Personally, I try to target streets on the edge of the woods, or near the traintracks, anywhere a typical vagrant with no ID would feel comfortable. The only problem is when another dude with a van shows up, and it gets awkward, it's like dude, I was here first, fuck off, I'm the one who disabled the Ring cameras, this block belongs to me.

>>21452915 (OP)
OP, you accidentally answered your own question with your pic.

First, you need to invest in a quality pair of yoga pants. Don't cheap out on this, you need the spandex that really hugs every curve of your asscrack (and a little see-thru doesn't hurt either). Then you can start a YouTube channel for your "vanlife" project, maybe with a little OnlyFans action on the side. Once a week, you do a livestream cooking something in your van, anything, it could be ramen & hot dogs, it doesn't matter, as long as plenty of water splashes on your thin white t-shirt, and you bend over a few times to pick up dropped utensils.

That video will pay for you to order Doordash for the rest of the week, just like any other thot.

>>21454161
This is the actual op. It verys were i stay. Most of the time I stay in a campground near the job site but sometimes I stay in the parking lot. It helps that we are a 24 7 operation so there are always other cars i blend in with.

>>21452915 (OP)
You can be the meal-prepper asshole or the van-life asshole. Pick a lane.

You want to meal prep because its a little harder to cook outside? /out/ist here, and i am disappointed. I regularly hike with and cook fresh food on multiday backpacking trips, making the same meals i would at home. No reason you cant do it in a van, for car camping its even easier. Use the grills at campgrounds. Get a couple burner stove like a classic coleman. Get a jetboil. Get compact cookware. Make a dishwashing set-up. Make the morons eating mountain house in a frountcountry campground jealous of the smells wafting over from your set-up.