KIT WHISTLER and jr switchgrass @idletheorybus

Hey Kit

Thank you so much for being a part of this interview and telling us about your love of food and your tiny kitchen.

Tell us about your small kitchen and what are your favourite features

Our kitchen is low-fuss and fancy free. We set it up in just a day, bolting the stove and 2 gallon propane tank to the counter and installing drawers into the cabinetry. Our countertop is a discarded restaurant table we picked up by a dumpster, and we found our drawer pulls in a rummage bin of a San Diego thrift store.

I prepare three meals a day on our two-burner Coleman stove. It’s from the 1970s, just as old as our bus, and works just as good now as it did the day it was made. It’s secured onto the countertop by wooden pegs we notched into the counter, so all I need to do to cook is open the top, turn on the propane, and I’m ready to cook. I love that my kitchen is simple and low maintenance. Because I think food can be best as a simple, spartan practice, my kitchen reflects that. It is everything I need, and nothing more.

I do some heavy-duty cooking here I have made bone broth, whole rabbits we butchered ourselves on farms, and homemade sourdough biscuits all in this little space. You don’t need much to eat well!

We recently got a life-changing update to our little kitchen on wheels. After ten years of traveling with a Yeti Cooler, which served us well, we newly have a Dometic fridge, which runs on our solar panel. Though it took a learning curve to get used to, it has been transformative to stop buying ice for the cooler—and to no longer deal with the melted ice at the bottom of said cooler. It feels like such a luxury to have a little fridge, which keeps our food so much fresher for so much longer. We used to have to buy foods that didn’t need to be cooled if we were out longer than ten days or so…it is no longer that way, and to that, we say hallelujah!

“I do some heavy-duty cooking here I have made bone broth, whole rabbits we butchered ourselves on farms, and homemade sourdough biscuits all in this little space. You don’t need much to eat well!

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Name three key pieces of equipment in your small kitchen , that you use everyday and why you love them?

Cast Iron pans. We carry two, a 10 inch and a 14 inch . We also carry a chainmail cast iron scraper which, with a little water, makes washing these heavy duty skillets so simple. Our cast irons save us so much in water, because a little splash and dry is all they need. The grease sets in to season the pan. It truly is the only way to cook on the road.

Wooden bowls and plates. They are made by a friend of ours and are beautiful pieces of art. Also: they can be washed without soap, so they have the same thing going for them as the cast iron.

The Website LocalHarvest.com is a wonderful resource for finding local farm stands and farms that make on-property food sales to the public. We have traveled out of our way to a fish market in North Carolina’s Outer Banks…only to spend a day learning about local seafood with the fish monger. This website also lists food-related events, which has connected us to the local community we’re traveling through. Once, we stumbled into a music festival in Arkansas because I was looking up locally raised pork. Needless to say, we ate our fair share of barbecue there…

Glass Containers I use these for storing meat in our cooler. When buying frozen meat, we tuck each cut into the glass to keep juices contained. They are easy to clean and ensure that our cooler stays fresh, even when the meat defrosts and the juices are set free.

Refillable Five Gallon Water Jugs We carry two to three, depending on which phase of life we’re in. We like to drive out and camp on remote roads for large chunks of time. Sometimes we’ll be away from even the smallest town for two weeks. Carrying lots of filtered water spares us from having to filter and pump water from rivers on the daily. Even though it can be delicious, hand pumping water takes a bit of time, and it’s great to have a large supply at hand.

What are some food ingredients you always have in your pantry?

Our criteria for a pantry essential:

A) calorie-dense, high-nutrient foods that

B) Don’t take up lots of space and that

C) Nourish with mood and energy-sustaining from high quality fats and proteins.

Butter is crucial. It probably comprises 50% of my personal caloric intake (not gonna speak for JR here). I’m not even kidding. It is easy to get high quality butter, no matter where we are, and we have at least a pound of it on us at any given moment.

Avocados are the green that travels best. They can be expensive, depending on where in the US we are traveling, but the calorie load, fat content, and fiber make them almost unbeatable as a produce item. When we can’t find organic or high quality greens in more remote areas, avocados will save us. Tip: buy em super hard and green and they’ll last up to two weeks in cooler weather.

MCT oil is another high calorie food that does well as a clean energy source. It is tasteless, odorless, and satiates the way olive oil does, but it is much more stable in the extreme temperatures we encounter (which can range between -15 degrees F and go up to 115 degrees F. Olive oil cannot do that!)—and it leaves us feeling good.

High quality coffee is a non negotiable. If we find a roaster that sources for quality, and we know we’ll be traveling to areas where Folgers is the locals’ number one choice, we will buy pounds and pounds of single origin beans to ensure our morning cup is tasty and roasted to perfection. What can I say? Besides gas station coffee, which is a certain genre that we do consume on a regular basis on long driving days, both JR and I are kinda coffee snobs.

Fresh citrus makes every meal a lil brighter. Lemons, limes, tart tangerines, blood oranges. A good squeeze makes all salads, and most cooked meals, just a little better.

Pastured Lard/Tallow/Duck Fat/Coconut oil for those times when butter just isn’t the appropriate fat. They are shelf stable and last a long time, so we always have jars in our pantry. You can also buy these fats at reasonable prices from local farms.

What are a few dishes that are on high rotation and why?

We almost always stay close to simple foods that humans have been eating for thousands of years.

Eight years back, I read a book called Nourishing Traditions that changed my eating habits, and my health, drastically. It’s based on the writings of Weston Price, a dentist who studied the links between dental cavities and the introduction of the industrial food system. He found that humans were healthiest when eating a diet of ancestral foods—or foods that they raised themselves in their own yards and foraged from the wild.

What does that look like? Well, almost every day at lunch, I prepare greens and pastured or wild meat with grass-fed butter, salt, and herbs. Sometimes I cook the greens, sometimes I eat them as a mixed salad. With a squeeze of lemon and oil on top, this is a healthy, simple meal that can be prepared in a constant rotation of meat and veggies. The exact ingredients depend on which region of the country we’re in and what the current season provides. During the spring and summer, we eat beautiful salads and peas. In fall and winter, we’ll transition to cooked greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and green beans. We eat liver once a week, ground bison, elk, venison, or beef almost daily, and often seek out unpasteurized milk from small dairies.

Do you have any tips for minimising food waste and packaging?

Say no to bags! Seriously. At this point, to save on space, we only carry two reusable bags. If we’re at a market, we simply load our groceries back into our shopping cart without bags after shopping and paying. Just tell the confused check out clerk that it’s all going directly into your camper which is right outside the store. Usually, if you tell them you have a fridge inside, they will completely understand. Perk: This process makes loading a little camper fridge/cooler so much simpler too!

Shop at farmer’s markets and Directly from Farms Often you can take your food without any packaging, rubber bands, or ties…which is the best feeling!

Spend time on meal planning If you know how long you’re going out between resupplies, you are not likely to overshoot and allow food to go to waste. A good plan saves on mental effort, which lord knows I need more of ;)

Buy your Meat frozen whenever possible and store it in the coldest part of your cooler/fridge to maximize its shelf life. That ensures that you always have fresh meat when you need it, and prevents any spoilage.

Is it important to you to eat with sustainability in mind?

We are absolutely obsessed with sourcing food in increasingly ethical, mindful, and educated ways. It is meaningful, delicious, and also a ton of fun, because it leads to food-centric experiences and gives us an excuse to visit farms on a regular basis.

We actually plan and base our travels around sourcing food directly from small, regenerative farms. It gives our constant rambling purpose and meaning, In fact, in our early years on the road, we made our money working on farms because we wanted to learn more about agriculture and the origins of the food we eat.

Now, we’ll plan days of visiting farms, farmer’s markets, or local food stands as a day’s activity, much like hiking. And the bonus is—we leave with delicious groceries! I use the website LocalHarvest.com to source nearby food sources, and we’ll choose a farm that conducts on farm sales. Often, we’ll call ahead, and we’ve had many farmers stop what they’re doing to spend a day on their farm with us. We’ve also gotten gigs this way. Once, we showed up on a farm in Nevada looking for eggs—and wound up working and living on their goat dairy for three months!

“We actually plan and base our travels around sourcing food directly from small, regenerative farms. It gives our constant rambling purpose and meaning, In fact, in our early years on the road, we made our money working on farms because we wanted to learn more about agriculture and the origins of the food we eat.

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— Quote Source