Meet featured vanlifers Antoine & Alaena of @vantashjoey. They travel full-time in their van Joey and are currently between France and Spain. They have had their van for a year now, and are always making delicious looking food on their travels.
What is the kitchen set-up in your van?
As we have a Vito, there isn’t much space for a kitchen. We use a Camping Gaz Hob and cook on our slide out table outside.
What’s your favourite part of your van kitchen?
It is a very practical kitchen so we can move it to our convenience. If you have a fixed exterior kitchen it can be hard depending on the weather conditions. The good thing about ours is that we can cook wherever we fancy, even on the roof :)
Do you have a favourite vanlife kitchen accessory?
We don’t, but it is on our Christmas List. We would love to have an Omnia Oven! Although our home made chopping board is very precious.
What 3 food items do you always have in your van pantry?
Eggs – Always have eggs as it completes so many meals.
Couscous – Such an easy and quick to cook carbohydrate to accompany so
many meals.
Greek Yoghurt – We have it for breakfast, sauce bases, salad dressings,
dessert.. So many options!
What is your favourite / best meal you have made in your van?
We were very pleased with our Shakshouka, I have to say the fact of cooking in one pot makes it a favorite.
Any funny vanlife stories?
The one when the gear stick broke in half.
The one when we got caught by the tide and had to swim with our basket on
our head. The one when we had a siesta in Joey with another couple, and the faces of the people seeing us come out of the van one after the other.
The one when we go stuck in the sand… We could start a comedy show :D
Have you had any van cooking disasters?
You should have seen us, we were in the middle of nowhere, somewhere far
from civilization. We literally only had one packet of truffle ravioli left.
Nothing else in our pantry. So we start to set up a nice dinner, ready exactly for sunset. Both of us suuuper hungry and excited for these raviolis. I (Alaena) was planning on taking some cool photos of said meal with said sunset. So, after counting down the minutes till the pasta was ready, Antoine goes next to the bushes to drain the water… 0.2 seconds. That’s all it took for our ravioli to be splattered on the sandy ground. All of them. How does this story end? We had to hand wash each ravioli, losing most of the lovely filling, and having a little extra crunch in every other ravioli :/
