A garlic and onion sauté will out you faster than a light left on at midnight. I know this because it happened to me on a residential street in Seattle. I was parked on a block I’d used a dozen times before, no problems, no knocks. Then one evening I made a quick pasta base, … Read more
There was a morning somewhere outside of Siena, one of those autumn mornings where the light through the rear windows is almost too beautiful to process. I slid open the side door, stretched, fired up the hob for coffee, and then it hit me. Not catastrophic. Not rotten. Just there — lurking in the way … Read more
Most van lifers don’t realize they’re storing food in a biological acceleration chamber. I figured this out the hard way after a week of watching perfectly good produce turn into compost in what felt like record time. The problem isn’t what you think it is. Everyone assumes it’s the lack of a proper fridge. That’s … Read more
Cold temperatures make cooking in a van harder in ways nobody really explains upfront. It’s not just about being cold. It’s about three separate problems colliding at exactly the same moment: the stove is fighting to stay lit, the windows are fogging faster than you can wipe them, and the warm pocket you’ve carefully built … Read more
Spice jars don’t belong in vans. Not the way most people store them, anyway. A loose-lidded jar of cumin sitting in an open shelf bracket is a disaster waiting for a cattle grid. And they always find the cattle grid. I’ve cleaned ground cumin out of a sleeping bag, chili flakes out of a USB … Read more
“Every time I cook in my van, the windows get completely fogged up. By the next morning, there’s water dripping down the walls and my sleeping bag feels damp. How do people actually deal with this?” That’s probably the most common question I get asked, and it’s usually followed by a resignation to either never … Read more
The smell of last night’s onions is still in the curtains. It’s in the mattress. Probably in my jacket too. I cooked for twenty minutes and the van reminded me about it for three days straight. That’s not a one-off. That’s what a small enclosed living space does to cooking smells, and if you’re new … Read more
The first set of collapsible bowls I bought lasted about three weeks before the silicone started peeling at the rim. They’d been stored in the cabinet above the hob, and the ambient heat from cooking worked at the edge seal slowly, until one day I picked one up and it just came apart in my … Read more
Every few months, someone posts in a van life group asking for kitchen setup advice. The shopping list they end up with reads like a small appliance store: a mini rice cooker, a collapsible colander, a hand blender, two different pan sizes, a four-piece silicone utensil set, a mandoline they bought for a dinner party … Read more
The first van I converted had a kitchen I was genuinely proud of. Solid countertops, a spice rack mounted neatly on the wall, storage bins lined up in a row. It looked great in the build photos. About three months in, parked outside Toulouse and trying to make a proper pasta from scratch, I realised … Read more