The Campervan Podcast

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We published an article a couple years ago about quiet portable generators for campers. And I'll put the link in the show notes. Right down below, in your podcast player app, you'll see the link to an article that we're calling right now. Quiet generators for campers. And, you know, talked about how awesome the technology is and how far the technology for these quiet portable generators for campers have come along.

We write about how sometimes they're quiet sometimes not, fuel consumption, et cetera. It's a great article and there are some wonderful products recommended in there. At some point, I got a comment. In that post, and basically, the commenter said, , geez, these things use a lot of gas and they're not very efficient compared to solar and things like that.

And okay. That's great, but good luck running your air conditioner all night in the desert on solar power, on house batteries... I know some of us can do that, but for most of us, that's not possible. So I still believe that a quiet portable generator for a camper van is a great solution to staying cool and, or warm and running a lot of other stuff that requires power.

There are many wonderful improvements to the technology in the last few years. One of those improvements is that they've gotten a lot smaller, so they're easier to pack around, take up less space. They do use substantially less fuel. And there’s a protocol called carb compliance, which again, you'll find details about in the article linked below.

Quiet portable generators for campers are a viable solution to staying cool. If you are traveling in very hot regions and time of year.

Most of the advantages to quiet portable generators for campers are pretty obvious: They're quiet, you can crank out a bunch of power. They. Small and easy to carry, they're super reliable. Now, super easy to start. The prices have come way down. You can get 2000 Watts for under $500 from highly respected and consistent brands and companies. So those are the obvious advantages of quiet portable generators for campers.

Some of the disadvantages would be the cost of fuel and the fact that you have to carry Gasoline containers on board if you’re going to rely on quiet portable generators for campers for a lot of power production.

I'm looking into attaching the vans fuel tank directly to the generator. I, I don't have any knowledge of that at the moment, but I'll get back to you on that. Maybe if you know about that, you can send me a comment to contact at vansage.com or on that article in comments. Leave a comment and let me know what you think if you feel like it.

Carrying fuel is a negative, potentially the smell of gasoline in the van… You're gonna need to either carry this thing outside on a trailer hitch cargo carrier or on your rooftop or something like that, or seal it up in a couple of plastic bags so that it doesn't stink up your van.

The noise of quiet portable generators for campers can be an issue because actually, they're not 100% silent. I think they're similar in noise to the diesel or other fuel powered...

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Today I have for you my top four van cooking and kitchen skills.

Before I start, let me just say that most of these β€œlisticals”, that is, list posts, I think are kind of ridiculous.

I probably have 150 kitchen and cooking skills tips for you, but it helps to condense the ideas now and then, and that's what I've done over the last few days.

I’ve thought about kind of the most important things if you're not the greatest cook or you don't have cooking experience.

Hopefully this will help you understand what you might want to focus on early on as you develop your ability to cook.

I think cooking is one of the most valuable things that you can do for your camper van travel skills and experience.

I love to cook. I spent a few years working in restaurants, mostly as a waiter, but working as a waiter makes you kind of a foodie because you're always paying attention to the menu and understanding specials and things like that.

I also worked for catering companies. I was a a room service waiter in a high end hotel in Seattle years ago, many years ago.

Also I was a retail and wholesale produce worker for a about 15 years in warehouses and grocery stores, so food is kind of in my veins and my blood.

And I've been cooking for myself since I was kind of a latchkey child and that forced me to be able to to make my own lunches and sometimes even dinners.

The number one vital cooking skill for vanlife

In the French cooking world there's an expression; β€˜mis en place’. That’s the area of your kitchen where you do all your work and it needs to be organized.

The shorthand often used by cooks and chefs is β€œmis”.

Is your mis set up? And what that means is, do you have your knife and your rags, and are all of your ingredients in place for the day?

Of course, this would be for a professional kitchen. So the ingredients for the various specials and common things on the menu need to be within arms reach either right under the counter, in the refrigerator, or up on top for room temperature things.

Is your cutting board is ready? Your rags are ready. Your knife, your measuring equipment… Are your pans ready? And in the van, that just means that you set up just before you start cooking.

We can extrapolate this all the way out to your van design.

There's a concept in, in kitchen design called the three point kitchen. And that's basically a counter, that is, workspace, refrigeration, and cooktop.

And obviously it's easy to make all that happen in a van because the space is so small.

The same applies to setting up to cook in a campsite or if you're working out of a chuck box or out of the tailgate of a minivan or something like that.

Keep it in mind, if some builder tries to put your refrigerator at the other end of the vehicle away from your stove, don't let them do that because you'll be stepping over the other people in your van or other equipment to get back and forth to the fridge when it comes time to cook.

So keep that three point concept in mind in terms of mis en place as an organization concept.

Also, organization includes planning and shopping for meals. So if you have an apartment or a house, the tendency is to wander into the grocery store at some point and kind of meander up and down the aisle and, and get some...

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