The Vanlife Gut Health Larder — Campervan Food Ideas from Florie

Paco starts building the outside kitchen at Casa Adora in November. It'll be magnificent when it's done — wood-fired oven, proper worktop, the works. It also means the courtyard will be full of materials, the dust will be considerable, and Issy the rescue greyhound has already decided she won't approve of angle grinders.

We'd have found an excuse to leave anyway.

In November, Florie and I — and Issy — head north. Extremadura first, then up to Cantabria and the Asturian coast, possibly Galicia, and back through Portugal depending on the weather. Six weeks, off-grid where possible, 280Ah of lithium battery, an 85-litre compressor fridge and an efficient diesel heater that makes a November night in Cantabria considerably less daunting than it sounds.

The question I've been thinking about since I started paying serious attention to what I eat is this: how do you maintain a gut health regime from a two-ring gas burner in a Fiat Ducato?

The answer, as it turns out, is a well-stocked larder — and a very deliberate approach to campervan food ideas.

Campervan Food Ideas — Why the Larder Changes Everything

For most of my vanlife cooking life I've been a fresh-ingredient cook. Markets, local butchers, whatever looks good at the roadside. That still happens — it's one of the great pleasures of travelling Spain slowly — but I've started to think differently about tins and jars.

Not the ones full of additives and acidity regulators. The good ones. Al natural. Water, salt, nothing else. The kind of preserved ingredient that isn't a shortcut away from proper cooking but a component of it.

A jar of berberechos al natural — Spanish cockles in clean brine — sizzled for thirty seconds in garlic and smoked paprika on a slice of buckwheat sourdough is not convenience food. It's a proper lunch. It takes five minutes and one burner. It delivers 35g of protein and counts as two plants toward your weekly thirty.

That's the philosophy behind the Florie larder.

It's also the foundation of everything I'm planning for the November trip — campervan food ideas built around quality ingredients rather than compromise.

What I Carry — Campervan Healthy Food from the Florie Larder

Preserved seafood
The non-negotiables. Berberechos, mussels, sardines, mackerel — all al natural where possible. Check the label: water and salt only, no E numbers. These are your fastest protein hits on the road. A tin of sardines on buckwheat sourdough with a spoonful of kimchi is breakfast, lunch or a late-night supper depending on the hour. For a more considered tin fish plate, my warm tinned mackerel salad works beautifully on one ring.

Legumes
White beans, chickpeas, altramuces (lupin beans), green lentils — all tinned or jarred. The backbone of everything. Two tins of legumes at dinner and you've hit 30g of fibre for the day without trying. Garbanzos a la Riojana made in the van in Llanes last year is still one of the best meals I've cooked on the road. The one-pan chickpea rice bowl is another — fifteen minutes, one pan, done. These are the campervan food ideas that actually deliver on fibre.

Jarred vegetables
White asparagus spears, piquillo peppers, artichoke hearts. Spanish larder staples that travel beautifully and add variety and plant count to any plate without taking up fridge space.

Fermented foods
Kimchi keeps well in the compressor fridge. So does a jar of sauerkraut. A spoonful of either alongside whatever you've just cooked adds a plant, live cultures from fermentation, and something that makes the plate feel considered rather than assembled. For campervan food ideas with a genuine gut health payoff, fermented foods are non-negotiable.

Dry goods
Buckwheat groats (ground fresh for bread or cooked as a grain), pearl barley, overnight oats. Cook them, cool them, and you've got resistant starch working for you even in the van. Overnight oats with kefir made the night before requires no cooking at all in the morning — and the overnight buckwheat jar is five minutes of assembly the evening before. Cheap, portable, and among the best camping food ideas for anyone trying to eat well on the road.

Condiments
Good EVOO — always. Smoked paprika. Nutritional yeast. Balsamic. A tub of homemade ghee — shelf-stable, no refrigeration needed, and a far better friend to a gas burner than butter ever was. Garlic — buy it fresh at every market. These are the things that turn a tin of cockles into a meal worth eating.

The larder covers the preserved and dry goods. The rest — kefir, fresh fruit, eggs, whatever looks good at the market — gets picked up as we go.

Hitting Triple 30 — Campervan Healthy Food on the Road

Dominique Ludwig's Triple 30 — 30g protein per meal, 30g fibre per day, 30 plants per week — is entirely achievable from a two-ring gas burner if the larder is right. The maths are straightforward:

A breakfast of overnight oats with kefir and a green banana: 3 plants, 8g fibre.
A lunch of berberechos on buckwheat sourdough with kimchi and habas fritas: 8 plants, 12g fibre, 34g protein.
A dinner of Casa Adora minestrone with pearl barley, white beans and chickpeas: 17 plants, 35g fibre, 46g protein.

That's 28 plants and 55g of fibre in a single day, cooked on two rings with ingredients that live in a cupboard and a fridge.

The van doesn't make it harder. The wrong larder does.

The November Test

Extremadura in November is dehesa country — cork oaks, acorns, Ibérico pigs, game. Cantabria and Asturias mean fresh seafood straight off the boats in Gijón and Llanes, fabada, sidra. Galicia, if the weather holds, means percebes and octopus and Albariño. Portugal means bacalhau and pastéis de nata.

The larder travels with us. What we find on the road joins it. If you're looking for camping food ideas that don't involve packet noodles and cereal bars, this is the approach.

Every recipe that comes out of the trip will appear in the Campervan Cooking collection as it happens. Consider this the plan. The road will revise it, as it always does.

FOOTNOTES

This post is part of my Campervan Cooking collection — recipes actually cooked on the road in Florie, from the Asturian coast to the Andalucían interior.

It also features in my Gut Health Recipes collection — real food from a rural Andalucían kitchen, built around fermented foods, high-fibre pulses, wholegrains and prebiotic-rich ingredients.

Find more recipes and food adventures here.
Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef