Friday, September 26, 2008

Chew on this

Several of you have mentioned to bring snacks with us to Ukraine. What kinds of snacks did you bring? Which snacks did you wish that you had brought with you? Which snacks weren't good for the trip? I like to bake, so I've toyed with the idea of baking something and then using our food saver. Did anyone try this? Was it successful or unsuccessful? Also, which food items would you avoid once in-country? I know that the tap water is bad, but are all the bottled waters created equally? Should I bring water flavors to put in the bottled water?

8 comments:

Tami said...

I would suggest you bring whatever comfort foods you may want. For me it was anything chocolate. Of course you can get chocolate there, but it wasn't quite the same as an oreo cookie! :) There are some things you can find in Kiev, but it gets a lot tougher in the smaller towns.
We brought two boxes of breakfast bars, two boxes of granola bars, a couple of bags of chocolate candies (cheap and easy to do after Halloween), some crackers and trail mix.
We also brought some easy to fix dinner items. Noodle and rice mixes, some dry chicken noodle and tomato soup packets, oatmeal packets, water flavor packets to change up the bottles upon bottles of water we drank. All of this is dry, light and easy to pack. We just stuck them in ziplocks (my favorite travel item) and stuffed them in the little extra spaces in the suitcase.
The grocery stores really do have a pretty good selection of foods. The only thing I stayed away from was the meat. I'm a meat-lover, but I wasn't convinced of good quality-control or proper storage! :) I did buy a couple of things, but I cooked the heck out of them.
I didn't bring anything pre-baked because it is heavier to carry.
For bottled water my biggest suggestion is if you don't want the fizzy variety, stick with 'BonAqua' in a light blue lid. BonAqua is everywhere - kind of like AquaFina. The light blue lid is the one that doesn't have the fizz.

Diana said...

You likely won't get prebaked items through customs. I wouldn't do it. Commercially packaged stuff will make it through just fine...unless the baggage inspectors are hungry, that is.

We ate the precooked meat all the time and some of them are down right tasty! Quick and easy meals...we took some and never used them. We left them all at the flat in Kiev on our way home. We were stuck in Hotel Purgatory in region and had no kitchen. We also took some hot cocoa packets, but never used those, either. 1- we had no way to boil water and 2-we felt like everyone knew who we were(not just as Americans but also as "representatives.") We were watched so closely and given a whole lot of flack about stuff like that that we just didn't feel like explaining why some things were ok and not others. So we just went with not on everything. It was just easier that way.

We took a couple boxes of good quality protein bars from costco and also a bunch of fruit leather snacks also from costco. They were great! Just pack a few of them in small ziplocks and spread them out throughout your luggage. We had a few less of both once we arrived in Kiev. We expected it though. But by spreading them out, at least they weren't all missing.

Oh, speaking of customs, I also have a good friend who had several Ukrainian and Russian blue books seized at customs as well. Come to think of it, we also had an AWOL one. It seems the baggage inspectors just take pretty much whatever they want! We thought that of all things they could have removed, those were pretty darn funny! Hope they enjoyed their reading. :-)

If you're picky about your bottled water, take some flavoring. I probalby wouldn't waste the space though. You'll get to a point really fast that you don't care. Are they all created equal? Probably not. The BonAqua is good, though, and that's pretty much the brand you'll always find in the smaller bottles. And you can even find it cold in some places (at least we could in the summer.) Our facilitators were a lot more picky than we were. Whenever possible, they always bought BonAqua.

Yes, we drank a lot of bottled water, but they also have REALLY good (and fairly inexpensive) juice there as well. Anyone know where we could get some Sandora here in the states? :-)

DoveFamily said...

I think I mentioned our preferred snacks foods in the documents that I emailed to you. But as for water, we preferred Bonaqua (the light blue cap/label was the one with "no gas").

schoolmother said...

I really wished we would have had some granola bars or nutrigrain bars or jerky or something. One thing we got IN Ukraine that was great was a combination of various nuts, dried fruits, yogurt chips. Some of the fruits I kind of put aside but this is good stuff to put in a baggie in your pocket.
Joy,RR

Blaine said...

Very nice book! I like the simplicity of the text and such. I used to work for a company that bought (and later sold) Heritage Makers, so I made a book once as it was an employee "freebie". Nice book you've got there.

Ticklemedana said...

go to costco and invest in KASHI TLC granola bars! They are TO DIE FOR delicious, nutritious and ALL NATURAL. they come in Trail mix which has dried fruit and nuts, Almond Flax and I think a peanut butter type...they are the only granola bars I buy. I also love the chocolate crisp south beach meal replacement bars. GET THE ONES WITH 19g PROTEIN ONLY! I also LOVE the Zone Diet Protein bars 15g Protein and they taste DELICIOUS. YOu can get a box of 6 for 5 bucks at walmart in the weight loss section.

Lou said...

We haven't travelled yet, but the above suggestions sound great! I second the vote for anything Kashi, good stuff. Seems like fruit leather and beef jerky would be good too.
I also love your photo book. I will have to look into them, seems like a great idea! Love your faith pages!!! We are LDS too.

Courtney said...

We took granola bars, beef jerky, and peanut butter crackers (the individually wrapped 6-packs). We would usually carry a few of each with us when we went out because we never knew when we were going to get stuck somewhere waiting for a signature or someone to come back from lunch! :) We probably didn't even need to take those (we could have bought snacks in-country) but it was helpful not to have to worry about going to the store right away. Everything else we bought in-country.