Team Meals for Away Games With Printable Menu Planner
If your family is like ours and sports is pretty much your life…then you’ll love this list of Team Meals For Away Games with Free Printable Menu Planner! Enjoy team meals for away games, rather than stressing about all the extra money you’ll spend on food for your trip. You’ll also love the Ultimate Team Dinner Ideas for Large Crowds!
Stay organized and save hundreds of dollars using these yummy team meal ideas! I’ll show you all the tips and tricks I use for saving tons of money! You can save Thousands this year with these other creative money-saving tips too!
During sports season (which happens to be 9 months out of the year) we do a lot of traveling on the weekends. On those weekends we can have 4-6 games depending on the schedule. Crazy isn’t it!? So we NEED to plan team meals for away games so we can eat well! Eating healthy and staying on a budget has got to be purposeful or it just will not happen.
Use these sports Mom hacks or it’ll be easier to drive through a fast food joint in between games than to plan and prepare for your trip. But it will break the bank AND it’s not very healthy. Use these meals for away games and the whole gang will be happy and healthy!
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Team Meal Ideas for Away Games with Printable Menu Planner!
After eating dinner on the go over the years, I’ve learned to commit to planning and preparing most, if not all of our meals on the road. I don’t just mean “trail mix” like stuff (although that’s good too). But real meals that keep my athletes healthy and fueled.
Since they love to eat out so much I copycat some of the fast foods they like most (in my own healthy way!). So here are some of the meals and snacks I use:
Snack, Lunch and Dinner Ideas for Team Meals on the Road
It’s super important that you feed your young athlete well! I make these team snack ideas and also team lunch ideas ALL THE TIME. They are hearty, filling and healthy too!
- Sub Sandwiches – Chicken, Bacon Ranch, Veggie, Ham and Cheese (hot and melted Mmm) I keep the ones I want hot in my casserole dish that has a heat pack and a lid…first I wrap the sandwich in foil. It keeps them warm for hours.
- Homemade Hot Pockets
- Breakfast Sandwich (ham, cheese, egg) I keep hot the same as I explained above.
- Soups/Chili
- Easy BBQ Chicken Sandwiches ~ These are sooo delish and can be kept either in the 9×13 with a lid OR take along in the crockpot!
- Homemade Crispy Baked BBQ Chicken Strips
- Leftover Homemade Pizza (my kids like it cold) with Ranch Dressing for dipping. Or they also love to take along these Mini Pizzas
- Yogurt Parfait’s with lots of fruit and granola ~ use the little plastic mason jars with screw on lids from below ~ PERFECT!
- You can also make Healthy Smoothie Cubes ahead of time and freeze for later! Freeze in a disposable cups or in plastic freezer jars (shown below)
- Sandwich Wraps (Chicken, Turkey, Egg, Asian, BBQ Chicken)
- Good Morning Muffins, Pumpkin Spice Muffins
- Fruit and veggies like apples with peanut butter dip or caramel dip Use the plastic cups with screw on lids for this too!
- A little junk food ~ Chips, Dorrito’s, Popcorn (oh, were you thinking this was for my athletes? LOL)
Travel Ball Sports Food Ideas & Menu Planner
I want to help you be able to plan ahead, so I created this printable for you to use when you have your schedule of games or extracurricular activities.
Kitchen appliances, gadgets, and doodads I use:
Below are all of my favorite things I use to carry our food in. I explain what and how I use each one. These are guaranteed to make your traveling sport life SO MUCH EASIER!
Crockpot / Slow Cooker
I LOVE to take my Crockpot along on trips where we will be gone the whole day. I use this one now…my old one in the picture above finally gave out! It’s so nice to escape the crazy gym and go out to the car and have a nice healthy meal…quietly. Bring paper bowls and plastic spoons and a garbage bag and boom…you’re ready.
It’s also fun to invite others from the team to join you too. Trust me…you will be the hit of the team with both parents AND athletes if you bring a Crockpot full of yummy food.
It’s super important to have a Crockpot with an outer cover for these trips to keep your food hot.
9 x 13 Pyrex Baking Dish
Pyrex Portables 4-Piece Glass
Another of my prized possessions is my 9×13 Pyrex with a cover AND carrying case w/hot pad that you can microwave to keep the contents hot! I use this for casseroles BUT when I’m using it for my traveling menu, I put sandwiches, burritos …anything in it that I want to keep hot.
People ask me about this all the time because it works so well!
Thermos
The MOST IMPORTANT thing we bring– Coffeeee! 😀 My husband and I are coffee drinkers and we have saved sooo much money by simply bringing along our own coffee. While everyone else is driving through coffee stands at $4.50 a drink…we are spending pennies!
Oh is that too boring? You can make your own fancy coffee drinks and put them in a thermos too!
Cooler
Coleman 30 Can Cooler,You need a good cooler for keeping stuff cold…I’m pretty sure I don’t need to explain why.
You need a plastic bin to put your dirty dishes in so that you can just carry them in the house when you get home and throw things in the dishwasher.
Plastic Jars with Lids
Ball Plastic Freezer Jar 8oz Pack of 3
These little plastic jars with screw-on lids are PERFECT for having yogurt and fresh or frozen fruit parfaits! Bring some Easy Homemade Simple Granola in a zip-loc bag and boom…nope you don’t have to drive thru McDonalds!
You also need to make this Homemade Ice Pack for all the little injuries and aches and pains of Traveling Sports!
We travel 1-2 weekends a month for sports also. But we are often in a hotel. For the long weekends (2-3 nights), I try to bring my “travel kitchen” to the hotel. I have an electric skillet that I can use to make sandwiches, soups, pasta, reheat leftovers, etc. I have been known to bring a hotpot for easy heating of water and some soups, and I have brought a toaster too. Sometimes our hotel doesn’t include free breakfast,or we have games really early and we can’t catch their breakfast. It is easy to make toast,bagel, pancakes, French toast, or eggs, etc. I just have to be mindful of the smoke alarms and not cook smoky things (like a cube steak I made once which was amazing, but put off a lot of steam. I put the skillet on the bathroom counter to avoid setting off the smoke alarm or something.
I also check to see if the hotel includes a mini fridge or microwave for when I plan my hotel menu.
Awww I’ve done that too Bobbi! For the long weekends we used to get a hotel with a kitchen if possible. A couple of times to save money we rented a cheaper room with no kitchen I brought a toaster oven but the smoke alarm went off Whooops! Didn’t do that anymore! Great idea to do it in the bathroom though! Thanks for sharing your great ideas!
Do you plug your crockpot in somehow in your car? I’m confused by this. Or does the food just stay warm in the crockpot even though it’s not plugged in. Thanks for the clarification.
Hi Meredith! Great question. No I don’t plug into my car. I’ve used my crockpot several different ways. If I know that we will be at a certain venue for the day I will find an out of the way corner and plug it in so that it cooks all day at the venue. It must be very out of the way though. Another way I’ve used my crockpot is to have already cooked in it the day before and then left it in the crockpot in frig. overnight. Then in the morning I’ve reheated either in the crockpot or on the stove (depending on what you made) This only takes about 10 min. Then I pour it back into the crockpot and heat the whole crockpot up by turning it on for about an hour so it’s good and hot. The inner part of my crockpot removes from the outer part, so then I remove and put it into the warmer. It will stay warm until lunch time almost always. You definitely need to know game times and venue to make the crockpot work for you. We’ve done this many times though successfully!
This was a great read with lots of helpful tips. Thanks for the encouragement!
You are so welcome Charity, I’m happy it was helpful! Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment! Blessings!
As a mom to the boys on travel baseball teams and basketball I LOVE this post! Thank you!
Hi Rebecca! I’m so glad that it is helpful! Have fun with your boys! <3
As a hockey mom I truly appreciate this post!
Great tips for every busy family! Thank you for sharing on the Brag About It link party!