Riding in the car - what are your go to snacks?

[lynnlato]

I spend a lot of time chauffering my children around town. For whatever reason, this conjures up the desire to snack. I'm a diabetic so I keep Swedish Fish in every car, purse, drawer, etc. in case of a low blood sugar. In addition, I also usually have in the car peanut m&m's and sugar-free Twizzlers. Peanuts, trail mix and granola are other go-to's. And we can't forget the water and Coke Zero.

What are your favorite snacks that you either keep in the car or grab out of the pantry on your way to the car.

[James Cristinian]

No roadie from Houston to San Antonio and back is complete without a stop in Luling for some of the best BBQ in the world at City Market. A small detour to Lockhart brings more of the same plus prime rib at Smitty's. Real Texas BBQ needs no sauce, so it is not so messy in the car.

[Akitist]

I usually don't snack in the car, but on a long trip a bag of almonds is good. Water to drink, as soft drinks either have too many calories or if artificially sweetened taste nasty.

[Jay F]

I hate eating in the car. It's just not a natural position. So I don't do it, except for the occasional candy bar. Even more than eating in the car, I hate drinking coffee out of a sippy cup.

[Will Owen]

Although I agree with that, I will admit that on the occasion of my 60th birthday (ten years and two weeks ago, and the memory lingers still) I was returning from signing up for an illustration class at Otis - my birthday present to myself - when I spied an In-N-Out on Venice Blvd, and pulled in to treat myself to my first one of those. Double double and fries. Back on the road, I realized that I had not figured out how to eat this while underway, but I ventured to anyway. It was an episode fraught with peril, and damn near disastrous, but the goodies got et and the car and I made it home in no more pieces than when we'd left.

Sippy cup I don't mind. Strong likelihood of getting mustard and/or melted Velveeta on the upholstery, I mind.

[lynnlato]

I HATE sippy cups too! I'd rather abstain than consume hot beverages from one of those torture devices. The anticipation of the hot drink approaching my lips and whether it'll be too hot is too much. There's just something liberating about an open cup. Weird, I know.

[gilintx]

For us, it's usually jerky (local, hopefully something I've never heard of), spicy pork rinds, and funyuns for a road trip. Possibly there are some nuts involved. Possibly there are a couple of tallboys involved.

[lynnlato]

Ha!!! What, no corn nuts?

Man, I'll bet it smells goooood in your car, gilintx! Please tell me you have a tree air freshener? lol :-)

[mamachef]

Really, just throw in some pickled eggs and you've got smell-fest '10 when your car door opens. Especially on a hot day!! : )

[lynnlato]

Did somebody say "pickled eggs"? Yum! Provided they are in a cooler though. ;-)

[Perilagu Khan]

Crack open a couple o' tins o' sards in hot sauce and you've got the ultimate righteous road meal there.

[tatamagouche]

For long car trips: beef jerky, Medjool dates, peanut butter-filled pretzels.

[tatamagouche]

I forgot to add that I always bring a case of wild cherry Diet Pepsi, aka the most addictive (not in the positive sense) soda pop in the world.

[beevod]

Pretzels and a six-pack.

[mamachef]

oooooh beevod I bet you're going to take some flak for this one!! See you in J-A-I-L, buddy, (unless you live in Texas, where open containers, I believe, are still legal?)

[beevod]

For a six-pack of celery soda?

[mamachef]

Oh, CELERY soda. You say six-pack, I think "beer." Which says way more than me than it does about you. : )

[lynnlato]

OK, what is celery soda? I'm intrigued!

[mamachef]

Cel-Ray soda, courtesy of Dr. Brown and company. I love that stuff. But then, I also like carbonated espresso soda, which I guess means I dig things that taste like they're not QUITE supposed to.

[Perilagu Khan]

This stuff is pretty good, but out here in my part of the world a Brussels sprout frappe is the cruisin' beverage of choice.

[lynnlato]

"Brussels sprout frappe"

Are you serious? If so, what on Earth does that taste like? And what's in it?

[Perilagu Khan]

Nothing like chucking Pearl longnecks out the winder of your pickup as you're doing 90 on a farm-to-market road and then blasting 'em to bits with your Colt 45.

Such lovely sport.

[mamachef]

Topped only by settin' them there longnecks on a fencepost and pickin' em off one-by-one.
Actually, your version sounds waaaay more sportin', what with the moving (flying?) targets involved.

[hill food]

sailing them out the window on a dark KS winter night on state hwy 77 cruising down to Ark City, listening to the glass shatter behind you is fun too.

[Perilagu Khan]

Yep. And if you can peg at least five road signs in a row, you're an ace. Ten in a row and you're Dirty Harry, or Dirty Khan as the case may be.

[Will Owen]

As a general rule I do not eat in the car. Major and frequent exception is the Road Breakfast, which almost without exception is a pair of Sausage & Egg McMuffins and one hash browns cake, which at the window is split in half and each part inserted into one of the muffin sandwiches. Any other road meal is a stop at some promising smalltown diner.

I will however pop an Altoid or two if heartburn threatens. That is not so much a snack as a remedy …

[mamachef]

Will, I wish I could go to a drive-thru, but it doesn't make sense for me to, because my McMuffins must be spread with a hit of ketchup and strawberry jelly, so if I drive-thru I just have to pull over in the parking lot anyway. I save myself the trouble and go in.
Altoids RELIEVE your heartburn? They GIVE me heartburn. Lucky you, no heartburn and minty-fresh breath, all in one little white disc.

[mamachef]

I tend to run towards hypoglycemia, and what's worked best for me is something easily maneuverable and protein-based: pita with falafel, turkey or roast beef or tuna on wheat, string cheese and a pickle spear wrapped in sliced turkey. A bottle of v-8 is like a small meal, especially with a handful of nuts or some sharp cheese cubes and crackers. I just try to avoid a lot of condiments, as trying to save a sliding-filling sandwich while driving can be totally dangerous.

[lynnlato]

Peanut butter graham crackers are great for low blood sugar. It's what they always gave me at the diabetes center when I was pregnant and running low - decent amount of carbs and protein. Almond butter would be good on them also. Yum, now I'm craving this simple treat. :-)

[pikawicca]

Never feel a desire to eat in the car. I either stop and eat a home-packed snack at a rest stop, or visit a restaurant.

[atheorist]

Best rule I ever made: Never eat in the car. To think time is so short you have to save it by eating in the car gets it backwards. Life is too short to not stop the car, get out and eat when you need to.
Plus, the clean interior adds about $500 to your trade in value.

[goodhealthgourmet]

"Life is too short to not stop the car, get out and eat when you need to."
~~~~~~~~~
assuming there's somewhere to stop & eat...not always the case.

[Perilagu Khan]

Hey, there's roadkill and insects, no matter where you are. If it's good enough for the Billy Mack Hooten clan and the Matabele, it's good enough for me.

[goodhealthgourmet]

ha! again, it depends where you are. you'd be hard-pressed to even find insects, let alone animals, on/near the freeways of Los Angeles...the air quality *has* gotten better here over the past few years, but it's too late - the pollution already killed them all off ;)

[tatamagouche]

I refuse to eat actual meals in the car but I enjoy snacking on car trips. For me that's the only good part about being in the car for so long.

[EWSflash]

Usually nothing, but when we go to Puerto Penasco, Mexico, we stop for gas in Why, and get a bag of chicharrones and eat them on the way to the border. When we get there, we stop at Vasquez in Sonoyta and get a case or two of Coronas. Then, when we get out of town, we each crack a nice fresh Corona for the remaining hour's drive down.
So it's chicharrones and a Corona on the road to Mexico.

[linguafood]

Drinking and driving! Now there's a good reason to visit Mexico :-D

[goodhealthgourmet]

when i used to drive back & forth between LA & SD frequently i always packed snacks & a cooler for the car - on a bad day when there was a lot of traffic or an accident on the freeway, the 100-mile trip could take 4+ hours, and i don't eat fast food or convenience store snacks so i had to be prepared.

i'm a clean freak, so crumbs & spills in the car stress me out. i tend to stick with things that won't make a mess, though i quickly became quite adept at eating cottage cheese & yogurt with one hand without dripping it ;)

- homemade trail mix
- carrots, celery sticks, cucumber sticks & grape tomatoes
- protein or fruit & nut bars
- single-serve packets of PB or almond butter
- light string cheese
- cottage cheese or Greek yogurt (don't forget the spoon!)
- slices of turkey or chicken breast

[Perilagu Khan]

Yeah, I'm a neat freak about my car, too, which is why BBQ chicken and Sloppy Joes are my go-to road dishes.

[goodhealthgourmet]

well sure, because you put on a bib and spread out a drop cloth first ;)

[lynnlato]

Thanks ghg, for sharing your list. I'm on a health kick to lose a few ellbees and get stronger and your list is just what I need for my upcoming road trip. It all sounds yummy. Sometimes you just need others to point out the obvious. :)

[goodhealthgourmet]

a pleasure, as always, my friend...and you know where to find me if you need anything else! ;)

[wineguy7]

I'm in the car a lot for work and sometimes forget or don't have time to eat lunch. I keep a large zipper bag of Trader Joe's Trek Mix in my car. This way I get some protein from the nuts as well as some sugar from the dried fruit. It usually tides me over until I have a chance to get a meal. I always keep multiple reusable bottles of water in the car as well.

[twelvesmaster]

For any length trips nothing beats a plain old bag of pretzels to keep in the car. I don't get enough sleep lately so sleep deprivation is sometimes a problem for me - even on short trips. Grabbing one pretzel to nibble on when my eyes start to droop is the perfect solution, and pretzels are a pretty guilt-free snack (low fat).

[Jay F]

I don't go to snacks. I go to wherever it is I'm going.

[meatn3]

For running around town I always have chewing gum, water, some form of crackers and usually grab some "emergency cheese" (string or baby bella) to have handy. Often a protein bar too.

For a road trip I like combo's, pre-cut cheese and crackers, fruit, and some sort of nut/fruit mix from TJ's. A thermos of coffee, water and a soda in the cooler. Carrot sticks and deviled eggs are nice too.

Years ago I went out for lunch with a traveling salesman I did business with. He drove a Cadillac and had installed a lazy Susan sort of thing with individual bowls on the console area. Each bowl had a different snack - nuts and dried fruit in one, M&M's in another, Chex mix in the last. The center held breath mints and a pack of toothpicks. I had never seen a car so well equipped snack-wise!

[hill food]

now that's a touring car.

[Perilagu Khan]

Just yesterday I saw a wild-eyed loon careening down a freeway in Charlotte cramming a deviled egg into his maw. Could that have been you? ;)

[Sue in Mt P]

That loon was happy!

[meatn3]

No, I was the loon passing through on the 8th! But this time we were eating Banh Mi's picked up in Greensboro.

[Sue in Mt P]

OT, but where did you go?

[meatn3]

Greensboro? Pakse Cafe. Learned about it on CH, limited hours but very tasty. We purchased 3 varieties and split them for 1 1/2 each. Note to self, ask the restaurant to cut them in half next time!

Charlotte? Tour of Albert's Organics facility and then a meet-up to purchase a Harsch crock for fermenting kraut, etc! Then on to Ikea!!!!

[lynnlato]

A lazy susan-equipped Cadillac - Ha! I love it!

Deviled eggs - num mum num mum...

[Perilagu Khan]

James Bond' Aston-Martin is equipped with an egg cup and a waffle iron.

[lynnlato]

Funny you should mention the Aston-Martin... I just saw Michael Jordan's at the Ritz-Carlton here in CLT a couple of weeks ago. I didn't eye spy the egg cup and waflle iron though. :)

[buttertart]

At one point I think there was a statute that all persons over a certain age had to have Werther's Originals available in the car at all times. That was my dad's staple.

[lynnlato]

Ha! My dad always had Luden's licourice or wild cherry cough drops on the dash. I loved opening the little box and digging in the waxed pouch for the last ones. :)

[buttertart]

That was my mom's department, carrying cough drops. Remember the waxed paper thing very well. I always wanted to eat more than one. "They're NOT candy, Susie"!!!

[EWSflash]

:-)

[beachmouse]

For some unknown reason, we usually seem to end up eating Nutter Butter cookies on long car trips.

[buttertart]

Are the sugar-free Twizzlers any good, lynnlato? I could eat the real ones by the half pound.

[lynnlato]

Well, they are to me, but as a type 1 diabetic all I know is sugar substitutes. Sometimes I'll get a fountain diet coke and I'll swear it's regular coke. My husband or kids will taste it for me and assure me that it's diet. The sugar substitutes are sometimes sweeter than regular sugar!

That said, my family will eat them in a heartbeat (all non-diabetics). But they do seem to get stale quicker. Give 'em a try. They can be hard to find. They don't carry them at Target here, but they do at CVS.

[buttertart]

Is it xylitol as sweetener? Not crazy about its cooling/minty aspect - but I will try these just for fun.

[lynnlato]

Maltitol and sorbitol is what is listed on the package.

"They're not candy, Susie!" - HAA!!!!

[buttertart]

I was dangerous around candy, lived primarily on it for the first 10 yrs of my life!

[chileheadmike]

We just moved from KC to Lexington KY. I frequently drive back and forth for family stuff going on in KC. I rarely eat in the car. In fact most of the time its just one cup of coffee for the 10 hour drive. One stop for gas and that's it. I've got too much of my Dad in me I guess, I keep thinking @ 75 mph and the 20 minutes I lose to get food... that's 25 miles.

I did stop for Hardee's once. It had been decades since I've eaten there but the thickbuger commercial looked good. It wasn't.

I did stop at the Amish Buffet in Evansville ID. It was worth the lost time, real mashed potatoes, fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried fish. Only bad thing was all the veggies seemed to have come out of a can.

I never eat in the car while running around town.

[burgeoningfoodie]

Fiber One Bars, Vanilla Wafers, Honeycomb cereal, trailmix

[monavano]

Combos are my decadent snack in the car. Pizza flavored.
I pack pbnj sandwiches so we don't hit up fast food joints. They travel well and are gut-filling and keep you full for quite a long time.
I also keep granola bars in my purse to stave off meltdowns.

[Perilagu Khan]

A packet o' Terbasky-flavored Slim Jims and a tub o' Fanta Strawberry Sodee-pop.

[cupcakes924]

Haribo Gummy Bears (the best candy that isn't chocolate on earth), Sun Chips, Sugar Free Red Bull.

[Bob W]

Right now it's Corn Nuts!

[lynnlato]

Yea boyeeee!!!! :-)

[Bob W]

Two bucks buys me a bag that lasts a whole week!

[Sue in Mt P]

Coca cola and peanuts. No fuss no muss.

[Heatherb]

About 18 months ago, my big summer vacation was a weeklong roadtrip through West Virginia and Western PA. (What can I say? I was on a budget. But it was some beautiful scenery.) Convinced I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere with only pork rinds and Mountain Dew to buy at a gas station, I packed whole wheat breadsticks, single serving containers of peanut butter, a bag of salted popcorn, trail mix, apple sauce cups and granola bars. Oh and whole-grain goldfish. Always gotta have some goldfish on hand.

[hill food]

uhh you're missing the point of a road trip and especially through an area like that (which is beautiful BTW).

junk food you wouldn't normally eat and stinks up the car is part of the vacation IMHO.

[Heatherb]

I had a different strategy. I was eating out for pretty much every meal since it was a vacation - my goal was to minimize the impact of that. Thus the reasonably healthy stuff to snack on in between meals. And I wasn't wrong to pack it, as I was in the land of donut shops and convenience stores.

[hill food]

and the land where scrapple falls from the sky like manna.

[Heatherb]

Yeah, it kinda does:) But what really surprised me were the donut shops. There were multiple regional chains and independent shops all over the place. If I was a donut fan, I'd've been in heaven.

[hill food]

well duh!! JERKY! BEEF jerky and only the really crappy greasy over-processed type, none of this pemmican stuff unless you or I made it of course, esp if it's a cramped car with bad air-conditioning and you've pushing through a few states without sleep or shower. hands down.

as far as Hardee's goes, I haven't had a burger from there in years, but last Fall, I suddenly wanted a chocolate shake, and while it wasn't 'real' it was pretty good.

[lynnlato]

HAAA!!! I much prefer the mongolian jerky I found in NYC - spicy pork jerky - insanely good. Really, like, Slim Jims???

I forgot to mention Corn Nuts. It used to be that you could only find them at those interstate exit truck stop places. We used to grab several bags - even the BBQ & Ranch flavors. But now I'm seeing them everywhere. Funny, I liked them better when they were hard to come by.

[hill food]

Mongolian sounds good, but a certain level of trashy is required (yes Slim Jims).

Corn Nuts? sorry but I only eat those in staff meetings to intentionally annoy the person that called the brown-bag lunch (sound and odor)

[lynnlato]

AHAHAHA!!!!

The "sound and odor" is horrible, isn't it? Just as bad as someone munching on Fritos next to you. Ha!

[carlee134]

cheezits! they are my special snack for long car rides.

[linguafood]

Hmm. I probably mistook your headline for a question about longer car trips. I live in a fairly small town, so none of my trips around here exceed 15 minutes - a time period I can probably do without having to snack on anything.

That said, for longer trips, I usually make sandwiches: toasted whole grain, mayo, roast beef or ham, cheddar, lettuce.

Last road trip I made the mistake of stopping at a BK for my one (and very rare) chain indulgence, the jr. whopper w/cheese. It tasted like crap. The lettuce was brown. Never, ever, ever again.

[lynnlato]

BK has truly become the bottom of the barrel for fast food establishments - or so it seems these days. They are nasty and are right there with Hardee's in just having bad, bad "food".

[buttertart]

Any place serving "French fries" that bad should be banned from the earth. French fries are manna from the heavens for me and I like most of them, but BK's are just plain nasty.

[lynnlato]

Their fries are truly nasty! But, I have to say, McDonalds has done something different with theirs recently and they are tasteless. Ugh. So sad... :-(

[Sue in Mt P]

They took out all the trans fat!

[lynnlato]

That's explains a lot! They are tasteless - but for the salt. It was one of the few things I enjoyed at Mickey D's. Guess they cured my need for their fries.

[debbiel]

I also thought of this for longer trips. I commute an hour each way, but don't eat in the car for that. For road trips, I typically pack banana and peanut butter sandwiches, easily peeled oranges, nuts of some sort, carrots, and hard boiled eggs. And for honesty's sake I'll add that there's usually a bag of some sort of chex mix too. :)

[Pia]

Goldfish, pretzels, and Kind bars (all nuts and fruit).