Road food

Eating on the road is always a challenge, but for these two vegetarians, being happy with the road food can take extra creativity. So what are we eating? Here's a summary or a collection of notes about what has worked:

The internet. Gotta admit, having the Droid has revolutionized the afternoon coffee stop. We can easily find a Starbucks or local coffee shop and it's nice to have access to espresso. Yes, we're east coast coffee snobs.

The internet has also made it easy find co-ops or Whole Foods or even just grocery stores, places that we can fairly easily find the makings of a good picnic.

The salad bar picnic has become a staple. In DC, especially, a stop at Whole Foods to grab a salad from the salad bar, a hunk of cheese and a loaf of bread got us through at least one meal, if not two at a time. We've been able to do similar stunts in Iowa City, at their lovely co-op, and have used the Kraft prepackaged salads as substitutes in Indianapolis. Pretty good, actually. The only funny thing is that, while in the cities, it was really hard to find a place to picnic, so we've occasionally settled down on the sides of parking lots (see photo, coming in next post). Not glamorous, but convenient.

When we're ready to get fancy, we pull over at a roadside table and pull out the stove. Sliced onions and garlic, sauteed with a can of black beans and salsa, all wrapped up in a burrito, hits the spot. We've also found bags of pre-cooked brown rice in grocery stores, which pair well with the pre-made indian food packets also for sale. Yum!

Snacks! Bags of roasted/salted nuts, granola and candies (thanks, Carrie!) are often knocking around the passenger footwell. Nut consumption follows a now-predictable pattern: the passenger pours out a handful, Becky rescues the Brazil nuts from otherwise certainly being discarded, were I in charge (do they taste moldy to anyone else?), then we pick through the almonds and cashews, getting the hazelnuts in there as we can.

Becky has also discovered that it's pretty easy to make me happy by getting me ice cream. There was that incredible ice cream in Columbus, then a mini Ben and Jerry's container did the trick during our push through Iowa, and surely there will be other ice cream stops, as well. Good stuff.

It may be more challenging to do find good food as we head into less population-dense areas of the west, but we'll just be more creative and will tell you if we come up with anything good.