Eating on Road Trips

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I ate nothing but macaroni and cheese and Taco Bell. I was working in a Huge Multinational Corporation at the time, and three o’clock most afternoons found me making a run for the border.

I remember answering the phone one afternoon with a mouthful of burrito and realizing that I was, indeed, disgusting.

Then I finished the burrito.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my daughter is a junk-food junkie. Wave a french fry in her general direction, and you can get her to do just about anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you did a scientific analysis of her body, you’d find that she is made up almost entirely of high-fructose corn syrup.

After all, she is very sweet.

Ba-DUM-dum-DUM!

• A french fry from stretcher; the roadside diner gets creative.
• Paul Sapiano

This obsessive desire for deep-fried potato products—a trait she shares with both her parents—makes it remarkably easy to travel with her. I can be sure that she’ll eat at least one thing at most roadside restaurants and rest stops.

And while I was never that mom—the one who made her own baby food from just-picked produce grown in the backyard garden using only organic compost—I cringe at the site of my daughter chowing down on her fifth order of fries in two days.

For me, there is no solution to the road-food dilemma because nary a vegetable will pass my child’s rosebud lips.

But for you, you lucky souls whose offspring will eat food that is not passed through a vat of trans-fat, there are ways to fend off the road-food blues, for both the grown-ups and the kiddies. Because when you’ve been trapped in the backseat of a minivan watching “The Little Mermaid” DVD for 12 straight hours, you just really don’t want to eat yet another flattened cheeseburger wrapped in greasy paper.

*** We interrupt this column with an important public service announcement—The New York State Thruway is littered with rest stops serving flattened cheeseburgers wrapped in greasy paper! We repeat, flattened cheeseburgers wrapped in greasy paper! Avoid the New York State Thruway at all costs! We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. ****