Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Road Trip Munchies

With the Fourth of July just around the corner and summer in full swing, a road trip may be in your future if it hasn't already happened yet. When I was a kid, my mom always let us splurge on candies and salty snacks when we took our long East coast drives. I couldn't imagine being in the car for longer than three hours without a bag of Twizzlers by my side. These days, I'm a little bit more careful about my snacks, mostly because I'm a grown-up and occasionally share in the driving, which means sugar highs lead to speeding tickets and lows lead to swerving. No, I needed something that wouldn't send my blood sugar all over the place like gravel from a truck bed.

On our last road trip to NJ, I unexpectedly stumbled upon the answer. Trying to clean out my fridge of perishables, I found a half-used English cucumber, some celery sticks and a bag of baby carrots. "Hmmm, these will have to come along," I thought. So I tossed them in with the half-eaten bag of Doritos and set off to conquer (I mean crawl) along the Beltway. It was a success, not only did the veggies taste good, but they kept us hydrated and cool. Although, I still missed the Twizzlers, as we head off to Cape Cod for a beach weekend, I'm sure my waistline will thank me.

P.S. Parents, this might be a good trick to try with your kids. Fewer sugar roller coasters mean less fighting and fewer are-we-there-yets. Plus, you can save the candy as a reward for x-amount of miles of good behavior.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

From one road-tripper to another, speak for yourself.

With love, your husband.