"Is lunch in the car or out of the car?" Nico asks this before any drive longer than the trip to Dadeland. This weekend the answer is out of the car, at a picnic table, both days, and nobody is cooking anything.
We leave Saturday morning for Ocala, about 4.5 hours, and on Sunday we drive from Ron and Linda's to Elkmont in the Smokies, about 8.5 hours. Two long days back to back, with a five-year-old and a nine-year-old, means lunch has to be easy, cold and eaten with hands.
Our driving-day rules
- No stove. Setting up the two-burner at a rest area eats 30 minutes we'd rather spend driving.
- Lunch lives in its own small soft cooler behind Dana's seat. The big cooler in the back holds the week's food, and every time it opens we lose cold. It stays shut until Elkmont.
- We eat out of the car. Crumbs in the booster seat are forever, and kids who sit at a picnic table for 20 minutes ride better afterward.
- Everybody moves. I'm a PE teacher, so before we load back up, everyone does one lap around the rest area. Nobody loves this rule. Everybody sleeps better after it.
What's in the lunch cooler
This is what we've packed for the two days, plus what we learned on earlier drives to Ocala:
- Turkey pinwheels. Flour tortillas, cream cheese, turkey and spinach, rolled tight and cut into rounds the night before. They hold together better than sandwiches and Nico eats them like cookies.
- Cold Cuban-ish rolls. Ham, Swiss, pickles and mustard on soft rolls. A cold cousin of the pie-iron Cubanos the kids ranked in March. Cuban bread goes soggy by hour three, so we use rolls.
- Hard-boiled eggs, peeled at home. Peeling eggs at a rest area is a mess I only needed to make once.
- Cheese sticks, crackers and single hummus cups.
- Mini cucumbers and baby carrots, because I believe in vegetables and the kids believe in dipping them.
- Mango from our own tree. The first Hadens are ripening on the old tree in the backyard. We cut two into containers.
- Frozen grapes. They keep everything else cold for the first few hours and they're dessert by afternoon.
- Guava pastries from the Cuban bakery near Dana's parents, bought Friday, eaten Saturday. They don't make it to Sunday. They never do.
The lunch shopping came to about $38 at Publix, plus what came off the tree. That covers lunch for four people on both days. Saturday dinner and Sunday breakfast are Linda's department, and when we pull out of her driveway on Sunday she'll hand Dana a foil packet of something for the road. She always does. Last time it was banana bread, still warm, and it was gone before we reached the Turnpike.
Where we stop
Saturday's lunch will be at a picnic table at one of the Turnpike service plazas, about two hours in. They aren't scenic, but the bathrooms are clean and there's enough grass for a lap. Sunday we're aiming for the Georgia welcome center on I-75, just over the state line, where there's shade and room to run, and then one more stop for snacks and bathrooms somewhere north of Atlanta. I've learned to plan stops by the clock rather than by the map, roughly every two hours, because a nine-year-old's bladder does not care how close the next exit is.
What didn't work on past drives
Yogurt tubes. On a drive to Ocala last year, one burst in the seat-back pocket and we found it two days later by smell. Peanut butter and jelly on soft bread, which goes flat and purple under anything heavier than a napkin. And anything that needs a spoon, because the spoon always ends up under the seat.
The other thing we learned is timing. Nico falls asleep within 20 minutes of any car ride, so we try to eat right before the longest leg. On Sunday that means stopping for lunch somewhere in Georgia around 11:30, getting everyone to a bathroom and back in the car with a full stomach. If it works the way it usually does, he'll sleep through most of Atlanta, and Maya will listen to an audiobook with her headphones while I white-knuckle the interstate.
The cooler bag is packed except for the eggs. I'll boil and peel those Friday night, and I'll peel them badly, and someone will get an egg with a crater in it. That person is usually me, by choice, because I'm the one who peeled it.
