Elaborate Meals in the Car

Sometimes you have to have real food. On our trip, after hours of over-chowing on Twizzlers and cashews and ice cream and Pepsi and Sprite and bottles of cold Starbucks Frappucino, we needed something normal.

We stopped at Cracker Barrel. I went in and ordered 2 chicken 'n' dumplings dinners, stretched my legs, splashed my face with water, and walked around the gift shop for a minute, taking in the festive dry goods. There was a quilt with roosters all over it, and the fabric tail feathers actually stuck out sassily from the quilt! 3-D rooster quilts! I wanted to put my teeth into one and drag it to the parking lot for a little primal scream.

Back to the car I went, my sitting-too-long limp almost gone. Scott's turn. He went in and fetched our dang good down home dinners, the famous dumplings, accented by side dishes of lumpy mashed potatoes (which I love) and fried okra (love even more). We set up shop in the car, positioning our styrofoam trays accordingly: his on the steering wheel, mine on the open glove compartment. We pulled bottles of water out of the cooler, I handed gravy-covered bites of chicken under the glove compartment door to Hankie's secret lair, and even though we knew we had 2 full days of driving still to go, it was OK.