car cooking
last week i tried car cooking for the first time. bitchin!
since my last motel stay i’d been carrying around in my cooler a couple of veggie burgers, an onion, and some spaghetti sauce. so while in a grocery store after a couple of days wondering how i’d cook that stuff, i bought a roll of heavy duty aluminum foil; time to try, decades after i first heard about it (i think when the authors of this book were interviewed on letterman… or conan or something).
had been putting it off, figuring it would be a pain in the neck. wasn’t bad at all. in the parking lot of my gym i put the veggie burgers down on doubled foil, sandwiched by onion slices then topped with spaghetti sauce. wrapped it well, with a foil handle. placed the packet next to the engine, on top of the exhaust manifold heat shield. tied the foil handle loosely around a bracket, then ran a couple of errands. after a few stops and about 10 miles total, i opened the hood and felt the packet. wasn’t yet boiling hot, but close enough to eat. throw in some lemon pepper and a couple of fresh rolls from a grocery store bakery… damned good.
i know it’s annoying for non-vegans to hear vegans talking up our weird menu, but i gotta tell ya, as a hardcore omnivore for 43 years, the texas veggie burger from amy’s kitchen is kickass. great barbecue flavor. tasty, and — unusual for veggie burgers — definitely vegan.
car cooking regularly now, including with another of my favorite meals: refried beans and veggie dogs. slap refried beans, hot sauce, and onions on a smart dog, and IMO it’s nearly as good as the usually-maltreated pig version.
non car-livers probably have little use for car cooking, but it hits the spot when you don’t even have access to a microwave. still, if you’re planning a long road trip, it’s damned nice to smell a kickass meal roiling through the vents, telling you it’s ready.