Car food

We started taking our three boys on long car trips when they were very young, and anyone who has traveled with kids knows it can be stressful. The three things that most improved our long-ago car treks were air conditioning, a minivan, and a large cooler packed with snacks. I prepared things for days before those trips, so we'd have loads of interesting snacks to hand the kids along the way. But, now I wonder, was it really just for the kids? Now that the boys are grown and on their own, I see I'm still carting the car snacks — but now they're for me.

There's something about putting me into a small space (like a car or an airplane) where I can't move around much, that makes me hungry. I mean HUNGRY. Normally, I'm not much of a snacker, but stick me in a car for a few hours and I'll start gnawing on the dashboard. When we make our yearly four-day drive to Wisconsin, we take a small cooler for fresh food, as well as lots of packaged stuff that may or may not be healthy. Put me in the car and I need CHIPS!

This year's trip was a whole new experience — way back in June I was sent a box of healthy, gluten-free snacks from Healthy Surprise, and because I really hardly ever eat snacks on a daily basis, I still had the whole box to take on the trip in July. Once on the road, we snacked pretty much with abandon, and still had enough snacks to use on the way back to Seattle, too. And were they good snacks? Oh yes, they were. Our box of gluten-free packets was diverse and delicious  —  I honestly had no idea there were so many choices available. The box contained everything from Home Free cookies, Go Raw pizza flax snacks, Samba 99 fruit bar, Go Raw pumpkin super chips, Bare Fruit granny smith dried apples, Twin Cakes biscotti, Gone Nuts spinach pesto walnuts, almonds and pumpkin seeds, Gone Nuts thai lemon curry cashews, almonds and coconut, Mrs. Mays freeze-dried pears, etc., etc.

Weird, bloated pic of a delicious snack

We enjoyed just about everything we tasted, but our absolute favorite snack was Gone Nuts clusters of cacao, almonds, raisins, blueberries & coconut. A few bags of this might turn me into a snack-crazed monster.

I wish I had more photos of the wonderful snacks, but they were mostly consumed in the car, and photo conditions were not optimal. The Healthy Surprise snack boxes can be purchased as a snack-of-the-month club subscription, if you are a serious snackster, or one box at a time for special occasions like car trips or gifts. I'm pretty sure we'll be wanting to take a box along on our next long drive. If you'd like to try out a box, you can get a discount by using the code the company sent me. They have offered readers of this blog a coupon to use for $5 off unlimited orders. Here's the code: COKEASYVEGAN. Notice it says COK, not Cook. And my name isn't Lacey, though they seem to think it might be. (And no, I'm not an affiliate so I have nothing to gain if you use the code.) I thought the sample box I received was top notch. The snacks from Healthy Surprise are vegan, gluten-free, GMO-free, soy-free, and some are raw. I'm telling you this because many people have food intolerances and/or preferences and need the information, but even if you couldn't care less whether a food is GF or soy-free, the snacks are fantastic!

Full disclosure: The Healthy Surprise box was sent to me free of charge, no strings attached. I was not paid to write the review, nor am I a distributor or affiliate of the company.