My favorite traveling breakfast is to get a to-go coffee cup with a lid, put cereal in it, and yogurt on top instead of milk. The great thing is that once you're finished eating, your plastic spoon will fit inside and the lid closes it all up. Then it will sit safely in a cup holder until you get to a trash can. No mess, and easy to set down and stop eating for awhile.

Not sure if I misunderstood this but looks like this article is about eating while driving.

Eating while driving is not only stupid but also dangerous. This is even worse than driving and talking on the mobile phone. People should be fined for doing these kinds of activities.

I have a 90 mile commute to work, and a 90 mile commute home, due to the fact that there are no jobs where I live, and no houses that I can afford near where I work (sigh)...

So I am always eating on the run. Not necessarily eating while driving, I have found that to be a bad idea if a person wants to be a conscientious driver, but there are a lot of times when the most timely thing is to eat when I gas up or something.

One of the things I do is bring things that can be microwaved, and then use the gas station's microwave to warm them up. I have found that, like the other poster said, most fruits are not good "commuting" foods, but they can be if you plan ahead--use an apple corer/slicer to divvy up the apple and viola!!!

Another convenience food I do is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I sit down and make about two or three dozen of them at once, then put them all in the freezer. When I need one, it's ready to eat in about 20 minutes of sitting on the kitchen counter, or in a lunch bag in the car!

This sounds like the introduction to a Darwin Award story :)

We've been car camping and backpacking for decades, and the conventional wisdom is to NEVER light a fire in an enclosed space. Cars (like tents) are made of flammable materials, and even if you avoid knocking over the stove (and the portable models I have used are notoriously unstable), the incompletely oxidized fuel could create carbon monoxide.

Please always use these outdoors, on a surface that is not likely to ignite.

On a related note, my father in law served in the Army in Germany in the 1950's and said that they would warm their canned rations (C-rats) on the manifold of the jeep while driving. They had it timed to miles per can, and usually got it right, so that they had hot beans or chili when they stopped. Sometimes, they forgot the can, and then had to deal with the exploded contents all over the inside of the engine compartment (and the smell too)

If I know I am going to be in the car running errands most of the day I will pack up portable things to eat and a travel bottle with water or juice in it. I store it in one of those larger insulated lunch box six pack sized soft cooler bags with an ice pack.

Cubed up meat, cheese and cut veggies are pretty easy to do. I also keep a small plastic container of either shelled sunflower seeds or almonds in the console of the car in case I get a case of the I forgot to eat and now I'm getting low blood sugar dizzies.

When we road trip we pack things from the house in zip lock bags and buy some individual serving things from the grocery. A soda from the grocery store or pretty much anything else is going to be cheaper than buying the same thing at a convenience store. We also started packing some decent gourmet sandwiches to take with. You feel like you have the better deal when your cooler sandwich is better than any of the expensive fast food options on the road.

BigRed, how did they secure the cans?

I've read about some of this, but never actually seen pictures - and I'd worry about losing it when slinging the car around hills and curves.

One story I read was about a revenue agent who found a Canadian trying to smuggle vodka wrapped in tinfoil in the engine compartment, because he didn't know where the engine was on a VW, but didn't want to look foolish.

For eating/heating: Grilled cheese sandwiches frozen, or tossed in the fridge heat up nicely on the dashboard (assuming you've got an old-school non-sloped dashboard), given the solar cooker conditions most cars are in parking lots. Toss it up there when you park in the morning, head out at lunch and get a hot sandwich. Nothing that will go bad sitting around for a day (no mayo, lettuce to get wilty, etc).

PB&J sandwiches were all I ate in grade school. Made them up on sunday afternoon (bread sales on the weekend), tossed them all in the freezer, pulled out one (or two) a day.