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The Dashboard Diva's home of the original Dashboard Dining!

For those just tuning in, Dashboard Dining started as a project that helped me cope with the utter shock of moving from God's Backyard to the Ninth Ring of Hell. The extreme climate gives rise to new rules like "Okay, kids, when it's going to be above 115, don't make any social plans because Mommy is NOT driving anywhere." "It's a dry heat" is a phrase commonly bandied about, but my rejoinder is usually something along the lines of "so is a freaking oven, put your hand in there and tell me again that it's not too bad". The mouth-breather who coined that "dry heat" phrase must have been heavily involved either in the Chamber of Commerce or realty, because close in to civilization you encounter lots of misleading, impossibly cheerful place names like "Summer Breeze" and "Happy Valley" and "Daisy Hill" -- wishful thinking at best, criminally fraudulent at worst. Drive a few miles out beyond the "For Sale" signs, though, and it all changes to "Bloody Basin" and "Deadman's Wash", and you realize that $#!+ just got REAL. Not that I'm bitter or anything. But I digress. These adventures mostly occurred in The Fine Piece of German Engineering (my much-adored vintage diesel Benz, hereinafter referred to lovingly as "the FPOGE"). I elected to amuse myself with the escalating temperatures by proving that the sizzling noise when my butt hit the car seat wasn't my imagination -- it was indeed so hot that I could cook in the damn car. With the help of the trusty probe thermometer, I experimented first with the Dashboard Egg, moved on to Car-Cooked Chicken En Papillote, and rounded out the season with a coffeecake. 2006 saw a complete Fatty Beef dinner, 2008's outing was a meal featuring Apricot Pork, and in 2013 it was BBQ Ribs. Years after, despite fairly credible rumors of its death, the series revived with a nostalgic German dinner. When cabin fever sets in, cooking on the dashboard is fun, it's twisted, and hey, it's dinner.
The most recent adventure into nostalgia: The German Dinner	Heresy from a competition BBQ cook: BBQ Pork Ribs
A little sweet, a little sour, a little insane: Apricot Pork	Because nothing is better than some Fatty Beef
If I'd known you was coming, I'da made a car Coffee Cake	I'd gone clucking nuts with car-cooked Chicken en Papillote
and what started it all, the Dashboard Egg