By the time I get everything ready for a family outing, I feel rather ridiculous. After all, a picnic should not require all the accoutrements of an overnight journey. But with four kids, it seems I need to be ready for every contingency—including a surplus of snacks.
But what to bring them in? We’ve got a bundle of food preferences in our family—sweet, salty, cheesy, crunchy. Whenever I’ve packed individual lunches for a day trip, I feel like I’ve used up an entire box of baggies, which invariably end up floating around the van. I’m not the only one to find a moldy sandwich lodged under the seats months later, am I?
So put it to the internet to invent the most ingenious idea of all: using a tackle box as a snack container for when you’re out adventuring. And not just any snack box, but a snack box with a silly name: THE SNACKLE TACKLE BOX. I dare you to say that and not giggle.
Of course, you can’t simply repurpose a musty, old tackle box for treats you’d actually want to eat. All the tackle boxes I’ve ever seen are quintessentially disgusting—covered in dirt, grime, fish innards and rusty lures. Maybe some of the anglers out there are neat nicks and keep their tackle boxes pristine and all of their fishing lines untangled, but I’m having trouble envisioning it.
My husband owned a single creel for the first 22 years of our marriage. Just the one. It had a front pocket for a lidded cup of worms and a few lures, and a large pouch for those floppy fish. I didn’t allow this thing in the house. It smelled of fish water and dead things and was molded into an odd shape from drying out in weird angles. Last winter, a bottle of liquid garden fertilizer spilled on it in the garage and the creel literally rotted to the floor. This gave me the perfect gift idea for my husband’s next birthday: a brand-new tackle box.
And oh, did I have fun shopping for this thing. I don’t know if you’ve looked at brand-new tackle boxes recently (admit it—your tackle boxes are nauseatingly filled with fish muck and tetanus lures), but think about a wonderful organizing caddy that’s squeaky clean. The possibilities are endless for what you could corral in these things. In fact, the minute I brought this new tackle box home and set it on my counter, my children swarmed around it and oohed and ahhed like it was a present for them.
“Oh, what a neat box! Is this for Legos? Please say it’s for Legos!” my daughter begged. (Dear reader, we have so many thousands of Legos and such a glut of compartmentalized containers to keep them in that it’s annoying how often these tiny building blocks remain scattered across the floors of my house so that I step on them constantly. Which is to say: another organizing box for Legos is not going to solve the root problem.)
At the same time, I also purchased a handful of seed packets for the garden and put them in the box temporarily, so my son exclaimed, “It’s a seed organizer!” Which is, of course, another fabulous idea that my gardening self loves.
But turning it into a snackle tackle box is such a lovely idea. Just think of all the fun munchies and nibbles you could stow in the little compartments, the fold-out trays, and the tiny drawers.
It’s as charming as a charcuterie board and far more portable. Wouldn’t this be the perfect way to carry treats to a picnic? Everything would be contained in one convenient box (with a handle!) and without stray Tupperware or plastic baggies to worry about. And the presentation will be awe-inspiring when you unveil the layers of goodies in the box’s fold-out trays.
You could pack this pretty box with pretzels and pepperoni and provolone. You could cram this thing with crudites — carrots and cucumbers and celery. You could fill it with fresh peppers and fruit and French macarons. Or, you could go hog-wild on the teeter-totter rhymes and stuff your snackle tackle with Fiddle Faddle, Laffy Taffy, and Reese’s Pieces.
Remember to tuck in a handful of gummy worms because no self-respecting adventurer would carry a tackle box without some sort of wiggly jiggly grub. I definitely prefer the candy kind, though.