With a turbo, I could make creme brulee ...

In a cookbook I plan to write for single men who live alone, tentatively called “Grape Nuts Can Be Dinner One Night a Week But Really That’s It,” there will be a chapter on cooking in the car.

I’m assuming, of course, that by the time the cookbook comes out the automobile industry will have figured out ways in which our cars can be made into kitchens. It is, after all, time. Our cars are already discos and phone banks, computer centers and informal living rooms crawling upstream and down on freeways choked at all hours.

Just once, I would like to go on a first date where I suggest we get on the 101 heading west at, say, Highland, take it to the 405, take the 405 to the 10, then go east to downtown. In those eight hours, we might get to know each other. And if I could cook in the car, if I could whip up dinner, the wine chilling on the dash -- well, then, you see the dream I’m dreaming.

This dream, I might add, of cooking in the car, of dining and wooing and getting to know you in the car, grows out of something I’ve come to realize about traffic. Namely, it’s not going anywhere. I don’t think at this point we can expect to see a front-page headline that says: “In Landmark Agreement, Traffic Agrees to Leave L.A. in 2008.”

Our only chance in the unending struggle against traffic is to concede defeat, to admit that traffic has won, and to go about the business of moving our lives into our vehicles with increasing vigor and can-do American spirit. To sit there railing against traffic is to live in a state of abject denial, the other America. Some of you who commute like old settlers wondering if they’ve crawled across the Wyoming border have already made some of the necessary adjustments. Consider yourself pioneers. You will be studied by third-graders as part of American history.

But in our cars, as of yet, none of us can cook. It’s a darn shame. I have gobs of free time but no refrigerator, no stovetop, not one saute pan or pot hanging from the ceiling. My car is a kitchen of the mind until further notice. That glove compartment, with its parking tickets left over from the Bradley administration, what do I use it for? When was the last time I even wore gloves? Why can’t it be a microwave?

“People are always asking for what you’re asking for,” Rus Shafer, director of industrial design for Intier Automotive, Interiors outside of Detroit, told me.

Shafer is set to give a presentation this month at the Auto Interiors Show in the Motor City. The convention literature suggests he is the man to consult on how soon we can expect car kitchens: “Today’s drivers want to be able to plug in, dial up, download, navigate -- basically continue their daily business/routine as they drive from point A to point B. And they’d prefer to do it in an environment that has all of the comforts of home.”

It felt good to know that this issue of creating cars with “an environment that has all of the comforts of home” is out there in the marketplace of ideas.

When I asked Shafer about kitchens, he chuckled, but only briefly.

“Believe me, we’ve seen the concepts sketched out,” he said. He noted that several years ago Ford Motor Co. and Maytag teamed up to create a concept Windstar minivan complete with washer/dryer, fridge, freezer and microwave. It was unveiled at the 2000 Kitchen/Bath Industry Show in Chicago “to judge customer reaction to the idea of car appliances,” a story in the Detroit News said.

“There are tons of stuff that we would love to do, but you have to balance that with safety,” Shafer said.

OK, fine. But compared to phoning and driving or shaving and driving, how much more distracting is sauteing and driving or peeling and driving? In my cookbook, I plan to have recipes, divided into dishes better done on surface streets than on freeways. Your soups, your sauces, those can be accomplished simply trying to go north a few miles in Hollywood. Your bigger projects, your simmering meats and Cornish game hens, those are freeway dishes.

In fact, I can easily envision a day, and soon, when the following exchange might take place. Note the total absence of road rage among our players.

Motorist No. 1: “Do you have any minced garlic, by chance?”

Motorist No. 2: “I do.”

Motorist No. 1: “You’re a lifesaver.”

Motorist No. 2: “Smells good. What are you making?”

Motorist No. 1: “Lamb kebabs. Forgot to add garlic to the marinade.”

Motorist No. 2: “Long drive?”

Motorist No. 1: “Torrance.”

Motorist No. 2: “Mmm, Torrance.”

Paul Brownfield can be reached at paul.brownfield@latimes.com.