Hi, Iím Sarah Morehouse. When you have to eat gluten free, eating away
from home becomes a lot more inconvenient, a lot more work, and a lot more risky. In this video I will share what Iíve learned
from experience about how to eat at restaurants and on the road without getting myself glutened. I was never much of a fan of chain restaurants
before I became gluten free. If I was going to eat out, I wanted to try
a local place, a little hole in the wall ethnic restaurant, or some place really fancy. But the thing about being gluten free is that
you need reliability. In your town, you can probably get to know
some local restaurants well enough to know if they are able to make truly gluten free
food. But when youíre on the road, you donít have
that luxury. The good news is that a number of chain restaurants
have actually gone through a gluten free certification process. They have gluten free dishes; their kitchen
staff are trained not to cross-contaminate you, and the wait staff wonít look at you
like you have two heads for asking to have your hamburger without a bun or your prime
rib without au jus.
That doesnít mean that you can just go in
there and blithely order anything off the gluten free menu. You need to make sure that the wait staff
are actually paying attention and understand what you asked for so that they communicate
it with the kitchen. You might still have to ask questions like,
ìAnd the gluten free pasta is cooked in its own water, right? The French fries donít share fry oil with
anything thatís breaded, right? You didnít just pick the croutons off the
regular salad, right? My plain chicken breast isnít being cooked
on a grill next to a teriyaki chicken breast, right?î I know, it sounds ridiculous, but
you need to check.
People really donít understand how big a
problem cross-contamination is, and they donít understand how sick we get, so we need to
watch out and stand up for ourselves. Yes, it makes you sound like a demanding special
snowflake, but you can make up for it by tipping really well. There are lists of gluten free restaurants
online. Iíve linked to a number of them on the Gluten
Free Knowledge web site.
You can look up gluten free restaurants based
on city, and they typically have user-submitted ratings and reviews. They also have an app for smartphones. But if you want a book you can carry around,
a good one is Adam Bryanís Gluten Free Guide to Chain Restaurants or The Gluten Free Restaurant
Guide by Triumph Dining. Just bear in mind that the Internet updates
(at least itís supposed to) but a book can get out of date pretty quickly. Also, while the Olive Garden chain is pretty
good for gluten free, a particular Olive Garden restaurant might have an incompetent or lazy
cook. The comments on a web site might show that,
but a book has limited space. Spur of the moment trips are going to be a
little more difficult for you. When you are travelling to a new town, be
sure to take advantage of the Internet to look up the locations of any favorite, reliably
gluten free chain restaurants.
Also have a look at your gluten free restaurant
guidebooks and web sites and see what local restaurants are known to be friendly to gluten
free needs. Keep it all organized. You can put the addresses into Google Maps
or your GPS, or even just write them all down on paper and mark them on a paper map. Youíve got to do what works for you, but
what matters is that you have the information ready before youíre hungry and running out
of time. You will need to communicate with the people
youíre travelling with and the people youíre staying with. Theyíll need to understand that if they insist
on going to Fondue Palace or Baked Goods Bonanza, you wonít be able to join them.
They should understand that youíll need to
take extra time to order, so they should let you go either first, or last, depending on
your preference, and not question you or distract you while youíre talking to the wait staff. Hopefully your family, friends, and colleagues
are not jerks, so they will actually help you and stick up for you. When you are travelling long distances and
staying in hotels, eating gluten free becomes even more challenging. For some reason, breakfast is an especially
hard meal to get gluten free. I guess itís our societyís fascination with
toast. And rest stops almost never have anything
gluten free to eat. You may not be able to get away from your
dayís activities long enough to get to a restaurant that can do gluten free. This calls for some creative problem solving,
but at least youíll know that your meal tastes better than everybody elseís microwaved breakfast
burrito or nine dollar sub thatís mostly iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise.
First of all, make sure you will never get
so hungry that youíll make the colossally stupid decision to eat something that isnít
gluten free. Youíll be regretting it for days, if not
weeks. Bring shelf-stable snacks with you. Bananas, apples, and easily peeled oranges,
rice cakes with little single-serve tubs of peanut butter and jelly and a plastic knife
to spread them with, gluten free crackers and cookies, gluten free powerbars, jerky,
nuts, dried fruits, and fruit leather are all good ideas. For day trips, you will need an insulated
lunchbox and a freezer pack. Stick a few healthy snacks in there, and by
healthy, I mean snacks that wonít poison you with gluten.
I donít care if youíre eating maple walnut
fudge and cheezy cornballs, as long as theyíre gluten free and make you happy. But I like apples and peanut butter. And then, if youíre lazy, just head over
to Chipotle, because they are the absolute best at making a nutritious, filling, and
tasty gluten free lunch. Just tell them that you need it to be gluten
free, and they know exactly what to do. They even change their gloves to prevent cross-contamination. And their burrito bowls are perfectly good
even if you canít reheat them. If youíre not lazy, or if for some reason
you donít like Chipotle, or if youíre in some remote corner of the world that doesnít
have a Chipotle, you can pack your own lunch.
I like to brine chicken legs, bake them in
the oven, and serve them chilled. A bag of snap peas and some hummus, maybe
a box of rice crackers, and Iím set. You can also buy soup thermoses and pack stew,
chile, or a nice sloppy curry or stirfry. Make everyone jealous ñ with everything we
go through, weíre entitled to those little pleasures. In most areas, staying at a hotel makes things
a little more complicated unless you are willing to go to the Outback Steakhouse and have a
steak and a baked sweet potato for every meal during your trip. The solution is what I like to call ìcamping
in.î First, get a hotel room that has a microwave
and a mini fridge. Some hotels even offer rooms with kitchenettes,
but they cost more, are harder to reserve, and really arenít necessary.
Second, buy yourself a really good cooler. Coleman makes 3 day and 5 day coolers. The number is how many days it will keep your
ice frozen and your food cold. When you get into town, hit up the grocery
store for ice and food. Youíre going to want to bring your shelf
stable stuff from home, just to save a little money.
You can have a kit set up. I have a little bottle of olive oil, spices
in old tictac containers, and single serving packets of every condiment you can think of. Wholesale clubs like BJs and Costco are good
for buying those in bulk. Like I said before, youíll also want to pack
copious quantities of shelf-stable gluten free snackfoods. A set of lightweight dinnerware from a camping
supply store will make your life better. If youíve ever tried eating a steak or chile
off a leaky, floppy paper plate, you know what I mean. To round out your hotelís cooking capabilities,
buy yourself a fifteen dollar hot plate and a set of cookware from a camping supply store. That way itís lightweight and easily packable. Or if you want to, you can just bring a sauce
pan, frying pan, ladle, and spatula from your own kitchen. Youíre also going to want a knife and cutting
boards. Those colorful little knives with sheaths
are safer to bring and easy to find in any kitchen supply store. The foldable cutting boards are easier to
pack and lighter weight than regular ones. Additional mandatory equipment are a strainer,
a vegetable peeler, a can opener, and a rubber spatula thatís got a concave side so you
can also use it as a serving spoon if you want.
And of course bring a little bottle of dish
soap and a sponge. If you want to get really fancy, bring a slow
cooker. My friend with celiac disease discovered this
because she goes to a lot of science fiction conventions that last the whole weekend, and
she didnít want to take a lot of time out of her presenting schedule to cook. So she makes something in her slow cooker
every day and itís ready for her whenever she has a moment to get back to her room.
They even make slow cookers with two compartments,
so you can have two different dishes cooking at the same time. Needless to say, if youíre going to be doing
your own cooking when you travel, camping has a lot of potential. For one thing, itís much cheaper than staying
in a hotel. For another, when youíre camping, everybody
is eating home cooked food because thatís just what you do. That way, you feel less like an outcast because
everybody else is going to restaurants. Another possibility for saving money and eating
in while on vacation is renting a vacation house instead of a hotel room. Itís very economical if you have a family
with multiple children, or a group of several adults. There are even web sites where you can arrange
with people from other cities to trade houses or apartments for a week, although Iíve never
tried that. Travelling for work is a real bear. There are certain social and professional
expectations of us, and dealing with needing to eat gluten free can sometimes disturb the
fragile veneer that weíre perfect little working machines of impeccable professionalism,
who probably wake up without morning breath or bed head and come up with some innovative
solutions before breakfast.
Our culture of work wants us to leave our
personal life at the door, but this part of our personal life has to come with us everywhere,
and it isnít always very good at staying in the background. So, conferences. Some hotels are known for having gluten free
options at their restaurants. Some college cafeterias are capable of providing
gluten free meals to their students. But I have never once found that a conference,
either held at a hotel or held at a college campus, can offer me a real gluten free meal. In some cases, itís obvious that they canít
guarantee that itís not cross-contaminated. In other cases, they just straight up say
they canít do it. The people they hire to do catering for events
are often not actually employees and they just donít get the same training. And the food that they make for events is
optimized to be economical for large groups, not for the more varied options that a restaurant
or cafeteria would have.
On the off chance they do provide something
safe, itís usually so inedible or meager that it doesnít really count as a meal. Pack a bag lunch and lots of snacks. Fortunately, I donít have to do business
lunches where I have to impress my potential clients or screen potential collaborators
and colleagues. But most of us who work sometimes have to
eat with our coworkers. If you can do so, pick the venue. Figure out what restaurants are in the right
area and have the right price point and ambience.
Then see which of them have at least one thing
on the menu that you can eat, and can prepare it without cross-contaminating you. Then select, or suggest those places. If youíre not the one doing the inviting,
or if youíre not local, itís harder. Youíre going to have to be up front about
your needs and do a little bit of educating. Keep it simple, and keep your requests minimal. Basically, you need something you can eat
safely, not necessarily something delicious. If itís a dry, unseasoned chicken breast
on a bed of plain lettuce, you may have to deal with it and pretend youíre fine with
it. But donít think that requesting that your
health needs be met is unprofessional or a sign of weakness. Itís just another aspect of getting the job
done. If you were a wheelchair user, you couldnít
go to a business lunch held on the second floor of a building without an elevator, and
holding that against you would be severely unethical.
This is the same kind of thing. In the past, bringing up this kind of thing
had more of a stigma associated with it. Unfortunately, it is still a fact that some
people will remember your ìweird food thingî before they remember more important things
about you, like the resources, connections, and skills you brought to the table. The best thing you can do is to be matter
of fact, but not let your food issues become a topic of conversation.
Keep steering it towards the business matter
at hand, or more pleasant small talk. Stay positive and confident, even if you have
to fake it. Some peopleís weddings have provided me with
delicious gluten free food. Other times, not so much. The thing about weddings is that the people
planning them are also the people who are most excited and nervous and overwhelmed about
them, so they often miss little details like the fact that one of their guests has a food
sensitivity. If youíre close to the couple getting married,
talk to them early about the catering arrangements. If youíre not close to them, wait until you
get your invitation and call them when you RSVP.
Sometimes the couple chooses a caterer based
on their ability to accommodate dietary restrictions, and thatís good news. As long as the caterer knows what you need,
you will have something to eat. Sometimes you are supposed to tell the couple,
and they tell the caterer. Other times the couple will just give you
the catererís phone number and itís up to you to contact them directly. Ask them the same kinds of questions you would
ask at a restaurant. If you donít get the answers you need, or
if they sound unsure, donít trust that they can give you gluten free food. If the couple has chosen to have the meal
served buffet style, youíre probably out of luck. Buffets are impossible to keep free of cross-contamination. It may be possible to make a special arrangement
to have a gluten free plate made up in the kitchen and delivered to your table. Just like with business lunches, a wedding
isnít the occasion to talk about your frustrations with gluten free dining. Unless youíre at a table full of people with
similar issues who want to talk about it, you should come up with something else to
talk about that wonít bore, gross out, or depress the people around you.
If you know that a wedding canít accommodate
you, just eat before you go. Even if you are expecting that they can serve
you a gluten free meal, itís better to be safe than sorry. Eat a light meal before you go, and make sure
to have some gluten free snacks on hand, because the caterers may not have gotten the message,
or they may have made a mistake. If all else fails, you can eat a Larabar in
the lobby and sip wine. To wrap up, whether you are taking a day trip
or staying a week or more, eating out for business or pleasure or a social obligation
like a wedding, never let somebody try to nag, convince, persuade, or guilt you into
eating something that you suspect isnít safe.
Theyíre not the one who has to live with
the consequences; you are. And if you give into them, they will only
do it again, not only to you, but to everyone else in their life. And one last piece of advice from experience. It is hard to eat gluten free, particularly
outside your own home and surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues. It is tiring to have to be constantly on guard. Itís depressing to have to deprive yourself
of things that you want that everyone else is enjoying. It feels isolating and sometimes it actually
is literally isolating, when people decide to go on without you because itís just more
convenient not to have to deal with your needs. Itís hard not to let it get you down. Many people are used to comforting or rewarding
ourselves with food, and many of the foods that we would like to do that with are no
longer on the menu for us. Itís important to make sure that you have
a way to treat yourself and unwind. It gives you something to look forward to
so that you can make it through a difficult situation and not give into a self-destructive
temptation.
It should be something simple and affordable,
so that itís within reach whenever you need it, but it should also be special. Just make sure you have something that will
make you feel like you got your just rewards for soldiering through a 16 hour day where
breakfast, lunch, and dinner consisted of nothing but Rice Chex, jerky, and dried fruit,
or the wedding where the only things you could eat were carrot and celery sticks. Your treat might be a mug of capuccino on
the deck instead of your usual coffee in a hurry, or a luxurious bath instead of a quick
shower. If you have taken up gluten free baking, you
may want to make a really decadent recipe for yourself. But you need to have something. Thank you for joining me for Gluten Free Travel
and Dining. Most people find that eating away from home
is the hardest part of being gluten free, not only practically, but socially and emotionally.
I hope these tips are helpful for you..
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