gluten free familyA mum's blog about gluten-free living in Australia

[22/11/09]  I have just survived another gluten-free weekend away from home, but sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t have a better time just staying at home.

To illustrate, I will replay a conversation I had with non gluten free husband prior to departure. (note there were only very limited cooking facilities at our destination)

Him: “Where shall we eat while we are away?”

Me: “I can buy a hot chicken enroute and we can have that with salad for dinner, and on the second day a Chinese takeaway ought to suffice. We can pack plenty of snacks for other meals and the chicken should stretch to our second lunch. ”

Him: “I’d rather not. Lets try to have some proper meals over the weekend”.

Okay…. I wonder who is going to pack all the ingredients for those and cook them all in a single frypan then? I guess that will be me. Goodbye restful weekend.

Of course Chinese food was not the only fast food available at our destination. There were no shortage of pizza and pasta places too. But of course we of the gluten free persuasion can’t really easily digest the latter, and so that left us looking for a nice child-friendly restaurant that cooked something other than these. We drew a blank.

Sausages from the supermarket were our saviour (as they often are) because they are the one thing that everybody likes, are easy to cook up in a single pan (or thrown on barbie) and go well with almost anything, although beans and mash/toast are our most common accompaniments.

This experience has inspired me to come up with a list of gluten free friendly takeaway meals that you can get hold of in most towns. Would love some more suggestions if you can think of any . . .

-Hot chips (not always gluten free but we are rarely in a position to turn our noses up)

-Fish and chips (cooked without batter – although some small places get it in frozen batter ‘n all and cannot acommodate us)

-Noodles (rice) or rice dishes from an oriental restaurant. Some curry houses do gluten free curries, but not likely in out of the way places and not a very child friendly option anyway.

-Hamburger (throw away the bun) and stick the meat pattie on a plate with salad (must check patties are meat only). Not a very good option if you don’t have access to plates/cutlery.

-Gluten free pizza (some pizzerias are offering this now – but we are dairy free so its no good for us)

-Mexican – nachos/tacos are often gluten free.

-Delis – cold meat, salads, vine leaves etc.

-Sushi (if you are really lucky enough to run into one of these outside the city and your children have refined palates).

LH