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

gluten free camping

Q: how many times in a row can I get my kids to eat baked beans before they throw the tin at me?

A: not sure but I plan to find out in the next few days.

Why would I inflict baked bean torture on my own flesh and blood I hear you ask? Because we are going camping for four days over Easter at Gerroa on the south coast of NSW.

Campsite staples like sausage sandwiches and ham rolls are now out of bounds for us and the usual replacements like spuds, rice and gluten free pasta don’t do so well on the barbie.

Meanwhile every single gluten free cracker on the market is inedible apparently, and I’ve been told in no uncertain terms what I can do with my bananas.

So baked beans it is.

MB

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gluten free flight?

I have done a few air miles in my time, but few of them have been gluten free.

There is something about travel that obliterates special diets, and having just come back from a recent work trip overseas, it once again proved impossible to dodge gluten.

Between the airport fast-food counters, the airline meal trolleys and hotel room service, there was little of anything but wheat, wheat, wheat all the way to the US and back.

You may be wondering why on earth I did not order myself a gluten free meal for the flight. If you are asking this question I suspect you have never before ordered a special airline meal.

I made this mistake on our first flight to the UK after we discovered my son was gluten free. We were so relieved they offered this dietary option because we were not sure what we allowed to take on the aircraft.

So imagine our shock when my son’s gluten free meal arrived, consisting only of a fruit platter. This continued for the duration of the flight meaning he had to subsist on kiwi fruit and melon for the whole 26 hours.

We ended up feeding him gluten just to get some solid food for his tummy and we all paid the price when we touched down with tears and sore tummies. My coblogger, Mandy, had a very similar experience when her family went to Disneyland last year.

So why were we only offered fruit on the airline when we all know that gluten free diets contain many things that are not fruit like vegetables, meat, fish, rice, potato, egg and even cheese (for the non casein-senstive).

All airlines are different of course, but I can only imagine that when catering for vegan, kosher, raw food and every other kind of diet out there it is a lot easier just to serve them up the same thing – which means you go for the lowest common denominator. After all, there are not many diets that restrict the eating of raw fruit – other than low chemical diets – and as far as I know, airlines don’t yet cater to those.

So be warned.  Before ordering a gluten free meal, check with your airline what you or your child will actually be fed, and if they are shy about giving you details, pack loads of snacks for eating on the plane. There are few restrictions on the type of dry goods that you are allowed to take on board with you so arm yourself with favourite savoury biccies, chips, sweets, and anything else that will keep junior happy.  Just make sure you dump uneaten stuff before arriving at destination – or at least declare it for customs.

We actually now order normal kids meals for our son (he is not coeliac so trace gluten does not cause major problems) and combine his stuff with ours so he can eat things like our rice and chicken while my husband polishes off his alphabet spaghetti and bread roll,  but this wouldn’t work for everyone.

Airport transfers and hotel catering is a whole other beast, and I can only suggest what I always do when confronted with limited options. Head for the nearest sushi counter and failing that, find some hot chips to add to that tin of baked beans in your suitcase.

LH

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You often hear me belly-aching about how difficult it can be catering to gluten-free diets when venturing beyond the homestead. It turns out I am not the only one to suffer frustration on this score.

Fortunately for the gluten-free fraternity, one of the people struggling with this very dilemma happened to be married to an iPhone developer and the end result is that iPhone users can download  a free glutenfreeNSW app which tells them where to find gluten-free eateries and restaurants in any particular town within NSW and ACT.

Darko, the app developer, says: “My wife is a coeliac, we only found out about 1 year ago and we have been finding it very hard to find places to eat that cater to a gluten free diet especially when we are out and about in areas that we dont know very well.

“We recently went on a trip to Bega and the app came in handy many times when we stopped off for lunch in different towns on the way. Normally this would of involved us going door to door checking out all the menu’s of each cafe.”

The data in the app was sourced from websites, as well as from personal and friends’ experiences. Darko says the original plan was to build the application for all Australian restaurants and cafes, but the massive amount of time required to collate all the data, meant he had to narrow it down to NSW and ACT.

While there are gluten free apps already available for the iPhone, most of these are menu or ingredient based – making this the first to publish a local guide for coeliacs and gluten intolerant people seeking out eateries.

Unfortunately for non-iphone owners (like me) Darko hasn’t any immediate plans to port his app to other mobile phones, but over 500 people have already downloaded it so I figure he is definitely onto something.

LH

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We love dining out with our cosmopolitan toddler in tow, and a rich selection of Chinese, Mexican, Indian and Japanese restaurants on the doorstep means we can happily sidestep the local cafes and pubs where there is precious little other than chicken nuggets, fish and chips or spaghetti Bolognaise lurking on the kids menu.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently wrote a piece on some restaurants working hard to overcome this lack of imagination on behalf of our children’s dietary desires, but many of these are located in large urban centres where variety is driven by a tough competitive market.

Of course its when we are travelling that our options narrow considerably, leaving us desperately scanning fast-food menus Australia-wide that are devoid of anything warm and tasty that is not accompanied by a  payload of gluten.

So let us raise a toast to our last safe haven: chips.  Hot, fried and delicious to the entire human species, we can easily top up our toddler on them when all other menu possibilities have been exhausted when seated in the only cafe in a one-horse town.

Therefore it is with great dismay that I report the latest fad for beer-battered chips. We can tolerate such coatings on fish, prawns and other sea-dwelling creatures – but potatoes? Come on guys. Give us a break please.

In the last month we have encountered beer-battered fries in all manner of restaurants, pubs and cafes and a quick google search revealed someone begging for a recipe for this gourmet’s delight on a popular magazine website – so I can only deduce that a layer of batter adds a whole new dimension (along with several hundred extra calories and a few extra dollars on the bill) to everyday chips.

But it also leaves us gluten-intolerant people high and dry, and doomed to cower miserably at home where we can dine in safety when we would much prefer be out and about, clambering over rocks in small seaside townships or driving through quant mountain villages.

So please restaurant owners, take pity on the wheat intolerant and stop battering everything on your menu!

LH

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[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