Traveling Gluten Free

On our next trip to London and Ireland, It will be the first time I
will need Gluten Free food. Does anyone know if this will be
difficult?

Cathy L

In article ,
Cathy L wrote:

On our next trip to London and Ireland, It will be the first time I
will need Gluten Free food. Does anyone know if this will be
difficult?

Cathy L

I would think so yes, particularly since you don't like 'ethnic' or
'foreign' food.

Cathy L wrote:
On our next trip to London and Ireland, It will be the first time I
will need Gluten Free food. Does anyone know if this will be
difficult?


It can be difficult in the US, too.

No pasta, no bread, many sauces will have been thickened with wheat
flour, sausages may have gluten-containing filler, no fish-and-chips...

If you were to rent a self-catering place, it would be much easier, of
course.

On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:21:26 -0500, Cathy L wrote:

On our next trip to London and Ireland, It will be the first time I
will need Gluten Free food. Does anyone know if this will be
difficult?

I have no problem, but I see in another post that you don't like ethnic
food. The easiest way to be gluten-free in both of those locations is to
eat Indian food. All of their curries are gluten-free. And if properly made
the samosas and pakoras will also be gluten-free. And you can start with
pappadums made with lentils.

I also travel a lot to the Caribbean. West Indian cuisine, if made from
fresh ingredients, is gluten-free. (You just have to be careful of jerk
seasoning from a bottle.) But again it is an ethnic food.

Now I do find that breakfast can be harder. If you are staying at a B&B you
can eat the bacon, eggs, and fruit. People around you will be pigging out
on these plus the breads and cereals that you can't eat. But then the B&Bs
usually will not increase the eggs and bacon they give you, so you will end
up with less food. Some B&Bs, if you book and tell them in advance, will
get some gluten-free bread for you.

Now as you are an American you have been taught to be 100% gluten-free. In
both the UK and Ireland the societies push this proprietary wheat starch
that has a small amount of gluten. Americans, used to a 100% GF diet, can
get sick on it. So you need to specify that you are gluten and wheat free.

Don www.donwiss.com/pictures/#travel (e-mail link at page bottoms).

On Dec 4, 9:11*pm, Don Wiss wrote:
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:21:26 -0500, Cathy L wrote:
On our next trip to London and Ireland, It will be the first time I
will need Gluten Free food. Does anyone know if this will be
difficult?

I have no problem, but I see in another post that you don't like ethnic
food. The easiest way to be gluten-free in both of those locations is to
eat Indian food. All of their curries are gluten-free. And if properly made
the samosas and pakoras will also be gluten-free. And you can start with
pappadums made with lentils.

But very often the reality may not match up to this ideal. A few
months ago I was in a (highly-rated) Wolverhampton Indian restaurant
with a friend who eats gluten-free. The waiter understood perfectly
well what she was asking about, and he could only guarantee ONE main
course - a baked fish of some kind - to be suitable for her.

To the OP - if determined to be 100% G-F, you may need to ask
determined questions in restaurants, as waiting staff won't
necessarily have much of an idea exactly how a given dish is prepared.
Waiting staff should sometimes be better-informed in more upscale
places, and there is a small but growing trend to mark G-F dishes on
menus. Or, of course, you could play it ultra-safe and opt for dishes
that couldn't possibly include gluten.

There seems to be a reasonable variety of G-F foods available in large
supermarkets.

This Website seems to have a list of restaurants offering G-F food:
http://www.coeliac.org.uk/

On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Barney wrote:

To the OP - if determined to be 100% G-F, you may need to ask
determined questions in restaurants, as waiting staff won't
necessarily have much of an idea exactly how a given dish is prepared.

It appears that the OP is new to the gluten-free diet. In my first post I
mentioned that breakfast was the most difficult. At a B&B any eggs will be
cooked in a pan, but at restaurants they would usually be cooked on a
griddle. I do not eat anything cooked on a griddle. You can't fully clean
them. All you can do is smear the gluten around. In my early days of being
GF I was eating out with my parents and I ordered a burger (without roll of
course) and my mother ordered a Reuben. It appears that the cook used the
side of his spatula to cut the Reuben in half, and then used it to pick up
my burger. That was one of the worst contaminations I've had. Obviously one
learns along the way.

And I presume the OP knows by now that once something breaded goes into the
frying oil it is contaminated and anything fried is out. In the USA almost
always the frying oil will be contaminated. But when traveling there are
countries that aren't into fried onion rings and fried chicken, so French
Fries ("chips" in the UK) may be an option.

Don www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).

What is gluten free food and why is it important for some people?
--
Alfred Molon
http://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe