Traveling and Eating Out

I've done a lot of traveling this summer in and out of state with Justin who is gluten/dairy/egg intolerant. There are some tips I want to share in no particular order.

1. It never hurts to ask.

When I was in Payson my promise of sushi from Bashas made me a liar, so I asked a local pizza joint if they'd make a pizza for my kid if I brought in the dairy free cheese and gluten free crust (from Bashas). They said YES!, only charged us for sauce and sausage, and he ate right along side us eating pizza.

2. Know what you can ahead of time.

We stayed at a hotel in California that had a continental breakfast. The night we checked in I asked the staff what they served. I wrote it all down, and then we promptly took a trip to the store to get some things that we needed. We brought rice milk with us and simply needed to pick up some gluten free cereal. Justin was delighted with Frosted Flakes (the real deal)!

3. Bring your own condiments/substitutions.

At a sushi restaurant we were happy to order everything safely when we realized their soy sauce had wheat in it. This makes me so angry. SOY sauce. It's so stupid. Anyway, we had soy sauce at our hotel, and Ryan swung by to pick it up and returned to us at the restaurant saving the day.

At Olive Garden we brought our own salad dressing so that Justin could have a salad with us. We also brought him some bread so he could dip it in his gluten free pasta.

At Subway we brought our own bread and ordered the kids' meal for him. He was happy to get a toy and juice like every other kid.

4. Bring dessert.

I don't know about you but whenever I go on vacation I want dessert everyday, almost after every meal. It's nearly impossible to find gluten and dairy free desserts at restaurants, so we made sure to bring some with us. Dark chocolate covered almonds have become a favorite of ours. On another vacation we stopped at Cookies From Home and bought a dozen gluten/dairy free cookies for our trip.

That is all! Happy end of summer everyone. I hope you had fun vacationing somewhere!