Summer Travel Toddler to Teens

Celiac.com 08/05/2022 - The mere thought of traveling with gluten-free children can be so overwhelming you might think—why bother? Once you learn the tricks of traveling gluten-free you will be glad you made the effort, and you will treasure the memories forever.

Our family has learned over the years to roll with the punches— finding gluten-free meals on vacation is always possible— although it can be challenging at times. We have successfully traveled gluten-free with children aged 2 through 12. Fine dining is more practical now that the kids are older, but through the years our methods for gluten-free travel have remained mostly unchanged—although now we don’t pack much gluten-free food in our suitcases. This is due to better planning and more readily available food in natural food markets and grocery stores.

Celiac.com Sponsor (A12):
Recently, my daughter and I traveled to Victoria, British Columbia to teach a class and discovered a relatively new resource. The Victoria chapter of the Canadian Celiac Association has a list of area restaurants that understand the gluten-free diet— we used this list to narrow down our choices and had excellent gluten-free meals. Many support groups across the country have developed gluten-free restaurant lists, so it pays to contact the local support group in your travel area. The Gluten Intolerance Group, Celiac Sprue Association, Celiac Disease Foundation, and www.celiac.com all have support group lists, so it is relatively easy to make contact with these local support groups.

You will also want to go on-line and determine what gluten-free items are available from fast food restaurants. Consider regional fast food restaurants that you haven’t checked into before, as there are many across the country that you may want to visit, and it pays to know which of their items are gluten-free. We don’t eat at these places most of the time, but on vacation they can be life savers!

When planning your trip, seek out hotels with high-end restaurants. Their wait staff and chefs are more likely to understand the gluten-free diet, or they are more apt to be able to modify their fresh, made-from-scratch foods to meet your needs. Bed and Breakfasts are another good choice, and those we have stayed at have been very accommodating to our special diets. Condos with full kitchens and vacation home rentals are our top choice. Be sure you have access to an outdoor barbeque to keep your time in the kitchen to a minimum. We often rent the same home year to year—find a place that you like, as there are many benefits to knowing exactly how the kitchen is stocked. By staying in the same place repeatedly you will also learn where the best stores are located.

Call ahead to find out where the closest natural food market is (the internet is a great help in locating such stores), and ask if they stock your favorite gluten-free items. When you contact the staff ask them if they will hold your favorite items for you. On one trip we called ahead but failed to ask for the items to be held and by the time we arrived they were sold out of all of our favorite items! By calling ahead you can free up needed space in your luggage and you won’t have to worry about items that you bring getting crushed. Sometimes a natural food market can be a long distance away from your rental, so be prepared to make one big trip to that store for your gluten-free crackers, pastas, cereals, baking mixes, and snacks. We now pack only frozen homemade breads and frozen slices of healthy sweet bread, since these items travel well and can be hard to find.

Plan at least one night out for fine dining (if your children are old enough to make this enjoyable). We have had some terrific experiences on our travels at some wonderful restaurants. Call early in the day (or a few days in advance) and speak to the head chef so you can learn what menu items are safe. If the head chef is not working the night of your visit they may still be able to inform the kitchen staff of your special needs.

For air travel it is important to have a good supply of high-protein snacks in your carry-on bags such as granola bars, bananas, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and crackers. Order a fruit plate in advance, even though you won’t be able to eat the wheat-containing packaged items that often come with it, you will at least have some fresh fruit. Our luck with ordering the gluten-free meals some airlines offer has not been very good, so we stick to the fruit plates.

Remember that problems will always arise—and even the best laid plans may go awry. One example of this is our trip to Boston last year which offered us a few surprises. We arrived on Saturday evening in downtown Boston at the Harvard Club, a reciprocal health club to ours. Unbeknownst to us, the club has a skeleton staff during the summer months, as many of its members aren’t in town much then. Their restaurants were all closed. Although I had called ahead to talk to them about food, I failed to mention our dates of travel, so on a Saturday night we began walking down a popular street lined with busy restaurants to look for some place that we could eat.

Out of about 30 restaurants there was only one high-end steak house where we thought we could eat. At 9 pm not a single table was available. I explained our situation to the bar hostess who took charge of moving things around in the bar to make a spot for us. They allowed us to dine from the restaurant menu, and we managed to have a fabulous meal, even though it was expensive, but it was our only option aside from a nearby convenience store.

The next day we had breakfast at the Harvard Club and then walked all over Boston. We had lunch at one of several places that served fresh fish which we found in a guide book. That Sunday evening we were walking in Cambridge and discovered that almost everything was closed. We ended up in an almost empty French restaurant and had another fabulous meal. The balance of the trip was easier as we stayed with relatives in a home. My aunt knew of a great natural foods market but we never made it there because the regular grocery store had an entire natural foods section with all of our favorite items.

Plan some extra time into your vacation to accommodate your special diet, but do not stay home and avoid travel because of it. Our family has so many great gluten-free vacation experiences. It would be a shame to limit ourselves because of our diets.

Karen Robertson’s Banana Bread

Reprinted with permission from Karen Robertson’s Cooking Gluten-Free! A Food Lover’s Collection of Chef and Family Recipes (Celiac Publishing, 2003). This recipe makes one loaf.

Ingredients:

• 1⁄2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 4 medium, ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 2 cups Multi Blend 
• Gluten-Free flour mix
• 1⁄2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1⁄4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

If you do not have time to make the bread right away, freeze your ripe bananas for later use in this recipe.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Butter a 5 x 9-inch loaf pan.

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla on high speed until pale in color and light in texture. Beat in eggs one at a time until well blended. With a fork, mix bananas and milk in a small bowl and set aside. In another small bowl, combine the flour, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt. Blend dry ingredients into the creamed mixture alternately with banana mixture.

Turn batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean with a few crumbs clinging to it. Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Note: If using a standard gluten-free flour blend, add 1⁄4 teaspoon xanthan gum to the dry ingredients.