Hooray For Bend Oregon

[celiac-mommy]

So, we went on an adventure/vacation last week to Bend, OR. I made sure we had a condo with a kitchen so I could cook most, if not all of our meals so as to not poison my child. The 1st night, we went to Wild Oats, where in the bread section-searching for a gluten-free loaf, I happened upon a loaf from a local bakery (Angeline's). There were scones, cookies and a heavy loaf of white bread. I bought it to try (even though it was 5$), it smelled soooo good! The scones were some of the best I've ever had, the snickerdoodles were AMAZING and the bread was one of the BEST homemade breads I've EVER tasted!

2 nights later, we decided to venture out for dinner, knowing she could get a steak, hamburger or chicken. We stopped at 3 different bar&grill type restaurants and no one had any side dishes that she would enjoy, so we kept going. We ended up in the Old Mill district where there was Anthony's fish restuarant and an old standby-Red Robin, just in case. As my husband got out of the car to check the menu at Anthonys's, I longingly passed a little Italian bistro with live music on the patio and parked the car. My husband came out of Anthony's shaking his head, but said the manager pointed him across the street-TO THE ITALIAN RESTAURANT-Bella Cucina-who has an actual gluten-free menu--not just rice pasta with red sauce, but an entire menu with appitizers, soups, salads and almost ALL of their sauces--including the alfredo, which she enjoyed immensly.

One afternoon we rode the quad lift up to Pine Marten restaurant on Mt. Bachelor where we had a great BBQ lunch, the chef was more than happy to create a lunch for her and then hiked up to about 8500ft to the most amazing views I've ever seen.

The next day, the chef at our hotel (Inn at the Seventh Mountain) felt bad just giving her a hamburger patty and cheese so he wrapped it up in a gluten-free corn tortilla. The next morning, I snuck away to the Strictly Organic Coffee Co. coffee shop and when the gal was inputting my order, I noticed that they carried gluten-free bread, I asked her more about it, and they also had gluten-free muffins and homemade gluten-free biscotti!!

On our last day, we let our daughter pick where we went for lunch and of course she wanted to go to Red Robin. When I talked to our server, she knew exactly what I was talking about, gave us numerous options and asked Maddie "our fries are gluten-free, would you like some of those too?" She about died! Usually they are not prepared in a dedicated frier. All in all, a FABULOUS week!

Thank you Bend!!

[jerseyangel]

Wow! That all sounds great