Review Of A Year On The Road Eating Gluten Free

Everyone always gives us a hard time about all the delicious food we post about while we are on the road and showing our social media friends what we experience. You can blame me for that annoying trait, because I find every trip an adventure full of the opportunities to get to know where we are by the cultures of food available. But just because our food has to be gluten free, this provides more of a challenge. It requires spending a little time reading reviews and assessing whether the food will be safe or not. We also always have a back up plan in case the first choice isn't a good one.

While perusing the hundreds of pictures we take on each trip, I was faced with a huge amount of food pics and was stunned at the sheer volume! For people who claim having to limit their options, the reality is we had a year of incredible food laid out before us in each city. So, we compiled those pictures into a video, highlighting only the best of what we had eaten, to illustrate how amazing you can eat on simply gluten free. Hopefully this gives you all a positive boost that your options are expanding slowly as we all continue to make our gluten free voices heard.
Note: We did not have other allergens to be aware of.

Deck The Allergy Free Halls With Less Stress

The roar of the Holiday season is in full swing and also the setting up of upcoming 2015 Gluten and Allergen Free Wellness Events. So, even though we have been absent from our blog, there has been plenty of activity and buzz happening behind the scenes. We have event venues to finalize, speakers to schedule, vendors to contact, and sponsors to negotiate with. It can be quite chaotic from November to January especially with events held in multiple cities across the nation.

2015 Schedule

The added challenge of eating allergen free during the holidays can be overwhelming for any of us, and we are no exception. For anyone making changes to their dietary needs during the festive parties, potlucks, and family time can feel like a mine field of problematic moments and a burden when all you want to do is dig in to your favorite foods. The following story is how we started to deal with one of those bumps in the road.

I come from a large Southern family and our holiday meals have always been potluck dinners where each person would make enough of their best dishes to feed up to 20 people. We would meet in my family's Fish Camp (a Southern seafood restaurant specializing in fried fish, hushpuppies, and french fries) to make the mess easier to clean and have room for our large brood. Everyone arriving would place their delicious foods on a large banquet table to share. The sight of all that food made Thanksgiving and Christmas the best holidays of the year...until we went gluten free.

For three years after Doodle's celiac diagnosis, my mother and I would cook a completely separate gluten free meal and cart the lot over to the Fish Camp so Doodle wouldn't miss out on the festivities and family, nor the food. Although we still were missing out on 50% of the items at the large table, there was enough to fill us to stuffed mode before having to lug the leftovers back home. The great addition to this story is that Lake Todd Fish Camp now has gluten free fried fish and hushpuppies because of Doodle.

In December of 2011, we moved two hours away from the family to the mountains of NC. Thanksgiving rolled around in 2012 and it was the first time we spent holidays at home. I explained to my disappointed mother and father that we would not be there that year. There was no way I could justify making a whole meal and transporting it for a two hour drive, not to mention the challenge of food possibly spoiling on the way.

And you know what? It was the best feeling ever to wake that morning ready to cook our dinner with no time schedule to meet, no planning of who was making what, and no loading up the car and all the work that entails. We learned that day that all those years, my stress level had been higher than a kite on a windy March Carolina day. The new found joy of truly enjoying the holidays was one I will never forget. Now, we spend every holiday at home and plan a date afterwards to meet our family for a meal at a restaurant, with very little stress attached.

Just like most of our journey to health and wellness, the realization that stress is a factor in our healing process and avoiding it can be done with a little rearranging of the way things used to be has been refreshing. I hope that by sharing our story, inspiration will arise in how you can strive to add less and not more onto your plate.
Can you think of one way to make your holidays less stressful and more enjoyable for you and your family?

We hope you enjoy a stress free beautiful Holiday season.