traveling

i'm baaaaaaaaaack! really, i am. I'm sorry to the faithful who might have expected recipes and my philosophical ponderings over the last few weeks, but i had a lot going on with school and then i decided to travel across the country and then move. a lot going on, which precluded blogging about the wonderful world of food allergies. but i did give me plenty of fodder for topics, so maybe i'll make it all up to you.

first off, i love traveling! i haven't done a lot of it in awhile, but this time i did the whole cross-country flight, hotel room, touristy things included. I knew from the get-go that the food would be a challenging issue for me. Let's consider it, what do most people do when confront with these kinds of things? Run into a fast food restaurant and pick something up. I can only survive so long on McDonald's fries (coated with beef flavoring, which is probably why they taste so nice, but apparently wasn't enough to bother me) and milkshakes.

It actually got me thinking about how hard it is to even travel and health fairly healthfully. Yes, there's a McDonald's on every corner that can cover you in an emergency, but their salads aren't particularly healthy. We went in a Panera one morning, but while I had ruled out their lunch menu, I had hoped for a pastry or muffin that I could eat (everything has eggs in it, but I managed okay). If you look at Panera's nutritional information, their Caesar salad packs about 500 calories, which is fine for a meal, but a salad that's 500 calories?!

Luckily, the wedding I went to had a delightful, vegetarian buffet dinner. While the only thing I technically could have eaten was the green beans, I was able to enjoy salad, pasta, and the green beans with no ill effects. That raises another interesting question--one I've seen in the news recently--both the bride and the groom are vegetarians, so it was not unexpected to have a vegetarian dinner, and as a fellow vegetarian, I was pleased. But what if they'd been vegan? Should we all eat vegan?

Back to the traveling though. I changed terminals in the Chicago airport and I had a really long layover, so I was anticipating being able to find some good food to stand me over until I could get home and my mom could feed me something guaranteed to have no allergens in it. Nada. Deep dish pizza may be a Chicago standard and it is indeed delicious, but I knew I wouldn't be able to eat it and not suffer the consequences, not something I'd want to have to deal with on an airplane/while flying through turbulence anyway. Same goes with the fast food restaurants and some of the more diner-like restaurants scattered through the airport (though I did enjoy seeing the wine bar complete with player piano!). I ended up in a Hudson's paying exorbitant (though expected) prices for a bag of frito's and reese's peanut butter cups. Sounds delightfully healthy, right?

So imagine a week spent chowing down on that and playing the tourist. I can't imagine how I really made it through some days...stocking up on chocolate frosted banana cupcakes that apparently didn't have eggs in them must have gotten me through. Plus lots and lots of Sprite for the sugar.

Anyone else travel with a special diet and have stories? Or just tried to eat healthy and managed it? I knew when I had gone on vacation in the past, my usual careful consideration of what I'm eating goes out the window but it was interesting this year when I really really couldn't.