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Jennie Day Blog

Gluten Free NYC

October 18, 2013 By jennie

Want to hear a funny story? I don’t know why I ask, when we all know I’m going to tell you anyway.

Here’s the setup: since I am no longer blogging much about food, I am not in the habit of taking pictures of my meals before I dig in. Here’s the punchline: while we were in New York, Joel took more pictures of food than I did.

It’s not so much funny, haha, as it is funny weird.

ANYway, I figured I’d blog about my favorite restaurants we went to, even though I don’t have pictures of everything and some of my pictures are pretty bad. The food was good – that’s what matters.

Risotteria Melotti

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This is a 100% gluten-free Italian restaurant in East Village. The entire menu is risottos (or brown rice pasta) and we ordered what we wanted mixed in. I had the lunch special, which was a half sized salad and risotto, which was still more food than I could eat! I had the pear and avocado salad, then pollo e pepperoni (because it reminded me of a dish I ate in Italy …)

The best part of the meal, in my opinion, was the bread basket.

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It’s such a novel thing to me now, to get bread I can eat with my meal! I ate, like, three pieces of bread and one of the seasoned rice cakes (which was a contributing factor in why my lunch portion was more than I could eat.)

Bareburger

We went here with our friends Morgana and Grahme, who recommended it as they’d taken another gluten free person there and had good experiences. We ate at the one in Times Square, but there are several locations around NYC, so I played a little game called “spot the Bareburger” as we wandered around the city. They were everywhere!

I wish I had a picture to show you, but here’s the rundown: I had a chocolate peanut butter milkshake, all four of us split a bucket of sweet potato fries, and then I had a turkey burger in a lettuce wrap. They have gluten free buns available, but at that point, it had been a couple of days since I’d eaten a vegetable, so lettuce sounded good.

Morrell Wine Bar

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We picked this spot just outside of Rockefeller Center for lunch before our tour of NBC Studios. It ended up being our most expensive meal in New York! Only because this was one of only a couple times that we ordered an appetizer, drinks, and entrees – we shared warm rosemary olives; I had a glass of wine, Joel had a hard cider; then I had the cobb salad pictured above, and Joel had a piece of cod, which was also gluten-free. It is a rare day that we both order something GF in a restaurant and can share, so I was a happy camper.

Le Pain Quotidien

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We ended up eating here twice – I insisted on going back a second time so I could take a photo of the food 🙂 I didn’t realize this place is actually a chain, and there was a location literally next door to our hotel in D.C.

No matter – it was worth eating there twice. I even had the same thing both times: a hard boiled egg with gluten free crackers and a side of ham and cheese. I ended up making open faced sandwiches with the crackers, ham, and cheese.

I found these GF buckwheat crackers which are really similar to what they served at Le Pain at the Metro Market in West Seattle, so I can continue to eat open faced ham and cheese sandwiches now that we’re home.

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Filed Under: Restaurant, Travel

Caramel Eclairs, Gluten Free

October 14, 2013 By jennie

I haven’t even finished recapping our honeymoon in New York, and Joel has already been back to the city without me.

But it gets worse: one of the things that we wanted to do on our trip was see a taping of The Daily Show and/or The Colbert Report. We weren’t able to since they were both on hiatus. Guess what Joel did last week?

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Oh, and if that weren’t bad enough, he went back to The Bell House to see the cast of Bob’s Burgers, and Kristen Schaal apologized for not signing our Bob’s Burgers poster.

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Oh, and then if I wasn’t jealous enough already, he saw Mike Birbiglia, my favorite comedian, do sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

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I was like this.

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So to comfort myself, I’ve been baking like crazy for the past week.

A loaf of cranberry orange bread. (This is an old picture – the loaf I baked this weekend was not as photogenic.)

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My gluten free pumpkin muffins.

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And I tried my hand at caramel eclairs, gluten free.

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I’ve made attempted to make eclairs a couple of times in the past (both times with regular all purpose flour – this was before I knew I had Celiac) and both times, my choux pastry came out a little flat. But even those flat pastries were delicious filled with custard (and if I’m being totally honest, on my second attempt, I pitched the pastries and just dug in to the custard with a spoon because that stuff is good.)

So I didn’t have high expectations for my first time making gluten free eclairs. It was definitely different working with gf starches rather than regular flour, but everything tastes as good as I remember, and believe it or not, this was my most successful choux pastry to date.

That could be because I found a helpful photo tutorial. Or maybe because I used a stand mixer rather than trying to beat the pastry by hand. Or maybe I’m just a much better baker now. Yeah, I think I’ll go with that.

Here’s the recipe. I originally found it on the IMDB message boards for the movie Simply Irresistible, which is loosely based on Like Water for Chocolate. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character makes caramel eclairs that make her love interest fall for her.

I’ve modified it to be gluten free based on suggestions from The Sensitive Epicure and This Gluten Free Life.

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Here’s what you’ll need:

Custard

4 large egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Choux Pastry

1/4 cup sweet rice flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
A pinch of salt
2 large eggs

Caramel Sauce

1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 1/2 teaspoons butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup confectioners’ sugar

And what you’ll do:

First, make the custard

  1. Place egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl and whisk together.
  2. Add starch and milk and whisk in to the mixture.
  3. Strain mixture into a medium sauce pan. Whisk constantly over medium heat until the custard becomes thick.
  4. Remove from heat, then stir in vanilla extract.
  5. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until you are ready to assemble the eclairs (at least one hour.)

Now for the choux pastry

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Measure flour and starch into a small bowl. Whisk thoroughly to combine. Set aside.
  3. Combine water, butter, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then immediately remove from heat and stir in flour/starch mixture. Using a wooden spoon, beat the mixture until it forms a big ball. These flours are sticky, so this shouldn’t take long.
  4. This is where you’ll want to use an electric mixer or stand mixer: transfer the dough ball to a bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer) and beat for a few minutes. This is to cool the mixture down so we don’t scramble the eggs in the next step. If your dough ball separates into a bunch of tiny dough balls, you’re doing it right.
  5. Break eggs into a bowl and beat. Pour half in to the dough, and incorporate with the mixer. Wait to add the second half of the egg unto the first half is fully incorporated. Let the mixer run until the dough has transformed into a shiny, sticky paste.
  6. Transfer the paste into a ziplock bag and cut a hole in the corner (you could use a pastry bag for this if you have one. I don’t). Squeeze the pastry dough into logs on a greased cookie sheet.
  7. Bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then increase heat to 425 and bake for a further 10-15 minutes. Whatever you do, don’t open the oven door!
  8. When the pastries are tall and fluffy and golden brown, remove from oven and use a paring knife to cut a slit in the side of each. This is so steam can escape and the pastries don’t collapse. Then cool on cookie sheet and (this is the important part) DON’T TOUCH!

When the pastries have cooled and you’re ready to assemble the eclairs, make the caramel sauce

  1. In a double boiler, combine brown sugar, cream, and butter. Stir constantly, until the sugar has melted completely.
  2. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and powdered sugar. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes.
  3. While the caramel sauce cools, stuff the pastries with the custard. Use a pastry bag, if you have one – as we’ve established, I don’t – I cut the pastries open and spooned the custard in.
  4. Spoon the caramel sauce on top of the pastries.
  5. Eat.

Makes 8, plus a couple extra spoonfuls of custard.

Filed Under: Recipe

Repost: Travel Tips For The Gluten-Free

September 4, 2013 By jennie

***This post was originally published in August 2011.***

gluten free victoria2Those of us from the U.S. get a kick out of mocking our neighbors to the north – we joke that their money isn’t real, about their accents, and how can they take their own law enforcement seriously when they’re called Mounties?!

But I will say in Canada’s defense: they really had their act together when in came to gluten-free eating. The only restaurant that didn’t know how to serve me a GF meal was the one in the hotel we stayed in (and they also didn’t seem to understand wifi, so they’re a little behind the times.)

Victoria, on the southern edge of Vancouver Island, is very much a tourist town, so it’s really in their best interests to be able to accommodate their GF guests.

Here are some of my words of wisdom for any gluten-freebies who travel.

Pack snacks
We took the Victoria Clipper, a passenger ferry that travels daily between Seattle and Victoria, early Friday morning, and I was glad to have the food I’d packed the night before as there was literally nothing on their menu that I could eat. I took beef jerky, some veggies, plenty of chocolate, almond butter squeeze packs, and an apple for Joel.

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The fancy, trendy (see: expensive) restaurants are better at gluten-free.
Sad, but true.

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On Saturday night, Joel took me to Vista 18, on the 18th floor of the Chateau Hotel in Victoria. We pulled up their menu online before we made our reservations and saw that they had a gluten-free vegetarian lasagna, so I had high hopes that were not disappointed.

I ordered halibut from their “Simplicity” menu, which came with buttered mashed potatoes, vegetables, and a choice of five sauces – I figured there’d be two sauce options that were safe for me, but actually all five were gluten-free. I went with the orange horseradish butter, naturally.

Oh! And before our meal came, they brought me a bread basket with a couple of slices of GF bread from a local bakery, and my own butter so that I wouldn’t have to share.

***

For our final meal before we boarded our ferry back to Seattle on Sunday, we ate at Milestones, which is right on the water and famous as the head chef was on Top Chef Canada. I ordered a gluten-free hamburger, which came with a small salad and my choice of either four cheeses, bacon and cheese, or bacon and guacamole. Bacon and guac, please! It was on the best, fluffiest GF bun I think I’ve ever eaten. This was probably my favorite meal I had over the weekend … and I forgot to take a picture of it.

Smartphones are worth every penny
I was not a believer in iPhones … until I got mine. I love it, and highly recommend a smartphone for looking up nearby gluten-free friendly restaurants or a grocery store. Unfortunately, we discovered as we crossed into Canadian waters that we’d have to keep our phones in airplane mode to avoid an enormous international phone bill. This meant we several times had to buy bottled water at Starbucks to connect to the wifi 🙂

Joel made a snarky comment as we wandered aimlessly around downtown Victoria looking for breakfast on Saturday morning about how hard it must’ve been to travel before smart phones. Then he used a method to find a restaurant that I’d forgotten about – he stopped and asked one of the locals for a recommendation.

Be open minded

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That recommendation led us to Floyd’s Diner – I was pretty dubious that a diner would be able to accommodate my dietary needs, especially after reading their allergy warning on the front page of their menu, but they were very knowledgeable. Saturday morning, I had a smoked salmon omelette with goat cheese, and the waitress recommended substituting the toast on the side for breakfast potatoes, which were made in a dedicated fryer with their French fries, and thus safe.

Sunday morning we went back for more, and I ordered the “Listen to me when I’m talking to you, son” which was two eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast, which I subbed for half an avocado.

***

On Friday, when we first disembarked in Victoria, we were hungry, and set off in search of a restaurant when we came upon Bard and Banker’s, a Scottish pub. I was dubious about pub food, too, but when we asked if they were good at gluten-free, they retrieved a GF menu for me and I deemed them safe.

I glanced at the menu and ordered the Cobb salad for the egg, avocado, and bacon, without even noticing that it came with blue cheese (which is questionable, because the mold is sometimes grown on rye bread). They double checked for me, and it was, in fact, safe for me to eat. After two years without moldy cheese, though, I decided I didn’t really care for it and ate around the big chunks.

I skipped the gluten free beer they offered, and drank a hard cider instead.

Lastly, if you’re going to walk 6-ish miles every day of your vacation, stay hydrated. And pack band-aids.

Filed Under: Restaurant, Travel

Coconut Ice Cream, Revisited

July 31, 2013 By jennie

Remember when Joel and I taste tested coconut milk ice creams a couple of years ago? It’s been a while, so it’s okay if you don’t.

Go reread this post. Then come back.

Done? Okay.

A reader commented to let us know that the Trader Joe’s coconut milk ice cream I wanted to include in the experiment but wasn’t able to find had, in fact, been discontinued. It was very disappointing.

But that was two years ago. Things change.

Like the fact that I’d given up on coconut milk ice cream in favor of the real stuff.

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My favorites: Haagen Dazs white chocolate raspberry and Starbucks caramel macchiato.

But when I saw chocolate coconut milk ice cream back in the freezer at my local Trader Joe’s, I had to give it a try.

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I have to say … it’s much better than the other coconut milk ice creams we tried! Worthy of being mentioned in a post next to my other favorite ice creams, even.

Filed Under: Food

A Gluten Free French Dip Sandwich

July 24, 2013 By jennie

Between the several years that I was vegetarian and the several years that I’ve been gluten-free, it’s been nearly a decade since I ate a French dip sandwich. There were a number of foods that I’ve actively missed in that time (chicken salad sandwiches then; red licorice and cheesecake now; and teriyaki always.) French dip sandwiches were never among those things.

I was surprised – nay, shocked – during my “eat all the things” experiment when I found myself craving French dip sandwiches. One of my coworkers heated one up in the lunch room microwave one day, and the smell took me back to junior high school, when my mom used to make them all the time. I wanted a French dip sandwich, suddenly and strongly.

So I made one.

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The sandwich itself was easy enough to make GF. I found some Schar white rolls at Safeway, and used the Columbus brand roast beef, which is GF. It was the au jus that took a little more effort, but I found Betty’s recipe, and with a few tweaks it tastes (and smells) just like what mom used to make. I made an enormous batch so that we could just reheat for easy dinners all week.

Here’s what you’ll need:
2 Tbs butter
Half of a small onion, or a quarter of a large onion, minced
4 cups beef broth, divided
1 tsp garlic powder
Splash of white wine (approx. a scant quarter cup)
2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs cornstarch (or other GF starch – I used tapioca)

Here’s what you’ll do:

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add minced onion and caramelize (about 15 minutes.)
  2. Add 3 cups beef broth, garlic powder, wine, Worcestershire sauce, and whisk thoroughly.
  3. In a small bowl, combine remaining 1 cup broth and starch to make a slurry.
  4. Add slurry to saucepan, whisking quickly. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes. Liquid will thicken slightly.
  5. Strain, if you’d like to remove caramelized onion bits, or serve them up. Use as dip for roast beef sandwich.

    Enjoy.

Filed Under: Recipe

Gluten Free Ravioli

July 15, 2013 By jennie

Hey, it’s a post about food! The first one of these you’ve seen in a while.

Let me begin (as I so often do) with a story.

Back in 2008, I was a single girl living alone in the U-District, with a limited grocery budget and a catalog of about four dishes that I could cook really well. I ate a lot of canned soup and frozen meals in those days. And every once in a while, I would buy a container of fresh cheesy tortellinis.

Obviously, when I went gluten-free, that habit had to go. It was a sad day. And I never bother to look in the section of the store that has fresh pasta anymore, because I’ve given up on there being any gluten-free-friendly fresh pasta.

But look at what Joel found for me last week:

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Gluten free ravioli!

I ate them with just a little basil-infused olive oil (an Italian sausage and some sauteed veggies alongside).

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This was a very exciting find, and I’m happy to say that the raviolis are delicious. Super rich, and satisfying, too.

Filed Under: Food

Update

June 11, 2013 By jennie

***This was the last post I wrote on thegfgf.com.***

Once upon a time, I wrote a food blog about dieting. On the surface, it wasn’t really about dieting – I certainly didn’t mean for it to be. But there was a particular crowd of bloggers who I wanted to run with and tried to emulate, and their blogs were (are) about dieting. So in my head, if I just ate a little healthier, and a little less every day, eventually my blog might look like theirs and maybe over time I could be the author of a popular healthy living blog, too.

The blog I’m talking about is, of course, the gf-gf. The reason that I haven’t been writing lately is that those healthy eating intentions backfired. The more I told myself “just a little healthier, just a little less,” the more I wanted to eat, well, more!

I’m back with this update today, because for the past few months, I’ve been conducting an experiment. Here’s the gist …

The problem: why am I having these uncontrollable cravings, and why is it that when I tell myself to eat less, I want more food?

The hypothesis: It could be that I’m not eating enough in general, and not eating enough of the foods I really want and like.

The experiment: Over the past couple of months, I’ve been eating two or three meals a day (usually three) of lots of real food. Only things that I like. And most importantly, all those things that I told myself I “shouldn’t” eat because they didn’t fit my healthy meal mindset.

For the first week or two, I dove happily into my favorite foods that I hadn’t allowed myself to eat for … years, in some cases. Mashed potatoes, cheese, French dip sandwiches, and lots and lots of ice cream. The things I craved usually fell into one of two categories: foods I hadn’t eaten due to years of diets (vegetarian, vegan, and all the different variations of low carb-ing); or things my mom cooked when I was growing up.

After those couple of weeks, my cravings started to die down, and I found myself eating many of my regular staples: hummus and eggs and carrots and oatmeal. I made sure to eat enough that I was physically and mentally satisfied after every meal. I didn’t snack much between meals, and I (mostly) limited myself to one dessert per day, usually after dinner.

Oh, and those two meal days that I mentioned – I’m not talking two regular sized meals. I knew that if I was eating less often, I’d need to eat more calories when I did eat (about 1000!) to tide me over until the next meal. I often ate in multiple courses, so I might have a brunch of cheesy scrambled eggs with bacon and then a big bowl of buttery popcorn. Then, I’d go about my day and live my life and not think about food for a while. Dinner would be 7-8 hours later, and would be equally large, say a hamburger with salad and fries, and ice cream for dessert.

The conclusion? Well, I feel saner and less anxious about food than I can remember feeling. I have a pretty comfortable routine of eating satisfying meals. When we have friends coming over and decide to have nachos for dinner, I don’t freak out about the chips and cheese not jiving with my “healthy eating plan.” I just eat. It’s only food, and it’s nowhere near as important as enjoying my friends’ company.

So the only thing left to figure out is what to do with this little blog of mine. It’s been almost two years since I began blogging here, and in that time, well, my whole life has changed. The gf-gf documents the seven months I spent in massage school, the time I fell in love with world travel, and has seen my relationship with Joel grow from boyfriend and girlfriend to soon-to-be husband and wife. But I’m ready to move forward.

I’ve bought a new domain, and I’m slowly setting up shop there. A few posts from this blog (notably, those from my trips to Italy and South Africa) will transfer over, but I’ll delete many that I don’t think are a reflection of my new food philosophy.

There’ll still be food pictures and occasionally recipes in my new space, but it won’t be anywhere near as narrowly focused. I want it to document more of my life, and less of what I ate. I’ll post here again when the new site is up and running.

In the meantime, thanks to all for reading, for your encouragement and kindness over the past couple of years.

Filed Under: Food

Gold Restaurant in Cape Town

February 23, 2013 By jennie

So, let’s say it’s your first time in Africa. You’ve been there for about a week, and while you’re eaten some wonderful food, your only complaint is that it’s just like the food you eat back home. You want a real, traditional African meal. If you’re staying in Cape Town, I hope that, as our did, the hotel’s guest services recommends Gold.

The menu at Gold is predetermined, and 8-10 courses. Though our group was only seven, we had several food restrictions among us. Our waitress asked a few questions of the vegetarian, and when I said “I need to eat gluten free” she just said “okay,” and walked away.

I won’t lie. I kind of freaked out right then. But the next time I saw her, she was bringing our first course of dips and bread, and set a little plate of rice cakes in front of me. I knew I’d be okay.

Our next course was little rolls of roti (that’s a flatbread) with spiced ground ostrich. A few minutes after everyone else had started eating, the waitress returned with a little bowl of ostrich just for me.

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It was my first time eating ostrich – it’s a gamey red meat. I’d say it’s somewhere between lamb and elk.

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Next, a chicken pot pie. The pie part was a little piece of bread – mine was just chicken with sauce (the sauce was thickened with tapioca. you can see the little tapioca beads in the gravy.) The flavor was kind of like rotisserie chicken.

The last several courses came out all at once – there were several things I couldn’t eat (cous cous, a tabbouleh), but they brought me some spiced basmati rice, and there were still plenty of options to keep me busy. A lentil daal, some patties made from sweet potato, onion and spinach, and this …

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is springbok stew. Springboks are a small antelope, the national animal of South Africa (can you imagine — being able to EAT your national animal?!) It was very beefy, and very tender. We saw (and ate) some springbok later on, at Bushman’s Kloof, but here’s a preview of what they look like:

Springbok

As cute as they are delicious.

But wait – there’s more.

Periodically, while we were eating, a group would come out and perform. They sang, they danced, they played drums. But the best part was when they convinced (well, they kind of forced, but still) Joel to join the dance.

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Thanks Geraldine for this photo.

Joel at Gold Restaurant

Betcha didn’t know he could dance! Neither did I 😉

Filed Under: Restaurant, Travel

South African Eats

February 22, 2013 By jennie

Now that I’ve finished recapping our time in Cape Town, South Africa (still to come – Bushman’s Kloof!) here’s the rundown on what I ate.

While South Africa has its own culinary traditions, most of the food we came across was not dissimilar from what we eat back home. Think lots of eggs and bacon, roast chicken, steak, potatoes and rice and salad. It was exceedingly easy to eat gluten-free, and several places even had gluten free breads or desserts.

I didn’t take pictures of everything I ate, but here are the ones I did photograph:

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On our second night in town, we were invited out to dinner by some customers of Joel’s work. They took us to a burger restaurant, which we laughed about – of course they take the Americans out for burgers and fries! The restaurant (I don’t remember the name, sorry) had a number of WHEAT-free options, but not GLUTEN-free options. I ended up with a burger minus the bun, and salad on the side. It was yummy, but I kind of had my hopes up for a GF bun.

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Remember how I learned at the Slave Lodge that most of the slaves in South Africa were brought in from India? Indian food, curry in particular, remains popular and was very easy to find. This was from a stall at the Market on the Wharf, where we went for lunch one day. I wandered around the market for a while, not seeing anything that I could eat, when I came across a woman with vats of curry and this, butter chicken. That’s saffron rice underneath, and a tomato relish and cilantro on top.

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This is lamb dish called denningsvleis from a restaurant called Karibu – turns out, this is one of the oldest recorded South African recipes. The sauce was tamarind based, so I expected it to taste like pad Thai, but it was a very sweet, orange-y flavor. Again, served with saffron rice and tomato relish.

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This is a BLT on gluten free bread from Crush, a fresh food cafe and juice bar. (If you’re thinking that bacon looks like ham, it’s what we call Canadian bacon here in the U.S., called British bacon (or just bacon) in South Africa.)

I had this sandwich and a Coke Zero, Joel had a chicken salad sandwich and a large fruit smoothie, and we each bought a bottled water. The bill for this entire meal, including tip, was 160 Rands – about $20! That would barely buy us the two sandwiches here in Seattle!

Phil getting his hands washed with rosewater

We got off the ferry from Robben Island at about 3 in the afternoon with empty bellies. Directly across the walkway was Moyo – I said “hey, that looks like a restaurant. Let’s go there.” And it turned out to be one of the best meals we ate in Cape Town.

Above is Phil getting his hands washed (in rosewater!) before our food was served. This is an African tradition to welcome guests for a meal. Yes, we felt very welcomed.

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So much so that we went back for our last meal in South Africa. I had a steak with barbeque sauce, roasted veggies, and – French fries! (Sorry, I mean chips.) The folks at Moyo didn’t really know what gluten is, but they went to great lengths to make sure people with allergies (to fish, nuts, etc) could eat safely, so many items were gluten free, even if they didn’t know it.

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A few of Joel’s coworkers ate at Balthazar restaurant their first night in Cape Town, and highly recommended it to us. It’s only the number one steakhouse in South Africa! I ate a Caprese salad. It reminded me of Italy.

My picture didn’t turn out, but for my entree, I ate a really delicious piece of Kingklip, a fish found exclusively in the southern hemisphere. I found out later (okay, just now when I googled it) that it’s a type of eel.

Which is not as weird as what Joel ate – ostrich steak with monkeygland sauce. It’s a sauce made with fruit and spices, but we laughed our butts off at the name monkeygland sauce.

Another tea time

I’ll talk more about eating at Bushman’s Kloof in posts next week, but here’s a typical tea time – my own special plate with a tomato and cucumber sandwich, an egg salad sandwich, and some mushroom quiches. I tried, I really tried, to like those mushroom quiches, but I couldn’t quite do it.

On the next plate is a lemon meringue and a chocolate cupcake. They had GF chocolate muffins for me at breakfast everyday, and chocolate cupcakes at tea. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but they were exactly the same thing. I averaged 3 chocolate muffin-cakes every day we were there.

And in the back is a big glass of their signature rooibos tea.

Now that we’re home, I found a tin of Tazo vanilla rooibos tea, and I’ve been drinking it every day. It reminds me of Africa 🙂

Filed Under: Restaurant, Travel

Vacationing, Gluten Free

February 16, 2013 By jennie

I’m interrupting my South Africa recap posts for a funny story …

The first trip I took after my Celiac diagnosis was almost a year later, in July of 2010. My mom and I spent a long weekend in Portland at a yoga workshop.

For about a week before our trip, I frantically googled and perused the forums on Celiac.com, making sure I’d be able to eat in the strange lands of Portland. I packed a week’s supply of Larabars and Kind bars, almond butter, Udi’s muffins, and gluten free pretzels. And I barely needed any of it.

But that didn’t stop me from doing the same thing six months later, when the fam spent 10 days in Hawaii. I remember asking my gluten-free father “what will we EAT?!?!”

It seems so silly now, but I was terrified of getting sick on my vacation. It turns out, eating gluten free while traveling isn’t too difficult (and getting easier.)

And on my trip to South Africa, the worst happened. I got glutened on vacation.

Tea time!  My own gluten free feast

Tea time at the Kloof

I’m pretty sure the culprit was a cheesy vegetable casserole we had on our first night at Bushman’s Kloof – the house manager said it had been prepared with gluten free flour, but when we had the same thing a few nights later, he said it had gluten in it. Maybe they’d intended to make it gluten free and the chef forgot, maybe they’d talked about making it gluten free but decided it wasn’t as good so they made it with regular flour and the house manager forgot. It doesn’t really matter – they otherwise did a great job of accommodating me and I’m grateful.

And getting sick turned out to not be a big deal. I felt pretty lousy for a couple of days and skipped some of the activities that put me more than running distance from a bathroom, but we were there to relax, and relax I did.

Anyway, I’ve picked up on a few things I’ve learned about eating gluten free away from home. Here they are:

Reserve your gluten free meal when you book your plane ticket. Then confirm a few days before the flight. Then pack snacks anyway. It sucks, but occasionally, the special meal you reserve doesn’t make it on the airplane. I always pack some snacks, just in case (or if the food is inedible. Or if I get hungry between meals.) My favorites are Larabars, packets of GF instant oatmeal, and Justin’s nut butter (in my liquids bag, of course – the TSA classifies peanut butter as a paste.)

P.S. – The Delta flight from Seattle to Amsterdam upgraded their GF meals since I flew in September – instead of half a dozen stale rice cakes, I got a couple of Udi’s dinner rolls, and for breakfast, a chocolate muffin!

If you don’t speak the language, print a half dozen or so gluten free dining cards before your trip. These were so handy to have in Italy the first few days before I’d gotten the hang of ordering in restaurants (I eventually figured out that all I had to do was point at myself and say “Celiaco” and my food would be GF.)

For the most part, restaurant eating in other cities or states or countries is no different than at home. When it comes down to it, there’s the same risk of getting accidentally glutened no matter where I eat – the biggest difference is if I get sick at home, I’ll sit around and feel sorry for myself, but on vacation, I’ll choose low-key activities and try not to feel sorry for myself. It is a vacation, after all.

That said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that every other country I’ve visited (granted, that’s only three) is much, much better at preventing cross contamination. For example, both in Italy and South Africa, a couple of different waiters recommended I order something from the grill because they knew the grilled food was prepared in a separate part of the kitchen from the breads and pastas. I so appreciated that tidbit.

Lastly (and maybe most importantly) stay hydrated. I was just slightly dehydrated when I got glutened in South Africa, and it was an uphill battle to try to get rehydrated while I was sick. I skipped coffee and alcohol for a couple days, but we had an unlimited supply of delicious rooibos tea, so I’m not complaining 🙂

Stay tuned – more gluten free food pics from South Africa next week!

Filed Under: Food, Travel

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