Traveling with Allergies

I am so sorry I haven't been able to post anything since I have been traveling!!!  For some reason, in Argentina I couldn't log-on to this site.  But, never fear, here I am, with some tips for eating whilst traveling and some amazing photographs of some of the food I tried in South America.

First things first:  I was in Argentina for two months.  They are a culture heavily influenced by the Italians and Germans.  Therefore, they are very much a bread, pasta, pastry & pizza culture.  Eating here with a gluten & lactose allergy was challenging.  A typical "porteno" breakfast is a medialuna (pastry/croissant) with jam and some tea.  Obviously this was a problem.  So, I ate loads of fruit for breakfast - apples, bananas, oranges.  While I realize I was seriously lacking in protein in the morning, this was for a fairly short period of time, and I just dealt with it.

Lunch - ok so sandwiches are huge in Argentina.  Again, this is a problem.  While gluten-free isn't new here, there really aren't too many options.  My typical lunch was anything from rice to arabian food to a quarter of a chicken to mongolian BBQ.  So, there are choices, but you have to be aware of what ingredients go into the food your eating.  This is where your pro-active research needs to come into play.

Dinner - Fortunately, the people I stayed with in Buenos Aires were amazing and worked around all my annoying allergies.  Vegetable soup was a staple in our house.  STEAK!  The steak is world-renown in Argentina and for good reason.  I NEVER got one that was over or under cooked.  It was always perfectly medium rare.  Yum.

Dessert - You need to be very creative with dessert.  In households the typical dessert is fruit, which I love.  The first night I was there we had a whole baked apple and it was fantastic.  When you go out it is pies and pastries and cake, but there usually is a fruit dish available for dessert. 

HOWEVER, while traveling in El Tigre (the delta in Buenos Aires) we happened upon this charming German restaurant (only accessible by boat taxi).  There was this dessert listed and I had no idea what it meant in Spanish or German for that manner.  So, we asked and it's whipped egg & champagne.  I had never heard of such a thing and it was... AMAZING.  For the record it's called:  Sabayon.  I looked for this dessert over and over and only found it in a couple places throughout Argentina.



One last note:  BE WARY OF STREET FOOD!  Street food is amazing!! MOST OF THE TIME!  Try everything and have fun, just be very careful and probably carry some pro-biotics with you.

Not All GF Food is Good

I decided to try to make a GF/DF pizza last night.  I used a recipe for the crust from a GF cookbook.  The crust ended up being this weird green color, even though I used red cranberry juice (weird, right?).  I baked it for a bit and it was massively mogul looking (google it).  Well, you never know if something is good unless you keep trekking forward right?  So, I cut up three different kinds of tomatoes, and basil.  Added some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt.  So, essentially it should've come out like bruschetta.  Well, I put the tomatoes on top of the green pizza crust, just like Christmas, and popped it into the oven for 20 minutes until I could smell the tomatoes roasting. 

Well, it wasn't pretty- but it doesn't have to be.  I took a couple of pieces and it was ok.  The water roasting out of the tomatoes made the crust soggy.  One to never give up, I tried something else.  Knowing that similar ingredients are in another fav dish of mine I tried a tuna puttenesca pasta.  (I also read recipes like novels- which helps.)

I boiled up some GF corn noodles and threw them into a new pan once cooked.  I scrapped the pizza toppings into the noodles, added a can of tuna, some capers, and a few olives.  Ta da!  New meal - or so I thought - and while I did eat ALL, yes ALL of it, I'm not sold on corn noodles.  I still prefer the quinoa noodles to anything I've tried in over a year.  

Moral of the Story - Keep Trying!  Not everything works in the GF world, but you don't know that if you don't even try.  This is true not only with food, but with everything in life.  You might turn green, or get all soggy but then try to turnit into something new and exciting.  You never know where it might take you - and that, my friends, is the fun part!  Happy testing.