Sunday, October 31, 2010

gluten-free travels


Before our road trip to Maine I did some prep work... I bought a case of chocolate Bumble Bars, a pack of Udi's Bagels, a few boxes of Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks and did some research. We drove from Colorado to Maine along I-70 the snaked up through the East coast on 84, 290 and 95. I'd plan out PF Chang's and Whole Food stops based on distance from the interstate, our hotel or dinner time.

I had all the potenial stops written down with the phone number and address so we could punch it into Gertie, our trusty GPS. We left Colorado at night and took turns sleeping and driving throught the middle part of the country and made it to St. Louis for a much needed sleep and a double whammy- Whole Food's and PF Chang's within 5 minutes of each other and I-70. Love. Love. Love.

  It's kind of a strange obsession but I've never had a reaction to either place. I picked up some trip snacks, cut fruit for breakfast and sandwich meat at Whole Foods and dinner at PF Chang's.


The next day was also a bonus as we drove through Indianapolis for lunch and had enough left over for dinner as well. This was one road trip where I had no chance to feel hungry or deprived.
 

Dave was a good sport about it too. We stopped twice on our drive east (two days in a row) and  three times on the way home (we took our time) and usually ended up with leftovers for the next meal/snack as well.

We did mix it up and the only constant was the lettuce wraps as we both love them so much.

Out of all the Whole Foods we stopped at- Denver St. Louis, Indianapolis, Portland, Maine was our favorite.

They had a great soup bar that I hit twice and options for Dave too. Plus they had a good supply of Udi's products for our time in Maine as well.
I did make a point to stop at our old food store and was shocked that the last year and a half they went from having a small shelf space for gluten-free products to 6 times the space and a lot more products.
 They even had a line of cake mixes I hadn't heard of before. Sara had picked up their strawberry pound cake and it was the bomb, great strawberry flavor with a nice moist texture.
 Cheers to Hannaford  for getting on board and making sure glutards can eat safely. 

2 comments:

I Am Gluten Free said...

I love PF Chang's. And how lucky we are that there are so many places (we can buy food or dine at) we can go to when we're traveling.

Glutard! That's a new one on me!

Unknown said...

I know... even three years ago this would have been much harder. I use my smartphone (droid) a lot too while traveling to google everything.

Glad you like the glutard!
Kate