A Discomfort of Travel

Traveling to a strange place can be interesting but stressful. Food allergies have made travel extra challenging, and sometimes unpleasant. I carry a selection of snacks so I won't starve, at least not for a few days.

Tuesday was typical. Like many hotels, Days Inn & Suites offered a breakfast bar. Most of the items on the bar are wheat-based or contain dairy products, so those are out for me. Most fruits don't work for me either, since they make my gums very sore. Fortunately, they had plain instant grits. That's better than nothing but not great, so I was looking forward to a good lunch.

Unfortunately, I could not find one. We were on a highway with few restaurants except for a few sandwich places. Finally we found a place that looked like it had a varied menu.

I asked a series of questions and eliminated several initial choices because they were not available without butter or would take 20 minutes to make without it. I settled on a salad with chicken, no cheese or croutons, dressing on the side. But my first bite of the chicken was a big disappointment; it had an unpleasant taste. Turns out they marinated it in an Italian dressing. Not only was the taste bitter, but vinegar does not agree with me, so I sent it back and got a stripped-down chef salad. This was edible but the ham and turkey had that over-salted taste of lunch meat, so I forced down some of it without enjoyment. And they did not have decaf coffee so I just had water.

When we returned to the car I pulled out my snack bag and had something from it so that I didn't feel totally hungry. But this sort of road-food unpleasantness is not unusual. Often I end up with a greasy circle of burger meat and some wilted lettuce because that's all I find that won't make me ill, and even that meat is likely to contain pepper, which makes me cough a bit. (I tested allergic to black pepper but unless the food contains a lot of it, I don't cough TOO violently.)

Although I have a long list of food allergies and sensitivities, the ones likely to be hidden in restaurant foods are the ones I've mentioned above: wheat, dairy (especially butter), pepper, and vinegar. Still, I've only gotten REAL sick from restaurant food a handful of times; moderately sick more times than I can count. I put coughing, mild abdominal pain, and getting hopelessly sleepy in the moderate category. It's the unhappy price I pay for eating out.