Archive for February, 2012

Travelling on a restricted diet

***Although this post was drafted pre-GAPS but not published, it applies to our current GAPS diet as well.***

When we took our 1st vacation of the year at Batam in April 2011, we were blessed by mil who cooked several meals worth of food and brought them over via the ferry ride. How blessed dd is to have grandparents who love her so much that they were willing to inconvenience themselves twice in our 5 day 4 night vacation! I just borrowed a tiny crockpot from a friend to cook her quinoa in. That settled her lunch and dinner and I I allowed her to eat the breakfast offerings at the hotel :D Sadly though, she reacted to the food even though she was on medication. The reaction thankfully was mild but it showed me that her body hasn’t completely healed.

So when the time drew near for us to attend our Church Camp in June 2011, I was rather stressed by the food challenge again. No, ils were not in town so they couldn’t do a repeat of the above :D Not that they could even if they were in town since the drive up to Johore is much longer than the ferry ride to Batam. So I started planning and planning and planning.

But we did it! I would like to share my experience in case you have a child with allergies and wonder how you can ever go on a vacation ever again :)

I started with a menu plan for the 4 days we were to be away and went grocery shopping. Then I sliced and marinated all the meats and fish. Next, I packed them into the meals I had planned and labelled them. I used Ziplock bags since I did not want to chance upon them leaking! They were then popped into the freezer for a few days.

The only thing missing were vegetables. Since she hates peas and beans - the only frozen vegetables I could find - I didn’t bother to bring any along. She had a holiday from her vegetables for 4 days! :) The Ziplocked packets of food were then wrapped and wrapped in layers of newspapers. Then I bought and brought along a medium sized crockpot just for the trip. An entire suitcase was dedicated to food and its related stuff - crockpot, rubber gloves, detergent, salt, etc.

As for the cooking itself, some meals were started before we left the hotel room for breakfast while others had to be started about an hour or so before lunch/dinner. It was rather stressful to remember when to walk all the way back to the room to cook but we pulled it off! Thank God!

Again, she was allowed to eat breakfast at the hotel. This time round her body handled the food better. She was on a low course of oral steriods and she didn’t seem to react to the breakfast foods. Praise God!

So travelling with a child with multiple food allergies is doable. Stressful, but doable. It really helped that she is not at all fussy about her food and she is strong enough to not cheat on her diet.

Now I am already starting to plan ahead for this year’s Church Camp ! Maybe we will have enough healing to be able to relax more? :D


Need help with your chores?

I love my Motivated Moms 2012 Planner! Click here to view more details

 

February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Jan   Mar »
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.