After living in a hotel last week and being on the brink of living in a hotel for all of next week, I’m really appreciating some good home cooking while I can. Eating out is such a chore for me with my various food restrictions, that unless it’s a special occasion or celebration with multi-courses and fancy cocktails, I’d rather just stay home. Eating out while traveling is even a bigger hassle. Every meal is a puzzle. It’s always a fine dance of I definitely can not have this, this and that, but a little of this might, hopefully, make me only a little sick.
There are some things that are just off the list – if I get into corn starch, corn syrup or corn flour, I might as well crawl into bed and say see you in two days. I can have a little bit of gluten and dairy every once in awhile if I can also get a lot of sleep. There’s no getting around the fact that I can’t eat fast food or a sandwich or pizza or a bagel. All of the things that are widely and easily accessible when you’re traveling are off limits to me. I eat a lot of salads. And bananas. You’d think I would lose weight. I end up eating a lot of potato chips. Dill Pickle are my favorite. If I were more organized I could travel with a whole arsenal of food. But at this point I feel organized if I remember to pack my toothbrush. Next week we’ll have an efficiency kitchen and be able to stock up on necessities like almond milk – Starbucks if you’re reading this, can you just add almond milk already?
So back to home cooking – here are a few things I made this week that made me so happy to be back in my little kitchen and not playing tic tac toe on a kids menu while glaring at the damn bread basket. I don’t have any pictures because my pictures of food never actually look appetizing.
Brown rice pasta with kale pesto, chicken sausage and grape tomatoes
Sweet potato and spinach pancakes via Root Lust
Braised chicken and lentils with brown rice
Smoked salmon salad with lemon yogurt dressing
And yes, my kids ate these. They do eat more than chicken fingers, hamburgers, pizza, pasta and macaroni and cheese. How I hate the kids menu. But that’s a whole other story. Right now I’ll enjoy being home, being in my kitchen where there’s only food I can eat. Next week when I start to feel sorry for myself because all of the wonderful menu choices that are not available to me, I’ll grab a bag of potato chips, take my kids to the indoor pool at the hotel, and remember that it could definitely be worse.
We are headed down to Philadelphia again tomorrow for another week’s visit. Boys are on April vacation so we’ll be tagging along with Kevin as he starts his new gig on Monday. I’m very excited about these little single servings of almond butter. Carrying around a whole jar is just not cool. Found at Target.
You know I feel your pain on this one! I reflect sometimes on the fact that there was once a time in my life when eating out used to be one of my favorite things to do. Recent years have changed it into something where each decision is over-analyzed and anxiety provoking. Will I feel worse after eating the soybean oil in the salad dressing, or one of the many mystery starches in my GF pizza crust? How many grams of sugar are in this thing? What do they use to make the sauce goes on the chicken, and how is it thickened? Might they put soy sauce in it; that would be wheat and soy – double bad there. Better just make it plain. Alcohol tonight – yes or no? And, oh, what about the dreaded gluten contamination in this place? Horror!
Well, we are nothing if not self-aware, at least 🙂 Excited about your almond butter packets though; I’ll be hitting up Target this week. Maybe the next time I find myself without something suitable to eat I can just suck it out of the package 🙂 Seriously, though…I know I will.
Yeah – what the hell is in gluten free pizza crust? Tapioca? It never sits that well with me. And the couple of times in restaurants when I’ve asked what the ingredients are they pretty much just laugh as if they would actually know the ingredients in the food they make. So yeah, almond butter. Life saver.