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Business Travel with Celiac

Posted: September 26th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Week before last marked the first business trip I had to make since I was diagnosed with celiac disease last April. Fortunately, my job doesn’t require that I travel very often. I’ve never been very fond of business travel and it’s even more of a pain now. This trip was to Ogden, UT. Ogden does not exactly have a surfeit of the national restaurant chains with established gluten free menu options. Further, there were a number of coworkers with me on this trip and we were sharing a single suburban. They all know I have celiac, so that’s not a problem. Nevertheless, eating out together would have required both the lengthy conversation with a waiter and/or manager and would have either severely restricted the places they could eat or would have left me sitting at some places that offered little safe for me to eat.

So I decided to skip the whole eating out thing. I stayed at the Comfort Suites, which provided a small refrigerator and microwave in the room. I packed one of the smallest George Foreman grills so I could easily grill some chicken breasts (seasoned with Tabasco) and gluten free sausage — both of which you can find in just about any grocery store. I saw that there was a Super Walmart near the Comfort Suites, so I visited a local Super Walmart to prepare a menu plan and shopping list. Walmart is hardly my first (or even tenth) choice for grocery shopping. However, they do tend to have similar items stocked in every location, so it seemed like a safe bet. I also packed my insulated lunch box, so I could fix and keep cool my own lunch each day in the office in Ogden.

The week went pretty well and mostly according to plan. The first day, by the time we got to Ogden, checked in, and I had gone shopping, unpacked, and put everything away, I had gone some twelve hours with nothing but a Kind bar and a Larabar. I wasn’t in the mood to cook something to eat and clean up. But I did it nonetheless. I didn’t really get involved in any of the socializing, since what there was mostly revolved around lunches and dinners. But that’s OK. I enjoy being around people, but I’m fine being alone as well.

I did pick up a nasty upper respiratory bug (not the flu) that hit me not too long after I got home. That was no fun, and seems to be one of the little joys of traveling. But the trip was productive and I ate safely the whole week. I did put the mixed fruit (mostly melon) and the greek yogurt I bought under the little freezer compartment in the mini-frig after I had some for breakfast the first morning. The next day it was frozen solid. I was sad about that. 🙁 But otherwise the menu worked out perfectly!


One Comment on “Business Travel with Celiac”

  1. 1 Scott Morizot said at 4:48 pm on September 26th, 2009:

    New Faith & Food post: Business Travel with Celiac http://bit.ly/32LXuV