The trials of travelling #dairyfree

I’m lucky that my allergy doesn’t cause the kind of issues that a severe shellfish or peanut allergy might, but identifying that one has an allergy and having to learn fast how to get used to it is challenging!

Notwithstanding, dairy free isn’t actually as easy as not drinking tea or having cereal or porridge for breakfast – lactose is used as a preservative and so it crops in way more foods than expected.  Also whey and butter are frequently used as a base product of a dish when they needn’t be.  Typically the doctors finally got there a few weeks before a trip to Cornwall last Autumn (as a Cornish girl I wasn’t going to forgo cream teas etc). Having been dairy free for a few weeks by this point, tucking back into a cream tea very swiftly identified that dairy wasn’t good for me and the doctors had got it right at last!  Onwards and upwards to a healthier and trimmer lifestyle!

There is nothing quite like a rodda’s clotted cream tea

So since then, travelling has been a bit different, and just a tad more challenging.  It’s made me a bit more careful about where we go and often a bit better planned.  It is interesting though, to look back over the last 8 months and consider whether it has been easier to go about my new diet in the UK or abroad!!  I’m inclined to say it has been easier abroad – but mainly because there is more time to find a solution, whereas dashing out for a meeting or to grab lunch near the office isn’t always going to give much of a choice!

I’ve found some easy wins that make things that little bit simpler:

• Lactofree make little long-life single portions that are great to take to meetings or to put into hand luggage (in fact I think that I got 10 into the clear liquids bag along with my makeup on a recent trip).  Take a trip to the Hilton at Helsinki airport and this is the milk left in all bedrooms!  Even better!  They’ve got a great selection of milk, cheese (hard and soft) and cream – it tastes exactly the same and is longer life!

All set for a meeting and a culpa

• Plan ahead with a hotel – it has never been a problem as a result.  Often they will arrange for soya milk and sometimes will make a meal specially or at least think about ensuring there’s nothing to offer
• Take the pressure off by travelling with noodles and cous cous that are dairy free, as well as a selection of cereal bars – it is nice not to have to worry and so having an option in my handbag on a client visit is great for piece of mind.

Big fan of these

• Home baking – many of us cook and bake with solid stork blocks and this is absolutely fine!  Thank goodness!  Although the soft-stork isn’t as it has buttermilk in it

Domestic goddess

So now for the best and the worst so far… I am sure I have missed many anecdotes, but below just shows what a fun and exciting journey the last few months have been!!

The greats

BA Concorde Room at Heathrow – uttered a phrase along the lines of ‘tell us what you want and we’ll make it’!! Actually what I wanted was a toasted sandwich, but I could really have gone to town with an idea!  The waiting staff were even more helpful – filling an empty water bottle with soya milk for us to take on the plane!

At the bar in the concorde lounge!

Starbucks sausage sarnie – a life saver as it is a standard product that I happen to very much like with a sachet of ketchup for breakfast or lunch!!  While I am owning up to a love of fastfood – the McDonalds breakfast of sausage and egg mcmuffin and hashbrown is fine (if you request no cheese and butter in the mcmuffin).

The cheese is sadly the best bit though!

Italy!!  The quality of their food is high and so having to think about whether mozzarella is from a buffalo or not isn’t a risk (in the UK mozzarella is frequently from cow’s milk despite the naming on the package).  And also the base item to the majority of their dishes is actually oil, unlike many other places where it is butter or cream.

Lunch with a view

Soya-latté’s – these are great!  I used to love a caramel latté, but they are just so unhealthy and decadent!  But the soya version is sweet tasting without the same calorie kick!

Thai food has a coconut milk base on pretty much all main courses so this really makes it easy to dine out thai-style.  Indian curry is harder – ghee is from cow’s milk, but it is so far removed that it is potentially ok, but I’m so happy with thai food that it isn’t a risk I take often now!  Happily we have 2 good Thai restaurants in walking distance, and a take-away that delivers.  And better still the restaurants do really good cocktails too!

Thai cocktails

Attentive service – at a number of restaurants on our trip to Arabia the restaurants just could not do enough (this included the high end where for the price I’d expect it, as well as the more run of the mill where it came as a pleasant surprise).  They were so incredibly attentive and went out of their way to check that even the bread and the dips that came as standard were ok, pointing out which ones were and weren’t.

Friendly bread in Abu Dhabi

Terravina in the New Forest and 36 on the Quay in Emsworth.  These are both relatively small, but well-reputed restaurants.  At Terravina it was no problem to slightly alter the vegetables with my meal, and they even brought me dairyfree butter (which could have been vegetable marg I guess).  For pudding I was then given a choice of two baked dishes that were equally as good as the cream-based options on the menu!  At 36 on the Quay the attention to detail was what got me – the canapés, the palette cleansers and the extra little nibbles that came between courses – there was always an interesting and home-made version for me!  Not only that, the chef went to such effort with my pudding – it might have only been jelly and fruit, but it was stunning and full of flavour and texture!

36 on the quay

Quite a lot of dark chocolate doesn’t have any milk in it (particularly like the divine chocolate with raspberry in) – and nor do party rings, bourbon biscuits and those little pink wafer biscuits!  With a little planning, it still isn’t necessary to home-bake to enjoy some simple sweet treats!

The not so greats

Quince in Mayfair – I think this reminded me that it won’t necessarily be the expensive places that get it right!  When we let them know I was dairyfree on arrival, the head waiter’s first comment was that they couldn’t promise anything (we had to clarify he meant traces from the kitchen!).  Then after ordering my meal, my starter was then taken off me as I was about to have a first bite of scallop (as they’d forgotten which plate was which) and the steak arrived without sauce rather than make a similar one (I felt quite silly asking for ketchup in this restaurant, but otherwise it was too dry!).

Coffee shops – Nero and Costa are great at labelling in relation to gluten, but just don’t bother with dairy – presumably the absence of a label to say there is dairy doesn’t mean there isn’t in the same way it would for gluten!!  Costa frustratingly seem to butter all their sandwiches which to me seems a little unnecessary.  Pret and Greggs are also frustrating –they don’t put a clear ingredients list on their packaging which means needing to ask at the counter.  But the reason that you have to ask is because of phrases like ‘creamy mayonnaise’ which is actually cream-free as one might expect for a mayonnaise!

Virgin upper – to give them their dues they have probably now learnt that orange segments and lettuce and tomato sandwiches doesn’t really cut it for afternoon tea, however just as a reminder, feast on this sorry little picture…  Actually a pub in Winchester (an expensive one) managed a similar effort – lettuce sandwiches on white bread!  Particularly bad as many white breads have milk powder in too!

What a fine feast…

Marks and Spencer – they don’t actually seem to have a dairy free, or indeed ‘free-from’ section which is a shame, as their food is undeniably good!  Sainsbury and Waitrose on the other hand have such good choices in their free from sections!

Final tip – just ask if you aren’t sure!  Presented with this menu in Finland, the best thing to do was ask!  They easily understood what I could and couldn’t have and hey presto I had a lovely salmon dish with a hollandaise sauce being replaced with a scrummy lemon mayonnaise!

If in doubt – ask!