Travelling on a restricted diet

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When we took our 1st vacation of 2011 at Batam in April, we were blessed by my lovely mother-in-law who cooked several meals worth of food and brought them over via the ferry ride! How blessed S 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 borrowed a tiny crockpot from a friend to cook quinoa in. That settled her lunch and dinner and I I allowed her to eat the breakfast offerings at the hotel. 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 issue again. No, my in laws were not in town so they couldn’t do a repeat of the above even if they have wanted to. Besides even if they were in town we can’t expect them to drive up to Johore! 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 🙂

It starts with planning

1. What to eat, what to buy, how to pack?

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. You ought to freeze for at least 3 days to get it really rock hard so that it won’t thaw before you get to pop it into the hotel fridge.

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.

2. When to start cooking?

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 from the Conference rooms 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!

Success!

So travelling with a child with multiple food allergies is doable. The need to plan and think ahead can be stressful, but it is 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.

Since 2011, I have learnt all sorts of things along the way so that if we ever need to travel on a restricted diet again. we have taken a few trips with a few of us on the restricted diet. If you think travelling with one child on a restricted diet is hard, try travelling with 3!

Extra Notes

By the way, I avoid pork dishes since we were travelling to a largely Muslim country. So I cooked mostly chicken and beef. And I have tried both freezing raw foods to cook in the hotel room (either with a crockpot or a portable cooker) and freezing cooked foods that just needed to be heated up. Cooked food is the better option. Unless you are planning to eat soups and steamed food for all meals.

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? 😀

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