Have GF Food, Will Travel

To catch up the rest of December I want to cover 3 main things that made life way easier while traveling & being the only GF Person on both sides of the family. This year we traveled from MN to TN, then TN to my in-laws in MN (over an hour from home) over a 10 day period:

Portable Christmas Dinner  - last year I made a couple of pieces of Christmas dinner (we all make part of it) so I knew those pieces were safe, and relied on other people's word that they had made their dishes safely. I served myself first and didn't do seconds in case a spoon got put in the wrong dish, etc. It was a highly unsatisfying dinner but I did have food, almost all "white" ones. This year I brought all my own food - I baked & froze GF Cheese Biscuits (Fahlstrom Farms has a great mix), brought my own can of Cranberry Sauce, made a baked sweet potato with butter, and picked up ham from Honeybaked (froze and brought it along). I was in charge of the fruit and veggie trays, so I knew I would have safe health sides to go with everything. My plate had plenty of variety and color, and I was satisfied & safe.

Travel Snacks - I need to improve on this, but we did better this trip than previous ones. We packed clementine oranges, cheese sticks, Izze drinks in the cooler on the way down. In the travel bag we had Planters Pistachio Grove Nut Blend, Old Wisconsin Beef Sticks, & Starburst (not the best choice but you have to have something sweet!) On the way back we had the same thing pretty much, except grapes instead of oranges. My dad had also made me some gluten free chex mix that I munched on. We don't pack water because to have enough we would have to have a HUGE cooler - and that takes away from the GF food room!

Haulin' Around Food for 3 Days - As I said above, I traveled across the country twice over the holidays. When we were in TN I had access to many places that accommodated a GF diet, so I didn't carry much food there. My parents provide GF breakfast and I cooked dinner if we didn't eat out. I also was blessed by my uncle remembering that I couldn't have regular soy sauce, and he left it out of his homemade BBQ Sauce, so I was able to eat at his house as well.

In MN, I had access to almost no GF places to eat because we were 20+ miles from a city. We went straight there from TN, so when we left TN I had to have enough GF food for 3 days in the car. In addition to the Christmas dinner mentioned above, I packed the following:

hashbrowns
boiled eggs
GF mac & cheese
BBQ Chicken & another sweet potato
GF Biscuit & Sausage

I ended up dividing the hashbrowns & eggs into 3 breakfasts, the GF mac & cheese into 2 meals with some strawberries I picked up locally (they do have a tiny grocery store) and being in city 20 miles away for the remaining 3 meals. The rest stayed frozen for later use. I froze everything I could so it would make the trip safely.

I definitely think this year went better than last, so we will see how many changes I have to make for year 3!