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Post by Silly Yak on Feb 12, 2011 16:37:30 GMT
Holiday in Normandy Posted by Amanda on 4/9/2006
Gf board
First holiday abroad since son was diagnosed was an eye opener! No gluten free food in the supermarkets. Was interested to see if there was anything different for him to try.Luckily I took plenty. We relied on fried chips as snacks down by the beach and self catered which made life easier. Local markets are a great source of meat, fish and veg and cheese. If you do get stuck the pharmacies will have Schar foods out the back but not on display and small boxes of Pasta, but Son did not like the rolls I bought for 2 euros to try.
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Post by Silly Yak on Feb 12, 2011 16:49:57 GMT
Back from France
Posted by Jules on 31/8/2009
GF board
Just thought I would report back from a fantastic holiday in Normandy,France & "coping" with 3 Coeliacs!
We didn't eat out at all - our choice; we tried last year & didn't find the French very helpful so decided to give it a miss this year - we were self catering anyhow and as the weather was great, we BBQ'd every night!
Shopping for food was no problem at all - everything well labelled, generally in French and not many other languages (not in English - when we have been to Spain & Turkey there are about 12 different languages on a lot of packaging!)
Ate lots of lovely French cheeses, couldn't find any pate without Ble (wheat) in so we gave up on that - did find a "Rilette", similar to pate but it looked like cat food & didn't taste too good either!
All the fresh sausages we found had no gluten in - just meat & spices and were lovely. Some of the "frankfurter" style sausages contained ble so had to be careful as too did some of the packets of pre-sliced ham.
Good news since our trip to the same area last year, there is now a small GF section in 2 of the supermarkets we went to - Carreforre & Hyper U. We didn't buy any of it as it was very expensive - about 5 euros for small loaf of slced bread, 4 euros for a pack of biscuits and 5 euros for a pack of small cakes but it is there if you need it - they also had pasta & bread & flour mixes. We had taken a supply of GF bread/rolls/sweet bread rolls & croissants & bought rice cakes when we were there.
The French do seem to label a lot of products that contains ble such as glucose syrup & dextrose - they do seem to state whether it is derived from wheat or maize - I know there have been lots of discussions on this Board about these syrups & whether or not they are safe for Coeliacs. In the UK it is just labelled as glucose syrup etc but not the deriative.
There are places where you can get pancakes (gallettes made from buckwheat -"sarrasin"). We were tempted to try these but were worried that they might mix the buckwheat flour with wheat flour & also that it may be cooked on the same hotplate as the normal crepes - didn't really trust the French to be that honest - I get the impression from before that they don't like you questioning their cooking!
All in all, great holiday!
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