Im off to France with my 6 year old gf daughter. Any advice?
from Liz
Are you flying? we were told by our airline that we could have unlimited baggage allowance for our gf son . I wish I had taken more stuff with us . . I took plenty of treats for him ( he has to be nut free to so these can be quite tricky) I took rice and pasta , tesco free from pancakes, tins of tuna and various other basics....I bought some toaster bags from lakeland ltd which were brill. We found the hardest thing was travelling as we were very delayed at the airport both ways - its hard to carry around everything you need!! For travelling by car we now have a cool box that plugs in our car boot that acts like a fridge so we can take our supply of gluten free cambridge sausages from Waitrose any where we go
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From Lyn
I suggest you take GF basics for the entire time (bread, biscuits etc ) as you have better things to do on holiday than look for these.
Also French dietary card would be helpful:
www.dietarycard.com/ and a phrase book (to point to food/meals that are suitable) and where you have stuck the GF phrases/info downloaded & printed from internet eg :
“Je suis allergique à gluten” -- “I am allergic to gluten”
“Je ne peux pas manger de blé” -- “I cannot eat wheat”
In France you can virtually always order a plain omelette, even if it is not on the menu, with plain green salad or most pommes frites are cooked in a dedicated fryer (check this though).
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From Gill
Take along some gluten-free croissants in their packaging (eg from Waitrose/Tesco?) so for breakfast you can all have croissants, + french jam of course (bonne maman). This was a great success for us, as the gluten people had croissants from the boulangerie while the coeliac had their gf version. Enough calories to keep you going for some time... and of course very educational(?)... and hardly any washing up.
WE also took peanut butter, gf corned beef in tins, and corn thins for emergency snacks, and home made gf bread rolls but they went mouldy after a few days, better stick to manufactured stuff in the packaging.
WE went to MacDonalds quite a lot - they are everywhere in France. WE did not eat out much (children too small.)
If you look on the schar website you can find the addresses of schar stockists throughout Europe, however I did this several times, took the addresses but never got round to going to any of the shops as it would have meant a long drive to find the shop in some obscure French town and was not worth it.
For main meals we relied on sauces brought from the UK, + meat/veg/rice brought locally.
I have since descovered that some of the 'crepes' are in fact gluten free- made of buckwheat? but you would have to check on that.
Have a great holiday!
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From Msg:
Most supermarkets sell rice cakes (galettes de riz). They also have a much better selection of sliced cooked meat products than you can get in the UK. Take a dictionary to translate the food labels! ...
www.glutenfreeinfrance.com/howdoyousay.html ...
celiactravel.com/gluten-free-car ... rench.html
The travel cards are too small to be practical. If you are going to use them typing them into word and then printing them is a good idea and doesn't take too long.
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From Charlotte:
See Supp Board:
coeliac.info/suppboard/viewtopic.php?t=166 There's lots there. France is surprisingly hard so take all the GF food she needs with you, bread, crackers, cereal etc. including favourite biscuits, unless hunting for odd items in obscure hard to find French health food shops is your idea of fun (if you do find anything GF she likes regard it as a bonus..).
Take a simple French restuarant card adapted to what she likes to eat.
Check with the chef in restaurants as you would here.
You may find a creperie that inlcudes pure buckwheat crepes (farine noir pure) but contamination will be an issue.
EU labelling on crisps and packaged icecreams should be adequate. Plain crisps seem to be OK
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From Eve:
If you are self catering you will find that most sausages are just meat and herbs/spices. I always stock up and bring them home to freeze. I think its harder to be a vegetarian than a Coeliac in France.
I am not sure about contamination issues but I also can buy gateaux from the le Clerc supermarkets. I was amazed to be able to buy a large strawberry sponge cake which was real sponge, ie eggs and sugar and no flour. You do have to search them out .....
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From Karen:
was told by a chef that the French are not allowed to adulterate their meat with rusk, etc.
I think, therefore, that all sausages and beef burgers (steak hache) are gluten free.
Certainly there are less ingredients listed for French food and it's quite easy to translate the ingredients with a good dictionary.
Last time we went, we managed to get an ingredients list from McDonalds in France. I wrote in English and the list took a while to arrive and was all in French. Most of the list was similar to ours (unlike the Dutch list where the meat patties contain gluten).
ble, froment = wheat
amidon modifié = modified starch
pain = bread
sans pain = without bread
(e.g. un Big Mac sans pain)
allergie au blé - allergy to wheat
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Found this site (see link below) some time ago, giving translation of the English text below into quite a few languages.
English:
"I have a condition called coeliac disease, which means I cannot eat the smallest amount of wheat, rye, barley or oats.
Could you prepare my meal by using maize, rice, millet, buckwheat, soy flour or potato starch or totally without any cereals, please?"
French:
"Comme je souffre de la maladie coeliaque, je ne peux pas absorber, même en quantités infimes, de blé, de seigle, d´ogre ou d´avoine.
Pourriez vous, s´il vous plaît, préparer mon plat avec p. ex. du maïs, du riz, du millet, de la farine de soja, de la fécule de pommes de terre ou alors, à défaut, sans aucune céréale?"
Copy and paste into your word processor and format to suit.
I have found the following works quite well in MS Word:
Chose 'landscape' page option from Page Layout in 'File' drop-down menu, and select '3 columns'from Format drop-down menu.
Paste the copied text into the first column then add a few blank lines and paste again. Repeat until all 3 columns are full. Add or delete the blank lines till you get a suitable layout. Cut into individual 'business cards' to hand to catering staff.
The information is rather basic but gets the essential message across.
Hope this is of help.
Link:
www.sci.fi/~keliakia/tiedote/kielet.htm" \l "ranska
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