Well, we did it. We went on a family vacation and even survived unglutened! A week ago, I wasn’t so sure how we'd pull it off. How do you fly to the middle of nowhere (…really! Maui…just an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, far from all the new reliable sources and support we’ve developed…) and make sure your kid will be fine? Well, first it went without saying that we’d be doing a lot more cooking in than usual on this vacation. We were staying in a condo where we had access to a refrigerator and microwave. Funny thing is we made these plans BEFORE our son’s diagnosis, so we didn’t check the kitchen out the way we would now. Oven? Toaster? Scratched non-stick pans?
As always, the internet was our friend. Lots of celiacs had passed this way and shared so much helpful information. We had some excellent places to shop. Whole Foods has added a location near the airport in Kahului. Mana Foods in Paia is a sensitive eater’s paradise. I wish we had one near our home! Even the Safeway in Lahaina was better labeled and had more options than my local Safeway. And some blogs identified a couple of restaurants as likely options.
To tell the truth, restaurants still have me scared. Even when they have a gluten free menu, it’s hard to feel comfortable when they repeatedly offer your table a bread basket. The good news is that my son did not have any noticeable reactions to the two places we visited. Mama’s Fish House and Outback Steakhouse were both accommodating and supportive. Since we’ve gone gluten free as a family, it makes things a little easier. And several places were kind enough to let a Fumbling Mom read labels on ice cream, drinks and other food items to make me feel more secure about what we offering my son.
In the condo, we cooked GF pasta. We ate GF cereal. We scrambled more eggs than usual. We enjoyed some great island fruits. All in all, Maui truly is paradise. And, while maybe the food we cooked in the microwave wasn’t the best ever, the breaching humpback whales made up for it all! Aloha and mahalo!
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