So I am away at a conference and thought I would be smart and make all my own food to bring in order to both save money and stick to my SCD diet. I prepared a couple meals of chicken and artichokes, some beef meatballs, some chicken avocado tots, almond hazelnut brownies, baked squash with coconut oil and honey, and finally my SCD yogurt. I froze everything thinking I was being smart. I asked for a room with a fridge and microwave. All the food I was bringing would be frozen to start and by the time I got to my hotel room it would be just starting to thaw out. I would then store my food in the fridge and voila, instant SCD food ready for me.
So that plan worked pretty well, except for a few glitches. Here are my tips for traveling with your own food:
#1: Don’t freeze yogurt. It doesn’t work. Mine turned out basically as liquid as water. I had added blueberries and honey to it (thinking ahead) so it turned into a nice purple-liquidy-water-looking-mess. Don’t be lazy like me. Make your yogurt just before going. Invest in a soft small cooler pack to keep your yogurt cool during the trip. Don’t freeze it.
#2: Be careful freezing plastic containers of food and then stuffing them into full suitcases. Both of my cheap plastic Ziplock containers cracked. My expensive Corningware dish with a tight plastic lid was obviously fine. Luckily there wasn’t much mess as the food was still frozen. I now have 2 less containers. I also have a small piece of plastic somewhere in my stomach. Funny how when you’re starving mad you don’t notice the lid fall apart when take it off until after you start eating your food. At least it wasn’t glass.
#3: Pack nut flour products in a solid container, not a plastic baggie. Mine got all crumbled into an oily mess. It still tasted delicious, the problem is I couldn’t tell how much I was eating. Of course I finished the bag easily in the first day and then realized that was originally 4 large brownies. Oops.
#4: Bring some kind of sauce, like ketchup, for meatballs. Meatballs thawed out and room-temperature (I didn’t have a microwave at the conference during the day) are quite dry and not so tasty.
So this trip hasn’t turned out to be the best for me bringing food, but oh well. I did manage to find some SCD friendly food in the cafeteria at lunch. A whole roasted turkey, grilled carrots and zucchini, baked salmon and a very ripe banana. Yes, it was a fancy cafeteria.
I hope my ventures with the SCD yogurt start to get a little better. I have now left one batch for over 36 hours in the machine and frozen 4 cups worth that turned into water. I hope I get better at this.
