Travel the World Gluten Free

At home my staple Indian dishes are butter chicken, curry chicken, aloo gobi and vegetable biryani.  It’s funny how quickly butter chicken became boring in India.  I think I only ate it twice as there were so many other more delicious meals to try.  I am proud of how many different types of dishes I tried while in India.  Actually, during my trip I started asking Negi Chef to surprise me with the dinners he prepared me.  This was a fantastic way to try a wide variety of dishes and it really opened my eyes and taste buds to a whole new world of Indian dishes.

Prior to my first day in the Gurgaon office, Negi Chef told me he would prepare me a lunch to bring to work.  Perfect, I thought, that way I would know that I was eating safely and gluten free. After all I was told a few times to only trust the food at the hotel, not the stuff at work. Well there I was my first day at our Gurgaon office, packed lunch in hand. When I got there and asked my colleague where the kitchen was so I could put my lunch in the fridge he said there was no fridge. “Wait, no fridge?  But how will my lunch stay cold then?” I thought. Instead, he brought me downstairs to the cafeteria and he asked one of the vendors to put my food in the beverage fridge full of pop. Well, from then on I had a new routine of eating my lunch during first break so that it had less of a chance to go bad. Then I’d eat a banana or Lara bar during dinner break.

Quickly I learned how much I love traditional Southern Indian breakfast dishes and I am proud to say I only ordered a plain cheese omelette a couple times throughout my stay.

Masala Dosa was hands down my favourite breakfast.  It was just disappointing that I could only eat it on the weekends since they weren’t able to make it on the weekdays when I ate breakfast at 3:30 p.m. before work.  For the first week I actually stayed up until 8:00 a.m. after work so that I could eat this for breakfast before going to bed, but I quickly realized this was greatly messing up my sleeping pattern.  Dosa is a thin rice flour and yellow lentil pancake wrapped like a crepe and usually filled with delicious potatoes.  It is served with coconut chutney and lentil broth.  The breakfast chefs on the weekend would always know my order.  One morning I had a conversation with the Dosa chef about how making dosas is a skilled technique.  The batter is made ahead of time and then has to be left out for a while before cooking it.  To cook, the batter is quickly poured in a circle on the grill and flattened out into a perfect circle with a wooden tool.  They were so good, I hope I can find them in Toronto!

I’d like to proudly say that it has always been a dream of mine to work overseas.  Here I am at age 25 having just got back from a work assignment in India.  It was challenging, exciting, rewarding and scary at times…but I did it!  When I was asked to go abroad, I didn’t stop to think that it might be difficult to find gluten free food.  I promised myself three years ago when I found out I had to let gluten go that I would never let gluten stand in the way of me living my life or traveling the world.  I’m happy to say that my severe gluten intolerance did not stand in the way of fulfilling a lifelong dream.  I took the challenge in stride.  This time I was lucky since India is one of the most naturally gluten free cuisines in the world and I was staying at a nice hotel, but it still gives me confidence that I can successfully, safely and deliciously travel the world for business and pleasure and not let gluten hold me back.