The Adventure of Eating Out!

Two weeks into being WF/GF we went out to the lake for a week. Usually we just throw a bunch of food into a plastic tub, run to the corner meat market and stock up on hamburgers and dogs for the time out there. This time I had to plan meals so Zakkery had something that he could eat. I had great intentions of cooking dinners each night along with breakfast and lunch. Most of the time out our meals consisted of grazing the kitchen.

One night we had gone into town and Rich mentioned going out to eat. Fear came over me, not knowing what this would look like. Would he throw a fit like a 2 year old because he can't have the normal food? Rich suggested Wendy's. I kind of chuckled and told him to plan on buying a dozen hamburger patties for Zak to haul down. Without the bun, he could chow down a lot. Instead we decided on "The Ground Round". There I knew he could get a decent size burger or steak and survive. He was disappointed that he couldn't have the pizza, and his brother could. He was disappointed that he had to get the hamburger and there wasn't much of another option. We did allow him to have the fries. Which I now know fries are off limits because they fried in oil that has wheat in it or fried in a fryer that fried something that has wheat on it, like fried chicken for example.

I have read in several books and websites and have been told by friends to be upfront with the waitress/waiter at the restaurants. When we adventured into "The Ground Round", I asked the waitress if they had a WF/GF menu, which they did not have. I told her that Zak was WF/GF and couldn't have wheat. She said, "Oh, well he can have the pasta and the pizza and the burger and the..." I explained to her that he couldn't have that because of the wheat. I asked her to ask the chef if he had recommendations or knew anything. She checked and he did not know anything! So I was on my own with my itty bitty bit of information. We survived and Zak ate his burger without a bun and hauled down the fries that most likely had wheat on them!

Our second adventure was to "Outback" for Jeremiah's birthday dinner on July 8th. I heard from friends that "Outback" has a WF/GF menu, so I looked on line and read the menu. Yeah for Zak they even had dessert, a flourless brownie with ice cream and the works. I figured if nothing else, he would be thrilled to have dessert. But I digressed knowing this would not be beneficial to his new diet. So throughout that day I made an attempt to make him his own homemade hamburger bun from a WF/GF bread mix. I placed it in the tuna can to get the right size and all. It baked, it cooled, it came out of the can ...... hollow! That's right, there wasn't a bottom in it and it tasted nasty to top it off. I packed up the kids and made an emergency run to a new store in Novi to try their hamburger buns. They toasted them for us and Zak liked the taste and thought it would do for dinner tonight. The Outback site was where I found out that the fries are cooked in wheat oil, so I made my own fries, deep fried them, placed them in the foil and placed them in the oven to keep warm.

We arrived at Outback, me with Zak's thermal lunch bag in hand with half his dinner enclosed in it. Going out to eat isn't all that easy anymore. Thankfully, Outback is fairly dark so nobody paid much attention to my thermal bag with half a dinner inside! I knew Zak's dinner came with mashed potatoes which I gladly took. I brought out Zak's bun and fries. He was thrilled! He was even more thrilled to find out that dessert awaited him at the end of his meal. Just because he wasn't thrilled over his hamburger bun, I still told him that he had to eat it before getting the dessert. He obliged! I am sure when the plates went back to the kitchen they wondered where that batch of fries came from. They surely didn't look like theirs!