Avoiding “Cacahuates” in Mexico

“Remember,” my dad explained to my son last week while we were all together on vacation in Mexico, “don’t eat anything that starts with ‘caca’.”

Good words to live by.

“Cacahuates” is the Spanish word for peanuts. “Nueces” means nuts. We practiced them a lot on our vacation, making sure we didn’t accidentally order or buy anything that contained them. We were having too much fun playing in the waves, lounging on the beach, and splashing in the pool – we sure didn’t want to cut any of that short by having to practice the Spanish word for hospital (which is, fortunately, “hospital”).

We did have one close call, however. At our resort, we ate dinner one night at the buffet. When we walked in, I told the hostess that my son was allergic to peanuts and nuts, using both the English and Spanish translations. She completely understood, and turned to tell another waiter beside her the same thing. I could pick out enough of her words to know what she was saying. They both nodded emphatically and explained to me, in English, that they understood, and that he would find many foods to choose from.

So far, so good.

When our real waiter arrived, I again explained to him that my son was allergic to “cacahuates y nueces,” tackling it in both Spanish and English, and he assured me, in very nice English, that he understood and he would talk to the chef.

Again, so far, so good.

At this buffet, you order a main entrée, then go to the buffet for salads, fruit, various Mexican specialties like fajitas and empanadas, and desserts. My son ordered the steak entrée, then we strolled the buffet looking for safe things for him to eat. The breads were out – no way to verify the baking ingredients. But the chicken fajitas were okay, the cheese empanada was tasty, and the watermelon was right up his alley. We avoided the dessert table completely – pecans and almonds were evident.

When his entrée arrived, there was the steak, a mini quesadilla, and a tiny rolled thing under sauce. “What is that?” I asked the waiter who delivered the food, who was not the same waiter we’d ordered from.

“Enchilada,” he said.

“What is the sauce on it?” I asked, eyeing it. It looked suspiciously like a mole sauce, which is often made with peanuts, almonds, or other nuts.

“No, no,” he assured me. “Nothing like that.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, “because he’s ‘alérgico’.”

He assured me again that it was nut-free. A little part of me still worried, but I’d told four different people now, all of whom assured me that they understood.

My son started in on the steak. Fortunately, he doesn’t care for sauces on much of anything, so he started on the side of the plate away from the mysterious sauce.

He was on his third or fourth bite when our original, main waiter suddenly appeared at my son’s side, and began whisking away the plate. “I need to take this away,” he said, breathless from having run across the whole restaurant.

“Stop eating!” I commanded my son, and he dropped his silverware and sat back, while the waiter scooped up the plate.

“I am so sorry,” the waiter was saying. “It was a mistake. It should not have happened. I will bring him a new plate with new food.” Within a minute or two, he was back with a new plate, new steak, and no sign of mole sauce.

The waiter was clearly embarrassed and upset, because he wouldn’t look me in the eye when he came back to refill our glasses with water. Finally, I called him over to me.

“Thank you for catching that. His allergies are scary, so I appreciate that you discovered the mistake and told us right away.” He still was embarrassed and contrite, but I could see the relief in his shoulders.

I’m a big fan of the “encourage good behavior with rewards” school of thought. I could have made a scene, chewed him out, or been angry. But that wouldn’t have helped anything. The close call and his embarrassment alone left a huge impression on him, and I know the next time an allergic person sits at his table, he’ll be extra vigilant about their food. I hope that by telling him how much I appreciated him being honest and fast in fixing the mistake, I left him with a good feeling about allergic people, and not a dread. Fear causes mistakes. I want him to care, not fear.

Also, I had made a mistake, too. I had a bad feeling about that sauce, and I didn’t act on my motherly instincts.

Next time, I’ll know better, too.

Fortunately, the whole story had a happy ending. My son loved the steak, I loved my mahi-mahi steamed in a banana leaf, and when we left the restaurant, the waiter purposefully caught my eye and said “thank you.”

And for the rest of the week, my son successfully avoided eating anything that started with “caca.”

Caribbean Dreams

Re-entry is hard.

I love vacations, and I hate coming home. Coming home means piles of laundry, stacks of mail, a to-do list a mile long, looming work deadlines, and cold weather.

Sure, it’s nice to sleep in my own bed. I guess. Oh, who am I kidding? I much preferred sleeping on the 43-foot catamaran we just spent a week on while sailing through St. Lucia and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. Endless miles of turquoise water. Coral reefs teeming with fish in every color of the rainbow. Millions of stars in an unspoiled sky. Steel drum music wafting over the water from the nearby beach bar. Flippers and masks piled in the corner, ready for the next snorkeling foray. Rum punches. Conch fritters. Fish on the grill, freshly pulled from the water off the back of our boat.

I traded all this for gloomy skies, a messy house, and Christmas sale commercials?

Blech.

I’m a traveler at heart, and there’s no way around it. Right now, I’m sitting here with a handful of exotic coins in my pocket – they have scalloped edges and an old-fashion sailing ship on them. A giant conch shell, its inside pink and pearly, sits drying on my kitchen counter. My passport is lying open in front of me, its latest stamp a testament to my wanderlust.

I’m addicted to travel, and my addiction is apparently hereditary. My son has it, too. He got his first passport when he was 4 months old, when we went to Holland. At 2, he went to Hawaii and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean. He’s been to Mexico a couple of times, the British Virgin Islands, Belize, and now St. Lucia and the Grenadines. His wish list includes places like Pompeii, Japan, London, and Paris. Not bad for a kid who just turned 10. He’s gone through two passports now, and we’re about to order his third.

With his food allergies, we have to be a little more cautious and a lot more prepared than some when we travel. I carry a ton of food with me whenever we travel – lots of Enjoy Life! Foods granola bars, fruit snacks, and boxes and cans of things he can eat if we get stuck.

But the real life-saver is that since we chartered our own sailboat, we cooked most of our meals ourselves. Chartering a sailboat for a week is like renting a condo for a week – you have your own kitchen, so you can cook all of your own meals. The big difference is that you can’t usually sail your condo to another island when the mood strikes you!

Another good part about this trip was that our airline experience was positive – we discovered a benefit to the airlines’ recent cost-cutting measures! We flew American Airlines this time, and apparently they’ve done away with free snacks. No little packets of peanuts or trail mix! Instead, they have “food for purchase” on some of the flights. You can purchase snacks like chips, a cheese plate, or even a sandwich, but because they’re pretty expensive ($6), few people did. Personally, I felt a lot more relaxed on the flight because there simply weren’t as many wrappers floating around the plane.

Being able to control the food my son comes into contact with means my luggage is heavier, my planning is a little more complicated, and our meals might not be as spontaneous, but it does mean that we can still succumb to that wanderlust in our hearts.

Now if only I could feel as good about my return to reality. Where did all these bills come from, anyway?

Snack Bars in Paradise

A friend’s daughter is headed to Africa and Europe in a few weeks, for a summer’s worth of adventure. She’ll be visiting friends and relatives, as well as doing volunteer work while she’s there. She’s about twenty, full of energy and life and enthusiasm and joy.

And she’s allergic to a whole bunch of things. Her mom’s a tad worried.

But the best way to travel safely is to be prepared, so that’s exactly what the girl and her mom are doing. The mom asked me if I’d found any protein or snack bars that were free of nuts, milk, and eggs. I got on the UFAN forum and asked for recommendations, and everyone agreed that the Enjoy Life snack bars are tasty, and they’re free of all 8 of the “Top Ten” allergens. The mom went online that very night and ordered several boxes. (Click here for the Enjoy Life Foods website.)

When you’re traveling – especially in other countries – finding food without your allergens can be tricky. Sometimes you get lucky and find waiters who speak English, foods you trust, and markets that look reputable. Sometimes you don’t. So carrying your own food with you is essential. Even if you end up not needing it, it’s better to have it than wish you did. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s all that yummy or terribly balanced. You just need to survive for a few days or weeks, and you can do that on bottled water and snack bars if you have to. You can always get back onto a healthier diet when you return.

The other thing this mom and daughter are doing is finding translations for “I’m allergic to…” in all the languages where she’ll be traveling (which is a lot!). A great place for preprinted cards that can help you tell waiters what you’re allergic to, or ask someone to get you medical help fast, is www.SelectWisely.com. Their website has all kinds of helpful tips and resources, and preprinted cards in more languages than you can shake an EpiPen at.

Watching this friend of mine plan for her daughter’s vacation, I realize that it doesn’t matter how old and self-sufficient our children get. We will always worry about them and we will always do anything we can to keep them safe – even when they’re all grown up and heading to the other side of the planet.

I ordered some of the Enjoy Life snack bars myself, to let my son try them. He liked them, and took one in his lunchbox to school today. Someday, my son wants to travel to Japan. We travel a lot and have always had good luck wherever we’ve gone, but Japan makes me more nervous because we don’t speak even a jot of Japanese and I know they use a lot of peanut oils and nuts in their cooking. But even so, someday he may get there, and I know I’ll be just like this friend of mine – stocking up on safe snack bars and other suitcase-friendly foods that will turn his vacation from a trip through a land mine into the trip of his dreams.

I’ll have to do it. It’s in the mom handbook. I’ll be standing there in the airport with all the other moms, saying, “Have a nice trip! I love you! Here’s a snack bar!”

Travel Tips #2: Food During the Trip

Our trip to Cancun has already receded to the domain of dreams. It’s amazing how quickly reality takes back over, isn’t it?

As promised, this week I’ll describe some more tips on how I handle my son’s food allergies when we travel.

When I start packing, I plan ahead and pack at least some food for the time we’ll be at our destination. I try to stay at hotels or condos that have a kitchenette, so that we can make at least some of our own food. If we’re doing a car trip, we take a cooler and keep it stocked with sandwich fixings, salad fixings, etc. If we’re flying, I often tuck in a collapsible cooler that we can use in the hotel if we need to (also comes in handy for taking picnics and beer to the beach!). I’ve also been known to hit the local Walmart to pick up a cheap Styrofoam cooler for the hotel, too, that is easily thrown away when we leave.

I carry a ton of snacks and food in my carry-on. In fact, my carry-on is usually almost completely filled with food, with just a little corner reserved for spare underwear and swimsuits in case we get stranded without our suitcases (it’s happened). That way, even if we’ve gotten stranded at a strange airport overnight, with our suitcases in Timbuktu, we’ve got a change of undies, the ability to play in the hotel pool, and enough food to make a highly unimaginative meal (or two) that may not win points from Good Housekeeping magazine, but it will keep us from starving. And even if we get to our destination in good time, by having breakfast food in the carry-on, that gives me until the next day to find a grocery store. (I hate landing somewhere after an all-day odyssey, then discovering that the grocery stores are all closed.)

There’s usually more food in my checked suitcase, too, because I’m not just packing food in case our flight gets delayed – I’m also packing food so that I’ve got safe options in case our destination proves allergy-unfriendly.

What food do I pack? He’s only allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, so what I carry is probably different from what someone else would carry. But I carry crackers, a box or two of breakfast cereal, NutriGrain bars or Rice Krispie treats that I made, fruit leather, ramen noodles or Easy Mac ‘n’ Cheese, coffee and filters, cookies, a package of dry salami that doesn’t need refrigerating until after it’s opened, a jar of Sunbutter – things that don’t need refrigeration and that can easily be prepared in a hotel room with hot water from the coffee maker, microwaved, or eaten dry. I figure that can get us through breakfasts for a week, and at least a few “I’m hungry!” moments.

Once there, I look for a grocery store and buy bread, lunch meat, drinks, fresh fruit, etc. And if options are limited, I get creative. Sandwiches don’t always have to be made with bread. They can be rolled in a tortilla, or stacked on crackers. Those are easy to pack, too, if I’m worried about buying bread in a foreign place.

At that point, I’ve got breakfast and lunch taken care of for the whole week. I can pack lunches and picnics in the cooler, using Ziplocs and ice from the hotel ice machines to keep things cool when we’re out sightseeing. That just leaves dinners to worry about. If I think the restaurant might not have safe food for him, I’ll pack him another sandwich and take it into the restaurant just in case. Sure, he may get tired of sandwiches after a week, but he’d be a lot more upset if he didn’t get to go on the vacation at all.

In Cancun, we stayed at a time-share condo with friends who’d generously invited us along to share their week. So we had the luxury of a full kitchenette with necessities like pans, plates, bowls, and silverwear. To save time, hassle, and costs (between us, we had 3 kids in tow, none of whom had the patience to sit for long times in restaurants), we made several dinners at the condo, and we ate at the resort restaurants just a few times.

Grocery shopping was interesting, of course. Reading ingredient labels in foreign languages is a bold new adventure, but we figured them out and successfully stocked our cupboards. I did find a clerk at the grocery store who spoke English, and I had her check the labels on a couple of items for me, just to make sure. She was happy to do it.

So between last week’s blog entry and today, now you know all my secrets to traveling: 1) I keep HandiWipes in my purse. 2) I pack my own in-flight food. 3) I pack breakfast food and snacks. 4) I pack a collapsible cooler. 5) I grocery shop for lunch food and keep it in the fridge or cooler in the room, so we can take picnics with us when we go sightseeing.

I have one more bit of advice – I carry a card with me that says “I am allergic to nuts” in the language of the country we’re visiting. I ordered a nifty one from www.selectwisely.com. Check out that site if you are planning any foreign-language travel. By knowing the words for allergenic foods, I can feel a little more confident about reading labels and ordering for him in restaurants when we do go out.

And here’s a bonus from all that pre-planning: The space the food took up on the way to my destination becomes empty space I can fill up with souvenirs on the way back!