A Story Of Eating Gluten Free In & Around Dijon, France

The beautiful original painting above by one of my best friends and favorite artists; Rachel Kokko. She painted these as the favors for each guest at her wedding and put together they make a full painting of the beautiful Chateau she and her husband got engaged and were married at. She's amazing.

After the second worst transportation fiasco I've experienced during my travels (the first involved forgetting my passport), my husband and I managed to change our rental car reservations and navigate our way on to a train from Paris to Dijon. Keep in mind, this was all after spending 20 hours gallivanting around Iceland with only a 4 hour plane ride worth of rest in between the adventure and the subsequent chaos of having no access to our funds. After sleeping most of the way and almost leaving my purse with all our cards and passports on the train, we arrived in Dijon both mentally and physically exhausted. Instead of easily heading to the various gluten free friendly health food stores I had researched and mapped out - we would have to drag our 3 weeks of luggage around the cobbled streets to find the nearest grocery store to stock up on food I could eat.

Thanks to the incredible kindness of the Dijon visitor center employees - we were able to find our way around Dijon and made it to the Monoprix. Looking at the first floor filled with apparel, I was dubious of the gluten free options I might find inside. I ventured up the escalator and found myself in grocery shopping heaven. Rows of fresh produce, sheeps milk cheese and yogurt, and a huge selection of gluten free baked goods. Including the things my gluten free dreams are made of; soft bread, croissants, and delicious cookies. If you find yourself in Dijon - don't fear, plenty of gluten free options can be found at the Monoprix.

Exhausted and loaded down with far too many groceries in addition to our luggage, we splurged on a cab ridge to the historic chateau we would be staying at in the small village of Vougeot.

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Split Pea Soup with Bacon

This past winter I really haven't been into soup but now that we're deep in spring, all I seem to want is comforting soups. We've had two different soups on repeat in our food rotation; a dairy free tomato bisque and split pea soup. Up until recently, my attempts at split pea always turned out rather bland - but I've finally worked away at the recipe to get what I want. My theory is that I was missing a very key ingredient: bacon. And not just added bacon to the final soup, but cooking it in the same pot that you're soup will spend two hours simmering away in.

For a vegan version of this soup, you could easily skip the bacon all together and just cook the vegetables in 2 tablespoons of your favorite cooking oil. Adding some slices of cooked shiitake mushrooms would help pump up the flavor in somewhat similar way to the bacon.

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Gluten Free In San Diego, California: New Finds & Old Favorites

It's almost hard to believe that my trip to San Diego in February was the last time I traveled out of state. While I was down there all of my future work travel was canceled (at least for the time being) so all I've got left are three short personal trips coming up later this month and in May. The time at home as been much needed - I don't recall the last time I can say I slept in my own bed for a consecutive month.

Either way, I'm glad my last trip was to San Diego. Since I lived there for 3 1/2 years it's an easy place to get around and when I went last year I discovered oodles of gluten free friendly eateries. While I generally make an effort to get out and try new places, I found myself returning to Casa Guadalajara a few times this trip. However I was able to pull myself away from their delicious Mexican food to try two new-to-me places that I now get to share with you!

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Gluten Free Stuffed Pizza Crust

Finding good pizza seems to be the ultimate quest for most of us living our lives gluten free. Sure there are some that are happy without the bread products that are so prominent in the gluten full world - but for most of us, pizza seems to be that most wanted unattainable treat (well, that and good croissant). My perfect pizza is a fluffy one with a hearty bready crust that you can bite into and chew.

All those cracker like crusts that are so prevalent in the freezer section of the grocery and in most every restaurant I've been to just don't do it for me. I've actually made a rule that unless I'm in desperate need of carbs (like so desperate I'm going to faint) - I don't ever order gluten free pizza at a restaurant. There are only two restaurants I've ever been to where the gluten free pizza crust was passable; Pala Pizza in New York City and Razzi's in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.

My journey making my own gluten free crust at home started with Gluten Free Girl's recipe which also happens to be vegan. For a year or so, I followed her recipe and enjoyed some of the best pizza crust I'd had - but it still wasn't that fluffy crust I wanted. I played around with a few different flour combinations, added eggs, and then all of my changes came together when I started stuffing the crust with a bit of cheese. It made all the difference in the world - it seems to keep more moisture in the crust and it's just darn tasty.

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Gluten Free In Barcelona, Spain

Oh Barcelona. I must admit that you are not my favorite city in the world and to be honest I was rather under whelmed. Park Guell was very interesting, albeit swamped with people, and seeing the ancient Roman walls was cool too. Perhaps because neither of us are super into art or architecture, the crowded nature of the city, or maybe we were just ready to head home - either way it just didn't end up being a favorite stop on our trip.

All that being said, eating out gluten free in Barcelona was a real treat. We were only there for about a day and half and on tight food budget, but we even found a restaurant where I could get dessert (for someone who can't do gluten, dairy or soy - that's a serious treat!).  

Heart Burger

Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 602, 08007 Barcelona, Spain

+34 933 02 10 30

First things first - no, the burgers are not made of hearts, just shaped like them (so are the gluten-full buns). Second thing, I'm not really a burger person but the Hawaiian burger was one of the best I've ever had - could because of the manchego cheese melted on top (I don't recall the last time I had cheese on a burger) and the gluten free bun. They also have vegetarian options including deliciously interesting salads and sides. Their staff were wonderful and great at helping me pick out a safe meal - I even got a trio of sorbets for dessert!

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