Last May, one week before the tour left, my son and I decided to go on a three-week tour of Britain. Airfares were lower than I’d seen them all year, and he had been talking about studying abroad in college. This would be a test, I told myself. Can we pack up and go for three-weeks and feed him a gluten-free diet easily? In full Mama Bear mode, I would investigate his food choices in a foreign land before I could let my boy go off on his own. That and I had always wanted to go to Britain and had promised myself a life of travel and adventure when I was in Paris when I was 17. My passport expired with only one stamp and 30 years later, I got a shiny new one and made the same promise.
We landed at Gatwick jumped on the Gatwick Express to London’s Victoria Station, hopped in a cab to King’s Cross(every time I looked at my watch the driver increased his speed)and climbed on the train to Edinburgh right before it departed. We had a little gf snack on the plane that morning, but only the yogurt was edible and a Be Kind bar we had packed. There was one more bar left for the train ride and when we pulled into Edinburgh 24 hours after our flight left Columbus we were tired, dirty and starving.
We left Waverley Station and climbed Cockburn Street to the Royal Mile and our hotel. As we walked through the colorful goth characters on Cockburn Street we spied a baked potato place and in my internet research, I kept reading about celiacs living on jacket potatoes when all other menu options were suspicious. We dumped our bags(only one carry-on allowed for this tour, a blessing walking up that hill to the hotel) and headed back for our potatoes in the small, slightly messy potato joint. We cradled our wrapped potatoes in our cold hands and took them out to the street to find somewhere to eat. There was a walled square where we could sit out of the wind and watch the passersby. That first bite of beans, cheese and potatoes was heaven. It had been 24 hours since our last hot meal(dried out chicken breast and mushy broccoli and a rice cake on the plane in a gf meal).
We had several more stuffed potatoes in their jackets on our tour and not as a last resort. We love our potatoes. This is now a favorite snack of both my kids and they make it on their own.
The Bush’s Baked Beans site says they are gluten-free.
