ARFID ON THE GO: FINDING NEW SAFE FOODS FOR BREAKFAST ABROAD

Biscuits, sausage gravy, home fries and scrambled egg from First Watch in Florida

I don't know about others, but when I'm abroad or travelling it's always a big deal to find something that might be the same as a safe food at home. And breakfast usually is the hardest part for me. Especially when there are time zones and jet lag involved like when I visit my husband who lives in Orlando, Florida from the UK. Thankfully, he's pretty good at understanding what might or might not be a safe food for me and we tend to seek out food experiences that fit within my comfort levels.

When I'm in the UK, I tend to have egg drop soup with a frozen chicken gyoza dumpling heated up for breakfast and because I'm one of those people that don't like to impose my safe foods on others when I'm visiting them (even though they'd be happy to accommodate) I tend to stick to scrambled egg with cheese in. But the last time I visited my husband Andrew in Florida for Christmas, I decided to dip my toe in to trying something I had heard of from my husband and other American friends I've made online: biscuits and sausage gravy. 

One of the lakes around Celebration

We had taken a 2 day trip down to Kissimmee, it wasn't far from where my husband lives (approximately a 25 minute drive away) but it was a good way to get some R&R in after all the holiday festivities. We took a gentle stroll around a nearby place called Celebration early in the morning and then headed straight after to pick up some breakfast at a breakfast chain restaurant/place called First Watch. Whenever we order things for me to try for the first time, we always pick something definitely safe just in case I don't like it. In this case, to go alongside the biscuits and gravy we picked something off the kid's menu - mostly because the portions in America are huge and as you can see below even the kid's version of a chocolate chip pancake is massive! And it's also perfect for sharing, another thing we do to make sure I don't feel overwhelmed and ashamed of not being able to finish a full meal to myself. 

I had heard many things about biscuits and gravy. People in the UK often just mock them and think they're like scones. I too was one of these people and would scrunch my nose up the idea of having a scone with a sauce that had sausage bits in. I had originally imagined the idea of biscuits and gravy to be super bland and lacking any flavour at all. And I expected the biscuit to be frustrating to bite into because as you can see... looking at it above, it doesn't look all that appetising right? I expected it to be just hard, chewy and the food to be rubbery. But once you pour over the sausage gravy (which the sausage parts have a much softer food feel) on it, then the butter of the biscuit shines. The soft fluffiness of each bite. I was so thrilled to have an ARFID win, as I like to call it, that I completely forgot I had a pancake to eat alongside the breakfast food in front of me.

Having enjoyed it so much, I made it my mission to introduce it to my family back home in Cornwall. Now we don't have many places in the South West of England that do an American breakfast that isn't just American styled pancakes, so after gushing about how delicious the meal was and being excited that I possibly found a new safe food I decided when I got back to England I would find a way to make them. Which is another post I'll be making about how I went about making them in England in the future.

Now to wrap up this post, I would love to hear from other people how they go about incorporating potential new safe foods when abroad/travelling from home when their usual safe foods aren't easily obtainable or easy to replicate? Or how do you ensure a loved one is able to eat their safe foods? Feel free to share in the comment section. Have a wonderful day!

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