My day job sometimes involves staying away from home for a few nights. This can be literally anywhere in the country. From central London to Poole to Dundee…and a village in the Cotswold thrown in now and then! The locations I work at are equally variable, from modern office blocks, shopping centres, hospitals and colleges to industrial sites.
This really can become about survival!
When booking my hotel, I’ll try and get one that offers an English breakfast. This way I know I can eat eggs, bacon, mushrooms and beans. I usually steer away from the hash browns and definitely avoid the sausages. Occasionally, the hotel offers gluten free bread which is always a nice surprise. As I do carry bread with me, I sometimes have a slice with breakfast, untoasted to avoid contamination.
Lunch is the big challenge as I may only have half an hour for lunch. This means that I have to scout the onsite canteen (if there is one) or see what the local sandwich/lunch options are. Unless I’m in a large shopping centre or a city centre, I won’t have access to somewhere like Costa Coffee who do offer a limited stock of gluten free sandwiches. So I rely on having a back-up plan.
I’m limited to what I can take to make my sandwiches as I don’t have a fridge in the hotel room to store things like butter, mayonnaise, ham, etc for a few days.
My survival kit consists of a jar/tin of pate, some slices of bread and a spreading knife or plastic knife to make the sandwich. I take a separate jar/tin of pate for each day as I don’t have a fridge to store the opened container. Luckily, the pate jars tend to be so small that I use most of the content.
I use the Potted Chicken by M&S which comes in small glass jars (it’s 90% chicken) and this Vegetable Pate by granoVita which also happens to be dairy free and lactose free. The Schar bread is great for packing as it has a longer date than most fresh breads and it’s packed like crisps with some air in the packaging that protects the bread from getting utterly squished.
Other survival kit items may include bananas, Seabrook crisps, chocolate bars, nuts and cereal bars/biscuits. The Nairn’s Biscuit Breaks are good for dunking in a mid morning cuppa. Though dunking seems to be like marmite…you either love it or hate it.
Do you have any recommendations for a survival kit? Please share using the Comments link.