The credit for this life hack has to go to my Coeliac sister Lucie as it was her idea to do it first before introducing it to me! And she gets more than a round of applause for this one as it was nothing short of genius.
WE HAD A SUBWAY.
Like all the other fast food places, since being diagnosed I had completely written Subway off, especially seeing as their speciality is sandwiches. We have been waiting and waiting for them to jump on the Dominos/Pizza Hut bandwagon and introduce gluten free options but it doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. So for the mean time we have this nifty little life hack which I have an inkling you are going to enjoy.
It's pretty simple, and maybe quite obvious, we just took our own gluten free bread.
Some of you might be thinking, why didn't you do that years ago? And yes I suppose this isn't exactly ground breaking intelligence and more just common sense but I was never sure how successful it was actually going to be. The main reason for this is because it has taken a while for decent gluten free bread to come along. For a long time we were simply awaiting a successful bread and butter so we can have some toast for breakfast; our minds weren't exactly venturing as far as the dreams of Subway's. But we are in a different place now and we are lucky enough that there are a lot of really really good gluten free loaves available now by various companies, not to mention variations such as wraps, flat breads, rolls, buns and baguettes. The latter being what we would need for a Subway.
The other reason that it has taken me a while to attempt the Subway life hack is because you are running a much greater cross-contamination risk here. Due to the nature of the deli, there is a lot of handling of the food so it is much easier for crumbs to spread etc.
And finally, it is all well and good replacing the bread for a gluten free sandwich but then you still have no idea if the fillings are gluten free because Subway have no need to display this information.
SO all this in mind, lets talk about how our first gluten free Subway experience panned out.
The baguette we used was from the company Livwell and can be purchased on this website: http://www.livwellfoods.co.uk/products_140g_baguette.php OR if you have a prescription set up, it may also be available to you that way (which is how my sister got her hands on ours!)
We simply went in and asked first off if they were able to create a sandwich for us using bread that we had brought in ourselves. Expectedly, the staff member was slightly hesitant and consulted their manager first but they responded enthusiastically, asking us whether it was a gluten intolerance that we had and then even foreseeing that a new clean knife was used to cut our baguette! Impressive. As far as the rest of the sandwich making goes, I was consciously overlooking for any potential cross-contamination. For example I panicked slightly when the sandwich was being put in the oven/toaster but then noticed that it is on a clean sheet of wrap/paper which touches the oven shelf, not the sandwich itself, so that was fine. The baguette itself withstood the test tremendously, it did not crumble or break at all and it was really soft! Perfect.
As for the fillings, we pretty much just went with our gut and chose things we know are naturally gluten free. My sister did say however that she has asked staff in the past about the ingredients of the fillings where she found out for example that we can't eat the meatballs (boo!) so I'm sure there are ways you can find out about them all so you know for sure.
We had a 'Subway Melt' which consists of ham, chicken, bacon and then cheese and salad if you want them. I did notice some crumbs in the cheese but the girl must have sensed my panic (or just been aware of the risk) and she chose slices which were clean, phew! The one thing we did inquire about were the sauces, as more often than not a sauce will contain gluten. The manager handed over to us a folder containing a full list of ingredients and allergen information for all of their sauces, so thank you to him for being awesome. Luckily there was no queue when we went in so we were able to stand and scrutinise the ingredients without causing any fuss, however as Subway can get really busy, if you were thinking of getting a gluten free sandwich there it might be worth making a separate visit beforehand where you go and speak to the manager aside from the busy deli counter and check out what is available. Then when you eventually go to place your gf order it's done as swiftly as possible so you can enjoy it more! Reading ingredients is known to take the edge off a bit...
Unfortunately we were unable to have some of the sauces we wanted to but we did manage to add BBQ sauce!
And voilà! Here are our first (of many!) gluten free Subway sandwiches:
They were delicious! I highly recommend doing this.
We had one foot-long (well, however long the Livwell baguette is) and cut it in half to share which filled me up plenty! This cost us £3.99 which considering what you pay for gluten free food is actually reasonable (especially if you get the baguette on prescription!) and as I have said before, the novelty of getting to enjoy all these things when I thought I never would again is priceless!
Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment