On thing we've always done to help avoid the issues of eating out while traveling is to stay in Rooms with Kitchens. The issues is most these extend stay rooms are away from the areas general attractions. Recently I've been renting Timeshares instead. The rooms are Nicer and the locations are much better. The only place i've found for nightly rentals is www.ResorTime.com. If anyone know anyothers please let me know.
I do reverse research. Using the zip code of my destination, I search for local grocery stores and view their flyers to see which brands of bread, margarine etc might be available.
Then I contact those companies and see if their product might be safe. It isn't always possible to find my regular brands, but I might discover a new one!
Message boards are another great source of information. You can often connect through these with others avoiding your allergens and find out what they use.
My family is planning a trip and I'm in a panic on how to keep his frozen foods frozen for roughly a 7 to 10 hour drive to our location. Should I use dry ice or regular ice? We will be driving so I could always stop at a store and put fresh ice in. Do I need to pack the cooler a certain way? If you have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate them.
We always need a lot of "safe foods" at our destination so I will freeze several meals at a time, for example chili or stew. You can freeze these in freezer bags or in Hefty Ovenware disposable pans. Put several of these heavy frozen meals at the bottom. You can also freeze a bunch of juice boxes, hotdogs, and even water bottles to help keep things cold. Once you have your cooler mostly packed, add sealed plastic bags of ice cubes (less messy than loose ice) and stick those in between items wherever they will fit. If you will be eating cold cuts, yogurts or cheeses during your trip make sure these are the last things packed and put them on top. You can tuck some additional plastic bags on the side of the cooler and refill some new ice bags half way through your trip. If anything on top becomes partially thawed, you can just make that the first nights dinner. However, we usually find that with long trips, even if we add ice only once, all of our food stays frozen the entire time. Good Luck!