BootsnAll Travel Community

I found sweet potatoes in the market today. First time I've seen yams in years. I was overjoyed. Who'd have though a sweet potato could create such euphoria? Baked buttered sweet potatoes....ummmmmm. An exotic treat for the disposessed.

What super finds take you on a joyride when in farflung parts of the world?

Hehe. Somewhat off topic, but I am convinced that my local market bought a single box of peanut butter years ago and i have slowly worked through it, jar by jar, year by year. why? because they ran out of peanut butter and didn't have more for some six months. a marketing person probably noticed a run on peanut butter in my neighborhood, too. :P well, that is my theory at least.

back on topic: i was happy to find the stuff. what brand you ask? "American Peanut Butter" of course! The jars even have stars and stripes.

The grocery store down the street here in Wellington has Dr. Pepper... Yum. Except it's like NZD2 for a can

I was on a ferry in Hiroshima once, coming back from a long day of hiking and disc golf and in need of something to pick me up when I spotted Jolt Cola in a vending machine. It wasn't as good as I 'd remembered, but it did its job. The funny thing is that I never it saw it again anywhere in Japan over the next several years.

I have yet to find sweet potatoes here, but we're on a mission to find them. You can buy regular ol' potatoes by the truck load so sure someone in Ukraine has figured out how to grow a sweet potato.

I'm gonna do a reverse topic: in Thailand, I fell in love with Pocky, the chocolate-dipped stick dreams. I was overjoyed last weekend to find it at my CORNER GROCERY here in Brooklyn!! Suddenly, life is complete.

There were a handful of "OMG I can't believe they have this!" moments when I lived in Chile. Among them:

- Finding a few jars of Ragu spaghetti sauce Ragu spaghetti sauce. After settling for "make-do" spaghetti sauce for a year, it was total heaven. The let-down was that I could only carry 2-3 jars home with all my other groceries, and after that they never had any more Ragu ever again.

- Discovering bags of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips (USD$6/bag) ANDCrisco vegetable shortening ($10/tub) -- I made my famous homemade chocolate chip cookies for the first time (the Crisco is what makes them soft and fluffy!) and brought some into work. My colleagues loved them so much that they told me I should sell them on the side for some extra cash. Unfortunately I would have to sell them for like $2/cookie to even break even, the ingredients cost so much!

- Stumbling upon boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Yum! What a delight. It was worth paying $2/box for something that costs 1/4 that in the States.

For the reverse: I had never heard of nor eaten dulce de leche until I moved to Chile after college. A few years after returning to the States, I discovered Häagen-Dazs makes a Dulce de Leche ice cream, which is divine.

~ Jenney

For me, it was a teensy little cup of Hagen-Daz (sp?) strawberry ice cream in my local supermarket in Bangkok. I only found it twice, and it cost about...$8, but that ounce of ice cream made my day.

My month, actually.

Well they have TONS of sweet potatoes in Andalucia, Spain that I buy for one euro for a huge bag of them from the local farmers. (They make a local speciality with them here).

Actually, they have most everything here...sooo much better than when I lived in Milan for a year in my youth when stores in Europe were soooo different than America. Now the hypermarkets all over Europe are as over filled as American stores, although I do miss my endless organic health food stores in the States.

BUT my thrilling moment was finding "Shout". I have a kid, so I really missed my good stain remover when doing laundry. I had them sending me some from home, so now I do not have to.

You know - my 'small discoveries' are of a slightly differnet kind. As much as I love being on the road and don't want to go home just yet I, like everyone, miss home sometimes.

So I like those small discoveries when you turn a corner in the road and you find a place that looks exactly like somewhere from home. Just a small nook.

Because it's like being home -just for 5 minutes. Which is enough for me for now.

KPG

I tend to get more excited when I see things from the Balkans here.

I found Croatian Jana water at Whole Foods recently and was over the moon. I don't even drink bottled water but I was happy to see it.

There was also a nice one on Thanksgiving in Slovakia when a Slovak friend came to my dinner and contributed cranberry palacinke/pancakes. I hadn't really thought I'd find cranberries, and she didn't know they were a traditional Thanksgiving thing, so that was pretty neat.

Favorite foods by place:
Mexico city: Tacos, and no I don't mean taco bell
El salvador: Puposas
Guatemala: Atole, the best breakfast drink in the world
In Lago atitlan, american style coffee, endless cup, fresh roasted Guatemalan beans.

Guatemala: coconut juice, fresh from the coconut
Venezuela, other places: Cane sugar juice, straight from the sugar cane, crushed and juiced on the spot.

Malaysia: Tiger Balm, the real stuff, so strong it stops itching of mosquito bites.

Malaysia: Fried noodles, hot style

Bangkok: (don't laugh) barbeced chicken legs

Istanbul: Kanat( tiny chicken legs barbecued with special sauce)

Tost: Grilled cheese sandwich but smaller.

American style coffee: Cheap- mcDonalds
out of sight- starbucks

Worst street food in the world:

Cairo.

Oaxaca mexico: In a lunch restaurant nest to a health center, the best mole sauce on earth

Most other places: Indifferent mole sauce.

Get the idea?

First time in Europe I was studying in Finland for a summer, then traveling around Germany, and I was incredibly homesick for good Asian food (Mexican food too, but mainly Asian). I was flying home from Paris, and I saw Asian restaurants here and there, but none seemed like the real thing. At one so-called Vietnamese restaurant I asked in Mandarin if they had pho, and they said of course, but (in retrospect, as if to warn us) it would take twenty minutes to prepare, and I remember my friend and I instantly said nevermind, went outside, and exclaimed, "Pho takes hours! It's a soup you cook overnight, then it's quick and ready throughout the day. What kind of trashy place is this?!" I was so disappointed.

Then I ran out of sights I wanted to see, and went on long urban hikes in the remaining few days before my flight. It seemed like wherever you walked, it was interesting, and pretty, and a metro was nearby if you got sick of walking. During one of these hikes I came across a street that looked like... words can't begin to describe, maybe a Chinese street in Northwestern Africa. It doesn't look so much like that now, but four years ago, I came out of the metro, and some white French guy started speaking to me in Mandarin, there was a black woman in colorful robes selling grilled corn out of a tin barrel, and signs in Chinese, Arabic, and French everywhere, but mostly Chinese. I was so happy. It was the best part of my trip. I went into a Chinese Vietnamese restaurant and had the best bowl of pho in my life and it was reasonably priced, unlike food in other Asian restaurants in Finland and France. I nearly cried for joy. The memory of being incredibly happy there stuck, and when I was living in the South of France later on, every time when I went to Paris (maybe once a month) I would go back to Belleville and find this restaurant.

GOOD Mexican food in Singapore brought tears of joy to my eyes.

As an Asian student in Melbourne years back when we were still a rare sight in Australia, I discovered a few wonderful Australian foods. There was this small fish & chips shop just next to a tram station in Armadale, Melbourne. Honestly, I had no idea what it was and how to order. There were so many unfamiliar names to me like Herrings, Whiting, Snapper etc on the handwritten black board menu. The cook had to explain to me each and every one of them. With that done, came the chips, salts and vinegar and the paper to wrap them up. I never had them before in my country. It was just so good !
Next, the Australian meat pie with Ketchup sauce which I had it as lunch for nearly two years in my school canteen and the milk shake with different flavor from the milk bar are something that I never forget as a student studying in Australia.

A restaurant opened near my home that has "Egg Max Muffins" that whoop the pants off of an Egg McMuffin. I am a regular there now.

Though we have Mickey D's in Thailand - I've never found one that does breakfast, so it was great every time I was Kuala Lumpur to get a heart-clogging sausage and egg McMuffin.

Now - bigger, better, cheaper - just down the street.