Hodgepodge

I made a lot of new food discoveries on my recent trip to the USA. I compiled them into this post. From crisps, chocolates, ice cream and Spam!

I bought these Canadian crisps at Whole Foods Market. They were nutty and a bit salty, a little sweet and just perfect with cheese.

Fig and Olive Raincoast Crisps

Ledo Pizza is my favorite pizza in Virginia. I have to eat it at least once per trip.

This square pizza had a thin and crisp crust just the way I like it. We found out that the best way to eat Ledo Pizza was to choose single toppings only. For this pizza we chose half mushroom and half sausage.

I ate this Reuben panini at Corner Bakery in the mall. The rye bread was the best! It was perfect with the corned beef, sauerkraut and thousand island dressing.

Corned Beef Reuben on Caraway Rye Panini

We didn’t eat out all the time. One time my cousin, La made laksa noodle soup for dinner using this store bought laksa paste.

Laksa Paste

She added noodles, bean sprouts, fried tofu balls, fish balls and shrimp to the broth made with water and laksa paste. All the ingredients were store bought but making it herself made it taste homemade. It was just as good as a restaurant’s laksa noodle soup.

Laksa Noodle Soup

I bought these Brix Bites chocolates at World Market.

Brix chocolates is marketed as “chocolate for wine.” The box contained milk, dark and extra dark chocolates. On the packaging are the suggested wines to pair with each kind of chocolate. We ate and drank 1 kind each night.

I’m no wine connoisseur so I can’t really tell if the chocolate made the wine taste better or vice versa but I can tell you these chocolates were good!

I couldn’t resist trying chocolate soda. It tasted artificial but it was interesting in a way.

My cousin let me try Forte tea. I loved the packaging. The tea tasted like any other tea though.

I couldn’t resist buying these unique flavors of ice cream. Why can’t we have these flavors in Manila instead of the usual common flavors?

Ben & Jerry’s Key Lime Pie was sweet and tart and crunchy from the pieces of crushed pie crust pieces.

My favorite was Nature’s Promise orange cream gelato. The orange flavor was strong but not cloying. The gelato had a rich, creamy velvety feel on the tongue.

Edy’s orange cream sherbet was exactly like a creamsicle. Orange sherbet mixed with vanilla ice cream. Delicious!

In case of emergency, tear pouch and eat Spam. No I didn’t buy this.

I love Cape Cod’s 5 cheese potato chips which were the best cheese potato chips I’ve ever eaten. You could taste the nuances of the different cheeses yet the chips weren’t salty or greasy. I hope somebody brings those to Manila.

La and I also loved Ines Rosales sweet olive oil tortas which tasted like sophisticated otap.  These crisp, flaky cookies are made with olive oil and are terrific with cheese or eaten on its own.

You can believe me when I say it’s good. I ate it without any thought of taking pictures. This was also featured in Saveur’s top 100 list of best food finds.