Too bad squeebee's first thread filled up too quickly and closed before more people could post. I'm in Japan now, so all the food mentioned are a good list for me to sample. Thanks! I discovered a Domino's delivery where they offer grilled chicken done Yakitori style, yes!

Could those that served in European missions chime in? I'm curious about your food experiences there. Thanks.

I served a mission in my own country, so I'm not too thrilled about mission food. But I lived in Thailand for 4 years and can rightly say I love Tom Yang Kung (very hot, spicy shrimp soup), pad thai (spicy wide noodle with veggies and nuts) and Gai Med Mamoung (fried chicken+roasted cashew nuts). I could not get enough of it.

I don't have spaghetti as often as I used to.

Most of my mission... we were living with ppl who cooked our dinner...

Where in Japan? There's some regional stuff depending on where you are.

squeebee, Koto city in Tokyo right now. Or maybe for the next two years. I like that commercial and typical western food can be found side by side with traditional Japanese food. a nice hot bowl of pork noodles (don't know the name) does wonders during cold, chilly days here.

I get to Ginza every few months, but I never served anywhere near Tokyo, so no advice there.

When my step son was in Taiwan he begged me to send him cans of cherry pie filling. So I did.

He usually eats just about anything, but didn't seen overly smitten with the food on his mission. Only the shrimp. I think he ate a lot of shrimp and noodles.

It's funny what people crave from home.

When I lived in England, I asked my Canadian friends to send me Kraft Dinner. I never ate the stuff when I lived in Canada but something about it not being readily available in England made it oh-so-desirable.

Of course, I haven't touched the stuff since moving back to Canada.

Yeah, I don't like instant oatmeal, but I loved when my mom used packets of it as filler in her care packages.

Ha! My packing filler was those tiny single serving bags of Hawkins Cheezies. Oh, they were pure heaven!

Oh I still love those.

Me too.

I really miss Okonomiyaki. Hiroshima style is the best!

It's really difficult to find somewhere in the US that makes it, but I always order it when I find it.

Pollos A La Brasa

On my mission I remember finding an expat grocery store and in there was a can of A&W Root Beer. The Japanese don't go near the stuff, think it tastes like medicine, but I snatched it and treated it like it was the holy grail itself. It was sooo good!

Yummmmm.

Can u imagine what a pizza with black olives on it washed down with an ice cold root beer would sound to them?

Yeah, I noticed that here in Tokyo. No rootbeer and Coke is simply called 'cola'. Thais OTOH abhor cheese and think it's the worst thing in the world. They would substitute mayo on their pizza. Man!

As long as I can fly in, eat at least two rounds of yakiniku, some curry, and some good katsu, I can do without cheese.

Of course, that's a short trip.

Most Asians are lactose intolerant.

Carne Asada fries. Also Carne Asada with regular potato chips instead of nacho chips, though nacho chips were good too.

It's actually probably a good thing they don't have any of this east of the Mississippi as I would probably weigh 300 lbs if they did.

Really, really good European bread. Also, a decent Spanish tortilla - I can't seem to make mine as well as the Spanish do.

I served in the Gulf States Mission.


That meant plenty of fresh boiled seafood - crabs, crawfish, shrimp, oysters, fried catfish, drum fish, bass, and trout.


And who can forget seafood gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp creole, crawfish etufla, red beans and rice, and GRITS !


Nobody ate better than the elders sent to the Gulf States Mission!


Of course, that was many years before BP dumped all that oil onto the gulf coast.

the Baton Rouge Mission? The elders who taught me came from there. And next door, there was the Alabama Mobile Mission. Don't those exist any more?

Actually, the BP oil spill only effected a tiny portion of the Gulf, and the sea food is rebounding every where except the Apalachicola oyster beds, and those are only failing, not because of BP, but because the city of Atlanta is illegally diverting the fresh water river they depend on. To make matters worse, most of Atlanta's water dependency has less to to with its peoples needs and more to do with inefficiency. That, and since something like half the bottled water sold in this country is just tap water coca-cola takes out of the Atlanta water system.

Stotties. A North East (of England) delicacy. It's a round flat bread and we often bought a breakfast stottie from a local cafe in Gateshead, it was filled with sausages, bacon, fried egg and baked beans.

Inca Cola, Dinofrio Bars, Papas a la Huancaina, ceviche and anticuchos.

And picarrones. Not the ceviche for me, though, thanks. It just made my breath smell like fish. Plus, there was that cholera outbreak.

One pension used to serve us fresh, crunchy rolls every morning, on which we would put butter and these little avacados. It was amazing.

And definitely pollo a la brasa.

The Inka Kola was great, but stopped tasting like bubble gum after a while, and still doesn't when I occasionally buy a bottle up here.

A great New England Grinder and seafood at a little shop, it was called Budnicks in New London, Connecticut!

Deep fried Catfish & Hush puppies!!!

Alabama Burningham 82-83

Amen...

I was in costa rica. They aren't exactly gourmands there and mostly their food is good but pretty bland (rice and beans 3 meals a day)

But the fresh fruit oh my god! They had so many different kinds of fresh fruit it was ridiculous. Have you ever had a banana right off the tree? There were mango trees everywhere, you could just grab a mango off any street corner. Avacados and limes everywhere too. Pineapples, coconuts, leechee nuts, star fruit, so many kinds of melon, papaya, and a million other things you've never heard of.

Going in April on a quick vacation, any tips?

Just make sure you hit the west coast for sure (Liberia). Some very, very nice beaches there (not that I got to see any...cough...Manuel Antonio...cough...actually in Puntarenas but it's on the west coast). Also a super cool place to visit is Arenal Volcano. That's one of the places I really regret not having gone to. It is an active volcano on the edge of a fairly large lake, and there is a hotel on the other side of the lake that you can see it from. If you can find some kind of a wildlife sightseeing tour too it would be worth it. There are a ton of cool animals and birds there. I saw monkeys, iguanas, jesus lizards (so called because they run so fast they actually run on the water), toucans, macaws, etc. Coffee plantations are pretty cool to see, and there's also some pretty cool waterfalls in the mountains. Man, I should have done a lot more sight seeing...

There's a jesus lizard (basilisk I guess they're called). It took me forever to actually see one because they run so fast all you see is a blur and then they're gone. So cool...

http://goandmake.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/basilisk1.jpg