Best of 2021!

 I started out 2021 with food from Trader Joe’s, some of my Christmas food and food gifts and various other food products.  Then I had a lot of fun with my Store BoughtSalsa Taste Test.  Finally I finished up with my Food Olympics.  Here are my favorite foods from 2021!

Trader Joe’s Cheese enchiladas

Omaha Steaks Chicken Fried Steaks

Omaha Steaks Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough

Whole Foods Market Key Lime Pie

Frontera Cilantro Jalapeno Salsa                                

   

Loacker Quadratini Lemon Wafers

Meiji Hello Panda Chocolate Cookies

 Sabine’s Collections Garlic, Chives and Parsley Baguette Crisps

Bibigo beef and vegetable mandu   

Whole Foods Spanakopita  

Aged Manchego

Nordy's BBQ

Cannoli from Whole Foods

2021 Food Olympics Recap

 We started the Food Olympics in August with a tribute to Tokyo, host of the actual Olympics, with a Japanese snack box. Most of the items in the box I thought were awful. After this we continued with 9 different events including Cookies, Snacks, Frozen Appetizers, Homemade meals, Sodas, cheese, take out, Breakfast/dessert sweets and finished with an international snack box.  Some of the highlights of the 9 events were

I found out I like wafer cookies especially the Loacker Quadratini Lemon Wafers from Italy 

and the Meiji Hello Panda Chocolate Cookies from Japan      

    

 I really enjoyed the Sabine’s Collections Garlic, Chives and Parsley Baguette Crisps from Canada

 

·         I enjoyed eating the Frozen Appetizers including the South Korean Bibigo beef and vegetable mandu     and the Whole Foods Greek Spanakopita   

 

·        It was fun to try to cook and eat foreign meals including Bulgogi, Carnitas and Swedish meatballs

 

·        The cheese event was really fun but hard to judge. I tried Aged Manchego from Spain and Jarlsberg from Norway for the first time and really enjoyed them.

 

·      The whole family enjoyed Nordy's BBQ. I also enjoyed getting takeout from local restaurants including chicken pad Thai from Chili Thai, kung pao chicken from Asian pearl bistro and the al pastor burrito from Mi Tierra

 

·        We really enjoyed the Cannoli and cherry turnovers both from Whole Foods

 

·        The international snack box event was a lot of fun and a little different than others since I didn’t know what was in the box.  We enjoyed the Teashop Bourbon Creams from the U.K. 

      and the Dolcetto Petites Cookies and Cream Wafer Bites from Indonesia             

 

Here is the final 2021 Food Olympics medal count

Medal count
	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
US	3	2	1	6
Italy	2		1	3
Mexico	1	1	1	3
South Korea	2			2
Canada	1	1		2
Spain			2	2
Indonesia	1			1
Norway	1			1
Switzerland		1		1
Thailand		1		1
UK		1		1
Belgium			1	1
China			1	1
Greece			1	1
Ireland			1	1
Japan			1	1
Sweden			1	1
	11	7	11	29

The 2021 Food Olympics was a very successful and a very fun event!  I was able to eat lots of food and try new foods from all over the world.  We had foods from or representing more than 30 different countries! Most of these were very good, but some were not so good.  This was so much fun, and I was glad I could do something that corresponded with the actual Olympics.  I hope you enjoyed reading and following along.

Event # 9 international snack box

For my 9^th and final event, I ordered an international snack box from Amazon. The box contained 17 snacks from at least 12 different countries maybe 13.  We each sampled all the snacks.  Some were just big enough for a small sample and others were a little bigger.  Then we each voted for our top 7, and then combined the votes to get the rankings.  The event was interesting and different because I didn’t pick out the different items, we just took what was there.  This added foods from different countries than I normally would have.  Here is the rundown of the 8 snacks that received votes

 

Lebanon              Grandour Dabke Biscuit sandwich with lemon cream filling          

This was okay, but I think it needs more lemon cream.

 

Croatia                Koestlin Cheese and Paprika  Saltas, Salted filled sticks   

This was a good snack.  They were pretzel sticks filled with cheese and paprika.   They were salty and had a tad of spice.

 

Bronze Spain      Gullon Creamwafer cookies        

This was a pretty good wafer cookie.

 

                                           

Silver       U.K.           Teashop Bourbon Creams           

A very good hard chocolate cookie with a good strong chocolate flavor and a slight bourbon flavor.

 

India                     Kurkure Green Chutney Style     

I thought these tasted good.  They had a salty, limey flavor but were really hot, too hot to really enjoy.

 

Gold Indonesia     Dolcetto Petites       Cookies and Cream Wafer Bites      

These were little chocolate cookies with Cookies and Cream filling.  These were delicious and just beat out the Teashop Bourbon Creams for the Gold medal!

 

Philippines           Jack and Jill Dewberry Blueberries and Cream                    

I didn’t particularly like these, but they did get a vote.   They had a good blueberry flavor, but the blueberries were chewy and rubbery.

 

                          

Poland  Goplana Grzeski  Orzecnowe (Milk chocolate-coated wafer bar with hazelnut  cream)            

     

This was a good wafer bar that was kind of like a Kit Kat.

                                            

Event # 9 was a fun and interesting event and was the perfect way to end the Food Olympics!  Thanks for reading and be sure to check out my Olympic recap in the next few days!