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Foreign Grocery Friday: Celebrating International Drinks of the Non-Green Variety

March 15, 2013 at 8:59 PM | by | Comments (0)

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

We're all aware this Sunday is St. Patrick's Day, and although everyone claims they don't partake in anything remotely looking like green beer, we sure see a lot of it in pint glasses in bars across the country. But this is a Foreign Grocery Friday post, and in that spirit, we'll focus on alcoholic beverages, but none of them in any shape or form have a green tinge.

Here are our latest finds, and surprisingly two of them caused a ruckus on Facebook. We were shocked a beverage could cause so much commotion:

If you travel to the Caribbean a good deal (especially Jamaica), chances are you've come across Ting at some point. It's a sparking grapefruit drink that is the America's lame version of Squirt. Anyway, the original Ting bottle is green. But in a recent jaunt to WalMart in upstate New York (yes, that's a foreign land, trust) we found this PINK version. We immediately purchased several, ran to the liquor store for some gin (Gin + Ting= Sting) to mix it up and transport us back to the islands.

We asked some of our Caribbean friends had they ever seen this pink Ting or would they try it. Whoa! You would have thought we'd insulted someone's mama from some of the feedback. Our pal from St. Kitts said "Hell to the NO!!!"; our girl from Guyana was intrigued with a "I am not acquainted. I'll try it, please believe!"; but the darling lady from Jamaica warned "Don't mess with the original!" Oh, and our pervy guy friend from Miami just said "Ohhh, I like the pink ting...hee hee." He got a hearty virtual slap.

Survey says? Pink Ting is a tad sweeter, but when mixing it with gin or CSR (the original spirit), you won't give a crap what color the label is.

We were recently in Austria and stopped in a Vienna grocery store for a snack. When we happened upon these cans of fun, we stopped in our tracks. Why on earth can we not find these in any of our U.S. grocers? And we're not talking about any wack Smirnoff wine-cooler bullshit neither. These things were dope (especially the Cuba Libre) and perfect for our hotel's in-room fridge. Thing is--you need to sip them over ice for best flavor, and everyone knows there are only 4 ice cubes in all of Europe.

Honorary non-alcoholic mention: Coco Pops' Chocolatey Liquid Breakfast We found this doozy on Instagram and apparently it can only be found in Australia. We haven't had a moment to research the validity of this, as we were too busy mediating the various Facebook comments, that ranged from "ewwww" and "Um no. Just no." to "Have I told you lately that I love you?" Some folks will appreciate the "fibre" too, for you know better known as colon care.

[Photos: Chanize Thorpe for Jaunted/Instagram]

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