This may sound sad but one of the things I like to do when I am travelling abroad is look out for food and drink that I’ve not seen before. I had a whale of a time doing this on my recent trip to the US. We did a lot of driving (3,000 miles in 11 days) so made a lot of stops for gas and snacks.

I am a big fan of Ben & Jerry’s so was delighted to get my mitts on one (okay, two) of their new Pint Slices. These are vanilla ice cream bars with ’gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge flakes, covered in a dark chocolatey coating’. Wow were they good! I would love to see these make their way over here.

Mr West was taken by the look of a Tornados hot snack ’a whirlwind of flavor’ and chose the Sausage, Egg & Cheese one. However, it wasn’t as good as he had hoped. Sausage, egg and cheese in some sort of pastry, which he thought might have been hanging around all day.

Also on our travels, we found Doritos Flavor Shots, which are ’fiery habanero triangles’. I suppose you might describe them as like triangular Hula Hoops and when they mean ’fiery’, they really mean ’fiery’. Both Mr West and I thought they were really good.

I was asked by a friend to bring back some Peanut Butter and Mint M&M’s. While I was hunting these down, I happened upon Hazelnut Spread M&M’s. Basically these are chocolates with a Nutella-type filling. I love Nutella but was not particularly taken with these, which was good really because imagine the calories.

However, a good find was Snickers Salty & Sweet. It’s a large Snickers bar divided into two bits with one bit salty and the other bit sweet and it was rather nice. Even the message on the packaging that said ’Partially produced with genetic engineering’ didn’t put me off!

During my travels, I was quite taken with one forecourt chain’s display of fruit cups in a great big ’bin’ filled with ice keeping the fruit chilled and fresh. It also looked really good and refreshing.

They sold hard boiled eggs in pots too, which I know we do over here, but you got four in a pot for two bucks a lot of protein for a small price a real bargain.