I was at the grocery store at 2 o'clock this morning. I ended up spending quite a while looking at the (limited) selection in the "foreign" foods section.

They had:

German

Eastern European

Kosher

Scandinavian

Dutch

English

Mediterranean

Indian

Asian (fairly generic)

Italian

They were pretty much limited to :

candies

cookies/biscuits

crackers

chips/crisps

sauces/seasonings/condiments

noodles/pasta/rice

a small assortment of canned/jarred/boxed ingredients

I have another 2 weeks of vacation, and feel a bit adventurous. Does anyone from these areas have suggestions of what I should look for or try?

edit- I was raised in an area settled by the Dutch, so I'm familiar with most of the items in that section.

edit- If I can find your suggestions, I'll report back on my impressions.

In the Asian section, you will find something called Oyster Sauce, it comes in 3 grades, inedible, decent and good. Get the expensive stuff ($8 a bottle as opposed to $3 or $5 a bottle) and use a tablespoon or two in your stir fry. This is the missing ingredient as to why your stir fry does not taste the same as restaurants. That and some good soy and chili garlic sauce, and you can whip a stir fry that will blow away any Chinese take out. Note, don't ever taste Oyster Sauce on it's own, you will never use it otherwise, even the good stuff.

If you want to get really confused about food in a grocery store, go to a Japanese or Chinese grocery store. Only some of the stuff in there is recognizable. Fortunately, the local Asian market is staffed by some nice people who take pity on me and point out the things that I want, and giggle at that the things I don't want, or want to know about. There are bags and boxes of things in there that are not recognizable as anything that ever lived on this planet, but the packaging has some happy smiling people on it, maybe they are in on the joke.

Along with oyster sauce, fish sauce is another good one to cook with- as long as you don't smell it or taste it straight from the bottle.

My grandpa once mistook soy sauce bottle for syrup and put it on my waffles when I was a kid. Didn't eat soy sauce on any thing for 12 years.

Also my food is ice cream in my chilli

I'm Native Alaskan... Whale blubber, moose meat, and fox eyeballs are delicacies.

Don't what the USA has as far as unique foods go---but we'll always have our KFC's, Pizza Huts and MacDonald's.

Cajun, Soul, Creole and Southern...to name just 4 unique to my area.

There are many styles unique to the us.

Our blending of peoples, cultures and spice palettes have created some of the most delicious cuisine on the planet.

I watched a guy at a sandwich buffet putting what he thought was mayo on his sandwich, in a layer that I thought was thick even for mayo...got back to my table in time to point him out so everyone could watch when he found out it was horseradish.

It dawns on me that the fact that warning him never crossed my mind at the time may say something about me.

I could provide any number of suggestions for Mexican food, but it wasn't mentioned on your list. Being in California I can't imagine a grocery store without tortillas, but I know you aren't in California.

They have a small authentic Mexican section, then the large MexAmerican section, just like the 4 feet of imported Italian and the 30 feet of Americanized Italian stuff.