My home province of Alberta is pretty much the Canadian version of Texas – it’s full of oil, cattle and guys in cowboy boots who say “Y’all†a lot (well OK, the last one’s mainly just in Calgary). But my hometown of Edmonton, a stereotypically white-bread, conservative, redneck city, has an ethnic diversity that may surprise you. I can eat at restaurants from a couple dozen different cultures and shop at specialty grocery stores from four or five more – and that’s just within a 10-minute drive of my office, which, by the way, is located not in a vibrant ethnic center, but in the blandest suburban warehouse/industrial district imaginable.
I guess where I’m going with this is that even your own town is probably home to all kinds of unlikely and unexpected food and candy treasures – you just have to know where to go to find the good stuff. Take these Hi-Chews, for example. I snagged a couple of packs of this popular Japanese candy from a Korean grocery store located just a few minutes from my office (woo!).
Hi-Chews are known for their intriguingly bouncy, pillowy texture, almost more like gum than North American fruit chews like Starburst. The coolest thing about them is that they don’t stick in your teeth at all, so you’re not picking bits of candy out of your molars for the next half hour.
