A Matter of Taste

You know, when you leave Australia and head over to Canada, you tend to think that it won’t be that different from home. Sure there close to the beast to the south, but it’s a Commonwealth country under the same Queen, so there’s got to be a few similarities, right?

Well when it comes to food, there seems to have been a few key departures from what we consider normal. And these are important departures that you really should be warned about before you leave the country.

Caroline bought a packet of jelly beans so that we could decorate some cakes for Thomas’ birthday. I like jelly beans. I tend to go for the red ones first. But this time, I didn’t, because I’d learnt something since coming to Canada. Over here, red isn’t raspberry. It’s cherry.

Now I don’t like cherries even if they’re real and I doubt very much that cherry flavoured ‘candy’ (or lollies as we are wont to call them) taste anything like real cherries. Regardless, I happen to think they’re disgusting. So I didn’t take a red one. I took a yellow one. No surprise there, it was quite tasty. And the orange one was nice too. Caroline took a green one and I knew from her face that it wasn’t what she’d expected.

I mean, what flavour do you expect when its green (I can see my sister cringing already, she always hated green lollies)? I personally expect lime. Caroline wasn’t about to tell me what it was either, she wanted me to taste for myself. Summoning up the true depths of my courage, I picked one up and bit into it.

Spearmint. Or as it tends to be otherwise known (from the memory that it recalls via association with the flavour) toothpaste. Yum. Not. Jelly beans should never, ever, in any way what-so-ever, taste like toothpaste.

Yep, it’s the little things that remind you you’re not at home!