Weekly Linkage! Horse Meat, Flavor Flav, Walmart in Stratford and more!

So happy Walmart's coming to town.  I enjoy purchasing food from Chinese farmers.  Supporting foreign products is pretty much my mantra.  "Out of work yet?  Keep buying foreign!  Who cares?!?"  I also enjoy the idea that I have a large carbon footprint (it makes up for other, smaller body parts that I may or may not feel inadequate about).  If we can lower the average wage in our city, decrease the quality of product and kill a few local businesses while we're at it, all the better!  As long as I can buy my ketchup, hemorrhoid cream and Wrestlemania videos in one place.  Plus now we can be part of this!

On to the links!

One thing Walmart doesn't sell (yet) is horse meat.  Good thing too, or people might get as upset at them as they are with Monday's Top Chef Canada episode (which features a challenge in which one contestant must use horse meat to create a dish).  I'm not going to touch on the potential health risk of eating a poorly regulated animal like horse (note: guess I just did).  What I don't get are the people who are upset because they feel eating horse is offensive, and yet eating beef is no big deal.

The amount of food we waste is absolutely shocking.  For those of you who won't click on the link, the most appalling number: North Americans waste 200lbs of food/year per person.  This does not include food loss (food that vanishes during the production and distribution process), but only refers to edible food that we throw away because we don't want it, or we've let it go bad.  This equals about one third of the food in the world.

McDonald's, ever the bastion of minimizing waste and small carbon footprints, is attempting to fool you into thinking that they care about creating healthy food for any other reason than to increase their profit margins.  The Walmart cafeteria is launching a 'Made Just For You' menu.  It's awesome how even the 'chef' says it's not about getting rid of the negatives, it's about the 'presence of positives'.  Next time I get a double Big Mac meal, I'll be sure to offset it with a Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie, which I'm sure won't have much sugar in it at all...

Flavor Flav is doing his part to not contribute to crappy food, albeit only by failing in his attempt to open a fried chicken spot in Las Vegas.

A profile on Canada's only female master sommelier.

The locavore movement has made it's way to the cocktail community.  Not sure if we have any distilleries anywhere near here, but we certainly have access to garnishes.  Some pickled ramps in a caesar perhaps...

Obika has opened in Toronto.  Sushi spot you might ask?  No, it's Ontario's first mozzarella bar.

The Toronto Sausage League had its inaugural competition this past wednesday.  No, it is not an all-male bowling league, it's an event in which two chefs go head to head, determining which one can make the best sausage dish.  Over the next five months, the challenge will be held weekly, eventually crowning someone champion and giving them the proud title of Sausage King.

The Local Come Lately has a stop by stop recap of the Delicious Stratford Debut Stroll, for which he was a guide.  It looks like this summer will have some pretty amazing dishes offered by some of our incredible local chefs.  Can't wait to start eating!

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