Wiarton Foodland

For me, the best part of shopping at Wiarton Foodland is shopping at the LCBO across the street. I often have occasion to do that when the Farm Manager is on one of her two or three hour hunter-gatherer forays into Foodland.

These happen all too often for my liking, but what can you do? Sit tight in the parking lot and hope for something interesting to happen, I guess...

Sometimes I'll wander over to the liquor store and take care of that part of the shopping while the FM is taking care of the meat and cheese and produce and breakfast cereal. That's what I did today.

Other times I'll meander around the corner to Sullivan's Butcher Shop. That's a genuine old-school butcher shop, except everybody who works there wears a hair-net these days. I remember when I was a kid, people used to not have to wear hair-nets in the butcher shop. Is there a single case of anyone becoming ill because there was a hair in their ground beef?

Besides, I don't go there for the ground beef. The Farm Manager takes care of that at Foodland. I go there for the fabulous smoked sausages. I usually pick up three; one honey-garlic, one hot, and one maple. It's me and Boomer and Lucy in the car, so between me and the hounds we can easily have these cleaned up before the FM is any the wiser.

She's got a thing about what I should eat for my "heart health," and regrettably, smoked sausages are not on the list.

My understanding is that the Sullivan clan smoke these puppies in their home smoker and bring them to the shop... (apologies in advance if I got that wrong, fellas). How do I know if they're wearing their hair-nets when they're tending the smoker in the back yard?

Point is, I think this hair-net hysteria, along with those gloves everybody wears now when they handle food, is just more bullshit from our $350,000/year "Chief Medical Officer" to justify her extravagant salary... after all, she probably makes more than all the butchers in Grey and Bruce counties combined!

Not that I begrudge her her job. After all, supervising the anti-smoking bylaws and making sure the food-service folks wear their hair-nets and gloves is important work. To say nothing of keeping Michael Schmidt's non-pasteurized milk away from a gullible public...

I mean, I kinda get it in a way. You don't want to be chowing down on a corned beef sandwich if the kid who fixed it just picked his nose. So thank God and the Chief Medical Officer for those latex gloves!... but how do you know the kid didn't pick his nose with the gloves on?

But I digress.

There's big changes in store to how we shop in Wiarton. Foodland-by-the-bay will soon be a distant memory. They're building a new Foodland at the south end of the Flats in the Timmies parking lot.

Ya, I don't get it either. No longer will I be able to wander across the street to the liquor store or around the corner to Sullivan's. I'll have to drive everywhere. Wonder how the Chief Medical Officer feels about that?

Has she not heard of "global warming?"

And that Timmies was in itself a dodgy affair. How many towns have torn down a school to put up a Tim Horton's? Just wondering where our priorities lie...

So me and the hounds have finished off the smokies, and I figure I've probably got time to pick up the medicine at the liquor store. It's super-busy today on account of all the tourists.

Who do I run into but Tommy Chong!

Well, I guess there is a possibility it wasn't him, but if you watch Up in Smoke and then look at this guy you'd see where I'm coming from

What tipped me off is Chong is right behind me in the checkout line, and right up by the counter where they've got the "staff picks" seductively situated for your impulse purchasing pleasure, there's a bottle of something called "Homegrown."

From behind me I hear, "Oh wow man!"

Had to be Tommy Chong.