What’s Cooking – Wednesday, March 17th

Here's what's cooking around town today...

I'm going to be a Debbie Downer in this debate about local versus global food and call out both participants as being full of hot air. Both Sarah Elton and Pierre Desrochers make a few good points, but both are being stubbornly naive about their selected food systems. Neither big food or little food is perfect, for a variety of reasons, and what we really need are big operations working with a more community-oriented mindset, better enforcement of organic standards, and a realization that supporting local cannot be about food miles but must be about community. [Globe and Mail]

Pepsi will pull sugary drinks from schools by 2012. The real question is, what will kids be offered in its place - diet drinks full of aspartame? [Toronto Star]

Yeah, yeah... green beer for St. Patty's Day. Even if it's the environmentally-friendly "green", the joke is getting tired. But it is really interesting to see what breweries are doing to reduce their environmental impact. [Globe and Mail]

Count to 3, try not to cry. You've gone through all the hard work of canning and preserving and - oh, crap - a jar breaks, seemingly for no reason. [Well Preserved]

Forget the green beer and St. Patrick, this weekend marks Nowruz, the Persian new year, where sweets and treats will fill homes in the Middle East and across the GTA. [Toronto Star]

How about a list of best places to go to avoid green puke? No? Okay... de rigeur St. Patty's Day suggestions. [Post City]

A Niagara winery has come up with something called Ice Syrup - made from a similar process as ice wine, it sounds tasty, but neither this article or the web site for the stuff reveals if it has been fermented to have an alcohol content. [Toronto Sun]

Variety is the spice of life - monkeys prefer a variety of foods, and so do we. [National Post]

And in Food For Thought - foodies on food stamps, the rising popularity of kosher food, and restaurants charging for clean utensils. [Save Your Fork]