Thinly sliced: Opossum breaks into liquor store and drinks cognac, dollar stores see growth in rural America, and more

This is the web version of a list we publish twice-weekly in our newsletter. It comprises the most noteworthy food stories of the moment, selected by our editors. Get it first here.

1. Shuffling chairs at Blue Apron. The meal-kit delivery company named Brad Dickerson, the former chief financial officer, as its new CEO, replacing co-founder Matt Salzberg, who will stay on as a chairman. Before joining Blue Apron in February 2016, Dickerson was the chief financial officer of an athletic apparel company.

2. Hampton Creek, the Silicon Valley startup known for plant-based products like Just Mayo, is releasing a long-awaited vegan egg substitute.

3. Reporters at the Washington Post got their hands on an advance copy of Let Trump Be Trump, a tell-all co-written by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Some of the book’s most astonishing details concern the Presidential diet, like Trump’s regular McDonald’s dinner order: two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate milkshake. A blogger replicated that meal and it did not go well.

4. We reported that dollar stores are eating into independent grocers’ market share in rural America. The Wall Street Journal took a closer look at that trend, focusing on the success of Dollar General, a Tennessee-based chain now catering to shoppers who don’t buy fresh foods. The story’s behind a paywall, but as Vox notes, the company’s CEO says income inequality may drive its growth.

5. Lowell Hawthorne, the founder of Golden Krust, died on Saturday, the result of an apparent gunshot suicide in a Bronx factory. His company was an archetypal New York success story, growing from a single store selling beef patties to perhaps the country’s largest Caribbean food chain. The New York Post reported he owed millions in taxes.

6. In a blistering editorial, the Toledo Blade tells Governor John Kasich that “voluntary compliance” isn’t going to clean Lake Erie, and demands he hold all farmers accountable for fertilizer and manure runoff that pollute the body of water. “Lake Erie is becoming a national punchline,” the editors write. “Mr. Kasich, are you listening?”

7. Martha’s Vineyard landowners are opening their properties to deer hunters. The idea is to reduce the prevalence of a tick-born illness carried by the island’s substantial deer population, while at the same time, to stock a local food pantry with venison.

8. Last week, a Florida ne’er-do-well was released from a treatment center. The young female opossum, who’d broken into a liquor store on Thanksgiving, and finished a “whole damn bottle” of Courvoisier cognac, had been convalescing at local wildlife refuge. The Northwest Florida Daily News has the story.

9. Maybe the opossum was suffering from “headline distress disorder.” Munchies reports this year’s news cycle has driven more Americans to drink.