Cover: Spring Food Section

How Chefs Create: Helpful hints on inventing new dishes.

Lettuce Pray: In praise of iceberg lettuce.

Beer Cookery: Try some suds in your favorite recipe.

Somethin's Cookin': A cookbook for every taste.

News: Duck & Cover
Sebastopol's Laguna de Santa Rosa goes from wasteland to wetland.

Understanding Gun Violence: Join Together Online, a project of the Boston University of Public Health, provides community resources for those trying to make sense out school shootings.

Up to the Task?: See how your kids' school did in the state Standardized Testing and Reporting program.

Climbing Up on Capitol Hill: Check up on the your Congressional Representatives and U.S. Senators--where they stand, how they voted.

Classical Gas: A new generation of pianists make a grand statement.

Bukowski Lives!: Black Sparrow Press preserves America's grittiest poet.

True Story: Teenage Single Mom comix stuns and outrages.

Raising the Dead: Sweet Chaos traces the strange history of the Grateful Dead.

Heard It Through the Grapevine: Get to the root of all things wine.

Aisles Seat: Mixed bag from Pacific Alliance and the Bodega Theatre Company.

Getting 'Kinky': Kate Winslet sails with style into the indie film Hideous Kinky.

Synthetic Cinema: The Matrix is inhumanly derivative.

The Real 'Rent': Director Steven Okazaki discusses the politics of shooting San Francisco's heroin addicts.

Smash the Past: 'Smashing' relives the century with a retro party decathalon.