Friends

On Sunday, Thomas Albright will wake up early. Before 5 a.m., the patriarch of the Albright Farms family will be in his truck, driving from his farm in Monkton to the city, where Saratoga and Holliday streets meet underneath the Jones Falls Expressway. By 7 a.m., he'll see his first customers — friendly faces coming to buy Albright Farms' produce or meat, kicking off another season of the Baltimore Farmers' Market & Bazaar. Albright has participated in the market since 1979, just two years after it opened.

We live in an age that glorifies home cooking. Accomplished chefs across the region strive to recreate the flavors, smells and experiences of their grandmothers' kitchens. "Comfort food" is an haute cuisine buzzword. Though it's been open for more than five decades, with capable home-style cooking and kindly service, Friendly Farm is a restaurant for these times. Jack and Dorothy Wilhelm opened the restaurant in 1959, after an accident left Jack unable to work their 200-acre Upperco farm.

Forgetting what day it was and unaware of her son's new-found love of pranks, Rodgers Forge resident Kim Morton walked unsuspectingly into the kitchen one morning and found herself soaked. "I came downstairs dressed nicely for work," she says of that April 1st. "I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and walked to the sink. Using a rubber band and toothpick, [my son] had rigged it so when you turned the faucet on, the water came out right at chest level. " A change of clothes later, Morton says she and her husband, Will, were smiling.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game - in this case, the game show "Jeopardy!" Tom Lynn, of Radnor-Winston, played so well that a crowd of 50 family members, friends and former colleagues and classmates gave him a standing ovation Monday evening at the Zen West cantina on York Road, where they gathered at his invitation to watch the taped show on a big-screen TV. Lynn, who taped his appearance in November, was prohibited contractually...

I spoke with a friend/fellow bride-to-be recently who brought up something I hadn't really considered before. In terms of wedding planning, when is it appropriate versus inappropriate to copy off of another bride's ideas? Obviously in the world of social media, especially Pinterest, it sometimes can be hard not to copy, but typically that's taking an idea from a stranger who you don't even know. That, I think, is completely appropriate…and I'm very grateful to all of the strangers whom I have snatched ideas from during the planning process.

The Della Roses are a family that works. The family has been in the restaurant business since 1944, when brothers Tony and Joe Della Rose opened a tavern in East Baltimore. Over time, the business grew and changed, morphing into a cheery pub serving bar-friendly food with an Italian twist. Today, three generations of the family work at Della Rose's Avenue Tavern, which opened on the Avenue at White Marsh in 1998. From the matriarch, now in her 80s and still working in the kitchen, to family members in their 20s and 30s, daily operations are a family affair.

  "Things happen for a reason. " Potomac's Nana Meriwether, the reigning Miss USA, says that a lot. Especially when she talks about the road she followed to her title: two runner-up finishes at the Miss California pageant before being crowned Miss Maryland last year; another second-place finish, this time in June's Miss USA competition; then - finally - the Miss USA crown, but only after the woman who beat her, 20-year-old Olivia Culpo...

Buy a shirt, save the world. OK, it might not be that easy. But at Boulder, an eco-conscious clothing store for men, customers can do their part to make a difference in the environment. "Everything we do is centered around the environment, animal welfare and community," says general manager Evan Saulsbury. "We want you to feel good about how you look and know where your clothes come from. " Boulder, which opened this summer, is the latest addition to Conscious Corner in Clarksville -- a collection of businesses on Route 108 near River Hill that are focused on healthy and mindful living.

Sara Knutson Cullen was as comfortable in a dress and stiletto heels as she was smoking cigars and flying Black Hawk helicopters in Afghanistan - a driven and level-headed 27-year-old whose dreams stretched far beyond her roots in Carroll County, family and friends said Sunday. Cullen, a captain in the U.S. Army, died along with four other Army members in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan last Monday, the Department of Defense said. She is the first Marylander killed in Afghanistan this year.

El Capitan is an intimidating granite formation in California's Yosemite National Park, popular with climbers because its 7,573-foot vertical face presents such a challenge. Pete Davis has done the four-night, five-day ascent twice, which is an accomplishment in itself. And he did it with one hand. The native of Phoenix in Baltimore County was born without an arm below the elbow, but as he shows in the short climbing film "The Gimp Monkeys," he'd rather have "one hand and a good attitude" than two hands and a bad outlook.