Lunch

Jean E. Small, who co-owned and ran a Lexington Street pharmacy and was later honored for thousands of volunteer hours at Sinai Hospital and Meals on Wheels, died of Monday of complications from old age at Levindale Hebrew Convalescent Home. The Village of Cross Keys resident was 96. Born Esther Jeanette "Jean" Taylor in Baltimore, she attended city public schools and began working alongside her father at his Gay Street furniture business. She joined the Miriam Lodge and United Order of True Sisters, a Jewish charity organization, and delivered food baskets on the High Holy Days to the needy.

KOSOVO, Yugoslavia -- Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have begun to return to their ruined villages.Donkey carts and tractors ply the roads, seeking supplies as winter cold intensifies. But where do the drivers live? Only rubble and graffiti remain where the Yugoslav army swept through last month. Every house looks uninhabitable.From the midst of one ruin, in the village of Carraluuka, smoke rises. What had appeared to be an abandoned structure bristles with life. Smiling children run up as their parents peek out cautiously.

Upstairs at the Middleton Tavern, a near-quorum of Maryland's 188-member General Assembly settled in for a winter's eve of succulent Chesapeake Bay oysters, mounds of colorful crudites, hand-carved meats and an open bar -- courtesy of lobbyist Dennis C. McCoy and one of his many clients, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons.McCoy is host of one of the legislative session's most popular receptions, generating enough good cheer to erase boundaries between Republican and Democrat, city and suburb, haughty reformer and unrepentant schmoozer.

Waterfront dining, with a great view of sailboats on the harbor, and a menu featuring a good variety of seafood, including delicious crab cakes -- what more could you ask for in an Annapolis restaurant?Well, stuffed fried shrimp that isn't rock-hard, perhaps.But that was pretty much the only flaw in my recent lunch at the Phillips restaurant that opened in July at the Annapolis City Dock.My mother and I arrived at Phillips shortly before 2 p.m. on a recent day to find the restaurant almost empty, so we were seated immediately on an outside terrace overlooking the City Dock.

For years I wondered what ever happened to the dark meat of the chicken. None of the restaurants I patronized had it on the menu, I'd noticed. Somebody told me it was being sent to feed the starving Russians. As I said, I worried about this for years. Then one day it all came clear to me after I had lunch with the pope.This is no joke. I did have lunch with the pope, as surely as I flew to Europe once on the Concorde. Understand, I'm not relating these experiences to exhibit the deep texture of my life, or for any other self-promoting purpose.

The Colonial columns and sweeping greenswards of the University of Maryland are a world away from the tough corners of Baltimore County's west side -- but the two were joined yesterday for a few hours at an innovative event for children at risk.A dozen middle school pupils -- first-time offenders in a Baltimore County police-run program -- were among 125 children who attended the seventh National Student-Athlete Day at College Park. They were paired with college athletes for five hours of tours, games, speeches and a box lunch.

A group of Goucher College students tried to take the campus back to the '50s yesterday, not to the innocent time of poodle skirts and Elvis hits, but to the dark side of the decade when racial segregation was common and legal.Students heading into lunch at Stimson Hall could take labels that designated them as "white" or "colored."The two groups were then directed to different silverware, different lunch lines, different tables."It was definitely an experience," said Will Vought, a senior.

IT HAD to be a firecracker. .....The quick popping sound that interrupted our seventh-grade English class could be nothing else. It was Jan. 20, 1983, a Thursday, and my classmates and I were sitting through a grammar lesson. There were 10 minutes to go until lunch.Our school, Parkway South Junior High, was an orderly, well-regarded place ensconced in a western suburb of St. Louis. The pupils were predominantly middle-class and, on the whole, we took our budding educations seriously. In our community, a bang in the distance meant a firecracker, a cap gun or a backfiring engine -- petty fractures in the white noise of suburban life.

In Carroll's high school cafeterias next year, hungry students can just say "super size."The Carroll County school board approved yesterday a plan that will give students the option to transform the routine $1.65 lunch tray into a $2.15 "super lunch" with enticements such as more french fries, a larger burger and extra chicken tenders.The plan is aimed at helping offset a projected $9,437 loss in the system's food service budget, despite a 10-cent increase during the past year in the price of regular lunches.

Take heart, those of you who miss the original M. Gettier, the Fells Point restaurant that two years ago moved to the burbs and became M. Gettier's Orchard Inn. Changes are planned that may make owner-chef Michael Gettier's new place more like his original idiosyncratic French restaurant.They start with renovations this summer -- relatively minor ones in the dining rooms, but a complete makeover for the lounge. Dan Procttor of Kirk Designs, who was responsible for Gertrude's handsome interior at the Baltimore Museum of Art, will be in charge.

The idea of fresh, local, healthful foods in Baltimore City school cafeterias seems like a great idea. Who could argue with the health benefits of serving whole grains, fruits and vegetables (and by "vegetables," we don't mean ketchup)? There's something intuitively appealing about bringing school lunches back to what they once were, before frozen trays of ultra-processed chicken nuggets became the norm. But as with everything, there are trade-offs. Schools outsourced meal preparation in an effort to save money, and converting back will have costs - as much as $3 million, for example, to retrofit a warehouse into a central cooking facility.

Miss USA was soooo earlier this week. Our collective attention turns to Mr. NFL, and the American work force slows considerably as we fill out our mock drafts and channel our inner Mel Kiper Jr. We toss around terms like "upside" and "potential," and we're all focused on the future. Everyone is trying to identify the one guy who can change a franchise. So it makes sense that Eric DeCosta would play such a prominent role this weekend. There aren't many with a brighter future. It's kind of funny, because if you visit most NFL cities, the guy who holds DeCosta's job for the local football team would be just a guy. A name reporters bandy about, a page to be flipped past in the media guide.

'South Park' gets West to wake up South Park may have accomplished the impossible - getting Kanye West to check his ego. The Comedy Central cartoon skewered the rapper Wednesday. West responded Thursday on his blog, saying that the show was funny but that it also hurt his feelings and has helped him realize that maybe he needs to stop saying how great he is. West wrote in typical all-caps: "I JUST WANT TO BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM."

Annapolis Warehouse boutique sale is today The Annapolis Warehouse Sale, featuring clothing and accessories from more than a dozen local boutiques and designers, will be held from noon to 5 p.m. today at Loews Annapolis Hotel, 126 West St. Admission is $10 for the VIP hour from noon to 1 p.m. to benefit Modest Needs, and free from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The sale will feature up to 75 percent off end-of-season merchandise, including women's and children's clothing,...

Both kids and parents tend to start each school year with resolutions. Kids vow to do their homework on time, keep their backpacks neat and never oversleep. Parents say this is the year they'll master the art of providing healthful and interesting lunches. Concerns about childhood nutrition, food allergies and cost are shaking up the packed school lunch. Even the bag it often came in is becoming outdated. "Waste-free" lunches, packed in reusable containers and served with cloth napkins instead of paper, are becoming popular alternatives, thanks to efforts from a California group called wastefreelunches.

Six schools in Howard County fell short of meeting state-ordered progress goals in the past year and were placed on a list of underperforming schools, despite appeals filed by county education officials. The elementary schools were Bollman Bridge in Jessup and Stevens Forest in Columbia. The middle schools were Harper's Choice in Columbia, Patuxent Valley in Jessup, Murray Hill in Laurel and Oakland Mills in Columbia. At Bollman Bridge, students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, and those in special-education programs did not meet the proficiency standard in math, which led to the school's being placed on the Adequate Yearly Progress list.

If you buy some smoked Polish sausage, then pick up a loaf of rye bread and snag some beet-flavored horseradish, you end up with a spicy, satisfying Polish lunch. That is what I did recently after visiting three sources of sausage in East Baltimore. The meat, mostly pork, is chopped, blended with seasonings and stuffed into casings, then smoked for hours. After lunch, slices of the leftover sausage made pleasing snacks. Best Bite Krakus Deli Address --1737 Fleet St., Fells Point Phone --410-732-7533 Hours --10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday The smoked hunter's sausage at $5.65 a pound measures about 1 inch in diameter (finger-length)

Hannah Wehrmeister had to convince her mother that it was OK to pack silverware in her lunch. A second-grader at Atholton Elementary School, Hannah was participating in Waste-Free Wednesday, part of the school's Green School initiative. She knew that plastic utensils could not be recycled, and that silverware is reusable. "At first, my mom told me no, but she decided yes," Hannah said. Everything in her lunch - containers for applesauce and pasta, the silverware, even a baggie for her milk money - went home to be used again.

Today, Dec. 8, is the Roman Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. As a schoolboy, I had the day off and it was traditionally spent along a routine established by my mother. After attendance at a Mass, we didn't return home. We had two routes. My mother, ever practical, scheduled all sorts of medical and dental appointments that day. She also bribed us by saying that the Medical Arts Building in the Mount Vernon neighborhood was more than halfway downtown. So, if all went well, we could compress religious observance, medical appointments and a Christmas outing.

A study by the University of Minnesota found that healthier school lunches don't chase away student customers and don't always cost more to provide. But while many school districts find students more receptive to nutritious meals than they might have expected, providing those meals at reasonable costs is more of a challenge. That is likely to be true in Baltimore and other Maryland districts as school budgets tighten in the next couple of years. Nationally, the most recent survey by the School Nutrition Association, released last month, found that districts are offering more whole grain products, fruits, vegetables and other nutritious foods.