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TeTe, a Peruvian cafe, is the newest addition to the restaurant offerings in Highland Park, at 304 Raritan Avenue, where Penny's and more recently Shushan Grill were formerly located.

Time was, school lunches featured “Salisbury steak” and mashed potatoes, with a side of corn as a vegetable. You could mash it all together into what comic Patton Oswalt calls a failure pile in a sadness bowl, washed down with strawberry milk and chased with a bright green mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. Yep, those were the days.

It may have seemed a long time coming to some, but the "Sprout Spot" at Irving Primary School, the "Lettuce Grow" garden at Bartle Elementary, and the Highland Park Middle & High School's "Garden of Eatin'" are in full swing. Teachers, students and the community are enjoying the fruits (or veggies!) of their labor.

At the middle school/high school garden, Dara Botvinick often holds class surrounded by the lettuce, spinach, peas, beans, nasturtium, and tomato and squash plants. "I really enjoy the impact of the garden on the students,” says Botvinick.

Three foreign born writers take on the challenge of New York City, its intoxicating promise as well as the punches it doles out to the novice and the native alike.

This may be a bit too removed from objectivity and a lack of vested interest for a review, so fortunately it’s not a review. It is a profile of an artist who happens to be one of the first people I ever met. Agop Gemdjian's solo exhibition at Alfa Art Gallery in New Brunswick opened last week and runs through the month of June.

This is after all an article, so let me start with an objective quote from an early review. It's by Roumen Serafimov, art critic for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Varna, Bulgaria. Writing in 1990, he said that Gemdjian is “an artist who has ever demonstrated his bent for vanguard and figurative thinking, and non-traditional plastic creation."

This year's squad did not lose any starters from a year ago, the coach said. "We're starting a couple of levels higher than (had we) lost some players . . . . We’re working more on situations, different defensive plays and different styles of batting," she added.

Four guys are standing at the intersection of two well known borough streets, South Seventh and Eden Avenues. For them it's their hood, and they are about to Break out -- or in their case, "Breakdown."

The Mile Long Boyz, Highland Park's own grassroots hiphop band, is about to release its first album, Walk A Mile in Our Shoes, and has been enjoying exposure on Youtube with their new video, Breakdown. For more than three years, HPHS seniors Altier Haskins (vocalist) and Ashton Burrell (rapper), and Haskins' older brother Kenny (Terrik), a Middlesex County Community College student Kenny (Terrik) Haskins, have been putting their hometown on the music map.

It is the forgotten spring activity—the one many athletes use to stay in peak condition after their main season ends. But track & field requires Highland Park High School athletes to be more versatile than they’d ever imagine in another sport.

While for many dog owners, the appearance of the small-dog park might seem sudden, there are those for whom it couldn’t arrive soon enough. Case in point: Taffee, the Jack Russell Terrier.