-- Blogspotting: She came, she saw -- she ate L.A. California girl-turned-New Yawker Kathy Patalsky blew through Los Angeles for a weekend and documented every vegan bite at her popular blog and website, Healthy-Happy-Life.com. At left: the Twister Wrap at Native Foods Cafe in Westwood. And here's her "I Love L.A." for vegan dining recommendations and more:

-- What would happen if you made sushi ... using Swedish fish? This.

-- You laptop types love the newly free Wi-Fi at Starbucks, right? But what about the folks who like their coffee without Internet service -- or would at least like to find an open chair while enjoying that overpriced cup of joe?

-- Ripe heirloom tomatoes in May?!?! How could that be? Find out how a lucky mistake -- a runaway tomato at the end of last season's harvest -- has one gardener wondering whether she should start planing tomatoes in the fall ...

-- "If Jimi Hendrix and Jack the Ripper had opened a bar in the Haight in the 1860s, this is what it would look like." That's celebrity interior designer Dana Hollister talking about her new bar, Villains Tavern, slated to open soon at 1356 Palmetto St., near the Arts District. Vintage chandeliers, blood-red walls, a repurposed bar that started life in The Bowery in the 1880s are on tap, along with nearly 30 draft beers, according to the announcement.

-- Beloved movie critic Roger Ebert -- whose battle with cancer left him unable to speak or eat -- is publishing a cookbook dedicated to rice cookers, a kitchen appliance he lovingly calls "The Pot" and champions as an answer for those strapped for cash, time and counter space. "To be sure, health problems have prevented me from eating," Ebert writes in the book. "That did not discourage my cooking. It became an exercise more pure, freed of biological compulsion."

-- Talk about a food fight: Police in Washington state responded to a fight that broke out between a brother and sister over whether to use butter or margarine in a batch of mac-n-cheese. I don't know for sure, but I'll bet that tensions were running high because they were making some really fancy mac like this, and not the stuff in the box.

-- Rene Lynch

twitter.com/renelynch

Photo credit: Kathy Patalsky