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Alex Roberts Photo by Kate NG SommersChef Alex Roberts is a low-key kind of guy. He doesn’t yell or throw temper tantrums, a la Gordon Ramsay. He doesn't have the legendary ego of a rock star chef ("I don't feel that I'm the best at anything," he recently told the Star Tribune's Rick Nelson).

For a city its size, Minneapolis is home to an impressive number of great restaurants, with amazing chefs focused on providing seasonal, local, sustainable Minnesota-and-Wisconsin-grown food. Add in St. Paul (which you really should, especially given the existence of Heartland, named St. Paul's best restaurant in the City Pages 2009 poll), and the number becomes almost shocking. Restaurant Alma has been quietly delighting fans of local food since 1999.

CSA sign-up season has officially kicked off in New York, and, as seems to be the case every year, memberships are getting gobbled up faster than they can be publicized.

Ah, Spring is in the air! For my family, that means loads of birthday celebrations, along with Easter, Passover, and May Day. We celebrate whenever we can. Easter Sunday is an easy one to do with local, sustainable, and organic foods, especially if you live in Minnesota, land of the pig and root vegetable. The folks at TheKitchn.com have provided a terrific list of places to find sustainable ham (heritage breeds), just in time for Easter.

My Dad, eater of Joyva jelly rings, Kosher beef tongue, and the biggest bags of salad you've ever seen, moved from New York (where I grew up) to Bristol, Pennsylvania with his wife Paula several years before he died.