Food brings people together. After all, it is our staff's favorite part of production week: production snack and dinner. Pesto pasta, Chinese food, Izzy's Bagels and homemade lemonade are just a sample of the satisfying goodies that filled our stomachs in this production cycle. For a few minutes, we take a break from staring at Indesign on the computer screen and worrying about our stories, to eat our delicious grub in the classroom, laugh, gossip, and listen to outrageous Youtube videos. While we have had to deal with tragic losses in the Palo Alto community, a tough economy, and the daily stresses of school work and extracurricular activities, we always have fine meals to give us a break during the day.

So we invite you to read our first issue of the school year, which focuses on food, in hopes that you'll take a break from the stresses in your life to relax and delve into Verde. Unfortunately, this is not foodporndaily.com or the Food Network, where one literally starts drooling from looking at images of food. However, we go beyond eating food to reveal the growth in celiac disease diagnoses in "Living with Celiac" (pg. 34). To accompany this story, we have "No Bread for Me" (pg. 38), Camille Von Kaenel's experiences eating gluten-free for a week. Have you been wondering when Trader Joe's will finally arrive at Town and Country? Well, we have, and we went further and looked into the store's history in "Do you know Joe's?" (pg. 43). You may be surprised by what you find in the store's past, but here's a hint: pantyhose.

Along with our cover package, we also have other stories from one of the largest writing staffs Verde has had in years. In Perspectives, an East Palo Alto resident shares her experience living with a sex offender in her neighborhood in "Let Him Be" (pg. 22). In Culture, we embrace Halloween by recommending some spooky entertainment in "Halloween Hits: Four Great Zombie Films" (pg. 60). We also explore the looming H1N1 issue in "Fighting the Battle" (pg. 46).

For this edition, we decided to re-organize the magazine by splitting it into sections in order to promote readability. "The Launch" is an interesting perspective that kicks off the magazine; "Spectrum" compiles all of our short features; "Perspectives" are opinion pieces; "Culture" has reviews; "Ryan's Rules" is Ryan Flanagan's page for her to share her wisdom on various issues; and "Profiles", "Cover" and "Features" are pretty self-explanatory. The cover pages for each of these sections, designed by Emily James, will hopefully add to the organization of the magazine.

We have an amazing new staff this year, including photographer Sarah Henderson, artist Yelena Kasianova and cartoonist Harry Nordlinger. Along with celebrating our staff, we would like to congratulate our adviser Mr. Kandell on winning the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund's 2009 National Journalism Teacher of the Year award. It has been a great start to the year and we could not be more excited for the rest of the year. So besides saying welcome to the issue, we'd like to say welcome to the start of volume 11 of Verde.

— Amanda & Caroline