Au

Dear SOS: A large group of us descended from the higher elevations of the Cuyamaca Mountains in San Diego County, a little grungy from camping and hiking. No matter: We received excellent service during lunch at Jeremy's on the Hill , just a few miles outside of Julian. Everyone, from the professional chef/fancy hotel executive to the foodies to the children who ate off the kids' menu, thoroughly enjoyed their meals. I, however, had the wise sense to order the waitress' favorite, the artichoke-potato au gratin, which came with broccolini and a house salad with balsamic reduction.

  Vol-au-vents with pea shoots and herbed goat cheese Our recipes, your kitchen: If you try any of the L.A. Times Test Kitchen recipes from this week's Food section, please share it with us: Click here to upload pictures of the finished dish. Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes Servings: 4 Note: This recipe can be adjusted to make smaller vol-au-vents to use as hors d'oeuvres, if desired. 1 recipe Quick Puff Pastry 1 egg, beaten 1 tablespoon canola oil 2 slices prosciutto, chopped 4 ounces fresh goat cheese Salt Freshly ground black pepper 1 tablespoon freshly chopped chives, more if desired 1/4 cup olive oil 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar 3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard, preferably whole-grain 1 tablespoon minced shallots 3 cups pea shoots (or baby arugula)

A day after Haiti's runoff election for president, the candidates kept a low profile Monday while they and the voters were left to wait at least a week and a half for official results. The scene in Port-au-Prince was calm, as it had been Sunday during balloting in the race between popular singer Michel Martelly and university administrator Mirlande Manigat. Preliminary results are due March 31. A final tally is to be announced April 16, almost a month after the balloting, to give the candidates a chance to lodge legal challenges.

The dozen biologists on Point Au Fer Island were on an 11th-hour mission to count what was there before it was gone. Nearly two months into the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which has dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, they were counting birds guarding chicks and eggs. Trying to ignore the sweltering heat and stinging deer flies, the biologists strode across the island's remote beaches and sandbars for two days last week to take stock of avian life before oil comes ashore.

The window- cleaning bill at Main Street shop Jadis in Santa Monica must be huge. So many people have leaned against the glass to peer at Parke Meek's seldom-open, oddity-packed domain. The word jadis in French refers to a period that is romantically distant. In Meek's crowded aisles, the romance includes the future as well as the past. Is that a Tesla coil hulking in the shadows? Do the aged black telephones work? Part old curiosity shop, mainly a prop house, Jadis is a monument to Meek's lifelong fascination with the improbable possible.

Relief organizations on Saturday began to move Haitians from tent camps that are in danger of flooding to new camps on the perimeter of the city, part of a larger plan to decentralize the population after January's devastating earthquake. After a heavy rain the night before, buses carried 62 people from a bedraggled camp on a defunct golf course to a barren field 10 miles northwest of the city. Aid workers helped Romaine Vincent Donal, 44, load her belongings in wheelbarrows.

When a city crashes to the ground, how do you dispose of it? Six weeks after an earthquake reduced Port-au-Prince to the ruins of a lost war, Haitian and foreign officials who hope to build a new capital first have to confront the wreckage of the old one. The capital is a panorama of rubble: collapsed and half-fallen stores, banks, apartment buildings and homes, hillsides covered by broken shacks that fell like dominoes. Gnarled steel rebar lies all over in massive tangles, like a thousand Medusas.

Few things are certain in Jislene Brisson's life these days. The Haitian mother of four lost her husband and her house in the earthquake that ravaged this impoverished country a month ago. She has little money left and the emergency food deliveries that aid groups are still struggling to establish have yet to reach her and her children, she said. In fact, there is perhaps only one thing Brisson can count on and it terrifies her: The rains are coming to Haiti and she is not prepared.

Reporting from Petite Riviere De L'Artibonite, Haiti -- National Route 1, which cuts north along the Caribbean from Haiti's crumpled capital, barely deserves to be called a road in stretches, much less a national highway. Long sections are more potholed than paved, and for miles and miles the pavement disappears altogether and is replaced not so much by dirt as by rocks the size of mangoes. On this road, earthquake victims have fled Port-au-Prince by the tens of thousands.

Clifford Berrette, 11 years old and 4 feet tall, moved like a determined little man through the choking exhaust of the bus terminal in scuffed white sneakers, unnoticed in the crush of people hurrying to leave town. He picked up a rag from the ground and began to wipe the dirt off a blue minibus, clambering up bumpers and tires to reach the high spots. A taller boy started to clean the vehicle too, but Clifford wasn't going to let him horn in; he shoved him away. Then he extended a small palm to the driver.