GALION -- Jean Plack holds the key to the tastiness of the funnel cakes served up by the volunteers for Home Care Matters Home Health and Hospice.

"I have been making the batter continuously for the stand since we opened in 1991," Plack said.

.

Newsom ready to sue over cuts in Medi-Cal

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is considering a run for governor in 2010, injected himself into California's heated budget battle Tuesday by threatening to sue the state over cuts to its medical insurance program for the poor.

Newsom offered few specifics about the potential lawsuit, other than to say he has the support of health care providers around the state and that he is working to bring other municipalities on board. It has not yet been decided whether the city of San Francisco will file the lawsuit on its own or whether the suit will include Newsom and a broad coalition of supporters.

THE NEW MOM & POP

YEARS ago, Amy Miceli left her home state of Nebraska for the offbeat Northern California life and took a job at a flower shop in Humboldt County. Her boss offered no health insurance, but she did provide massages for employees once a month. And there were other benefits, she discovered, when the boss' son, Kevin, arrived for a visit.

"I met him, and that was it," says Amy, 39. "We decided we're going to spend the rest of our lives together."

Today, "16 years and three kids later," the Micelis spend not only their domestic lives together, but their working lives, as well. The couple own and operate Ciao for Now, a homey cafe and catering service in the East Village, where Kevin, a gregarious Staten Island native who's worked as a Fulton Market fishmonger and a machete-wielding harvester on wildflower farms, greets regulars by name from behind the counter, while Amy, a former preschool teacher, plans the menu and arranges orders from a nearby office.