After five years in a partnership called “Cooks | Bellecour,” Grand Avenue culinary shop Cooks of Crocus Hill is separating from chef Gavin Kaysen’s bakery and rebranding back to its longstanding solo name.

Cooks of Crocus Hill plans to maintain its flagship St. Paul location as normal — minus the pastries that had been delivered daily.

In the North Loop of Minneapolis, the retail shop and bakery will close but Cooks will continue to operate a cooking school, and the Edina location will close altogether, both effective May 31.

The kitchen store and cooking school, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2023, had been renamed from Th’rice to Cooks of Crocus Hill when founder Martha Kaemmer moved it to the current Grand Avenue location in 1988.

Current owners Karl Benson and Marie Dwyer have run the business since 2008 and, in a post-Bellecour era, are planning additional programming including culinary travel, a spokesperson said.

“That is partly how we have been able to survive in this business, is constant innovation,” Dwyer told the Pioneer Press in 2023. “We’ve learned so much along the way. Make the same mistake twice? I don’t think so.”

To remain relevant, Benson added in 2023, “we have to change, to stay exactly the same.”

Cooks of Crocus Hill: 877 Grand Ave.; 651-228-1333; cooksofcrocushill.com

Related Articles

St. Paul’s Grand Old Day to return Sunday, June 1, with parade and local music

Mischief Toy Store of St. Paul joins lawsuit against Trump tariffs

Dining Diary: Breakfast at Razava, dinner at The High Hat, dessert and drinks at Estelle

St. Paul: Grand Ave. Anthropologie/Salut site undergoing renovation for new retail, restaurants

Developer plans six-story, mixed-use project at Grand Avenue and Victoria Street in St. Paul

May is mental health awareness month and Ramsey County officials are spending it connecting people with mental health resources through a new outreach vehicle.

The vehicle, which was purchased using a one-time grant through the state, will be out in the community and at events to connect visitors with mental health resources and other county services.

The Ramsey County Mental Health Bus at the Ramsey County Public Works in Arden Hills on Friday, May 9, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“We want to bring awareness, we want to reduce stigma, and we want to increase access. And so we want to first use the vehicle as a tool, not just for Ramsey County, but for mental health services for all,” said Sophia Thompson, Ramsey County’s Social Services director. “The intent is not to just focus on the services that Ramsey County provides, but our valuable partners that we have in the community. We have so many other agencies that are providing mental health services, and we intend to partner with them.”

The main purpose of the vehicle will be providing mental health assessments, connection and resources, Thompson said. Assessments could take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, she said, with the focus on what people need in the moment and what clinicians the county can make available.

Assessments

The county is focusing on creating one-stop locations for multiple resources with the vehicle as well as its Clinic 555 — a vehicle which provides sexual and reproductive health resources, as well as a syringe service program, Thompson said. Usage of the vehicle will evolve based on community need and the county’s ability, she said.

“…There’s a plethora of options that come once the assessment is done, but the assessment is that starting place to determine what’s next,” Thompson said.

Through the vehicle, clients also can learn about other county resources, such as housing and financial resources.

“The reality is so many things impact your well being. So us being able to be that bridge to other services, we see that as really a benefit in what we’re trying to do,” said Kenya Walker, Ramsey County’s Social Services deputy director.

Though the plans for the vehicle are still in their early stages, county officials plan to eventually have telehealth appointments available on the vehicle, as well as video resources and other services.

“If you see us and you want to know a little bit more about what we’re doing, come over and talk to us,” said Ramsey County adult support manager Charles Goff. “It’s important for you to know about what we’re doing, and we want to normalize conversations around mental health, we want to be accessible to our community, and we want to educate those in the community about the things that we’re doing at Ramsey County.”

‘Restructure access to mental health services’

Those interested can also request having the vehicle at events or to visit their organization by going to the Ramsey County website.

“What’s really important to me is just that community knows that we are trying to think differently about how we engage with individuals around their well-being,” Walker said. “This is a pathway for us to do that. We are really trying to restructure access to mental health services or services in general.

Currently, county officials are taking the vehicle out into the community once a week, with plans to attend several events.

“It really is about trying to reduce the stigma around accessing support, and so we’re really going to try to meet people where they are,” Walker said.

People can submit name suggestions for the vehicle until May 25. The name will be announced on May 31 during Ramsey County’s Wellness in the Park event at Phalen Recreation Center. Vote at ramseycounty.us/content/name-our-new-mental-health-outreach-vehicle.

To learn more about the vehicle and time and locations it will visit, go to ramseycounty.us/residents/health-medical/clinics-services/mental-health-crisis-services/mental-health-community.

Related Articles

St. Anthony: 3-year-old hospitalized with reported accidental gunshot wound to head

Citing disputes over fairgrounds, Ramsey County Fair canceled for 6th straight year

Falcon Heights adds paid parking zones for Minnesota State Fair

Robbinsdale park homicide victim ID’d as North St. Paul woman

Battle Creek Waterworks is closed for the summer. Here’s why.

By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Moody’s Ratings stripped the U.S. government of its top credit rating Friday, citing successive governments’ failure to stop a rising tide of debt.

Moody’s lowered the rating from a gold-standard Aaa to Aa1 but said the United States “retains exceptional credit strengths such as the size, resilience and dynamism of its economy and the role of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency.”

Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government’s credit. Standard & Poor’s downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023.

In a statement, Moody’s said: “We expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of (the U.S. economy) by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation.”

Extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, a priority of the Republican-controlled Congress, Moody’s said, would add $4 trillion over the next decade to the federal primary deficit (which does not include interest payments).

A gridlocked political system has been unable to tackle America’s huge deficits. Republicans reject tax increases, and Democrats are reluctant to cut spending.

On Friday, House Republicans failed to push a big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee. A small group of hard-right Republican lawmakers, insisting on steeper cuts to Medicaid and President Joe Biden’s green energy tax breaks, joined all Democrats in opposing it.

By TARA COPP and REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security has asked for 20,000 National Guard troops to assist with immigration roundups across the country, and the Pentagon is reviewing the unusual request, a U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press.

DHS asked for the troops to help carry out President Donald Trump’s “mandate from the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens,” department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said. She said DHS will ”use every tool and resource available” to do so because the “safety of American citizens comes first.”

Unlike the troops deployed at the southern border, these National Guard units would come from the states and be used to assist in deportation operations in the interior of the country.

Related Articles

Case of brain-dead pregnant woman kept on life support in Georgia raises tricky questions

House Republicans include a 10-year ban on US states regulating AI in ‘big, beautiful’ bill

Federal judge strikes down workplace protections for transgender workers

Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to resume quick deportations of Venezuelans under 18th century law

Judge OKs Iowa limits on K-6 gender identity, sexual orientation teaching but not elective programs

How the troops would be used may depend on whether they remain under state governors’ control. Under the Posse Comitatus Act, troops under federal orders cannot be used for domestic law enforcement, but units under state control can.

The addition of 20,000 National Guard troops would provide a huge boost to immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS agency responsible for immigration enforcement in the interior of the country, has a total staff of about 20,000 people spread across three divisions.

Enforcement and Removals Operations, which is the division directly responsible for arresting and removing people who do not have the right to stay in the country, has a total staff of roughly 7,700 people, including a little over 6,000 law enforcement officers.

It was unclear why the request was made to the Defense Department and not to the states. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public.

Trump has been carrying out a wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, issuing a series of executive orders designed to stop what he has called the “invasion” of the United States.

The U.S. already has as many as 10,000 troops under state and federal orders along the U.S.-Mexico border, including some who are now empowered to detain migrants they encounter along a newly militarized narrow strip of land adjacent to the border.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testifies during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

So far, these troops have largely been limited to providing airlift, bolstering the wall, surveillance and administrative support to free up border agents for arrests or detentions.

Along the newly militarized zone, troops have put up warning signs and accompanied border agents but left the detention of migrants crossing the border to other agencies.

In New Mexico, where the new militarized zone was first created, federal magistrate judges have started dismissing national security charges against migrants accused of crossing the southern U.S. border through the newly designated military zone, finding little evidence that they were aware of the zone.

The request for 20,000 troops was first reported by The New York Times.