Behold—another bizarre, new vegetable from a Southern California farmers’ market!

Yes, I know, it’s 100% culturally insensitive and ethnocentric to call something I’ve heretofore been entirely unaware of bizarre, but look at these things.

I’m told by the farmer who tasted these with me Sunday—I’m assuming to prove they were edible/not poisonous?—that these are called winged beans. I’ve never before seen them at a market, farmers’ or otherwise, and was immediately intrigued when I ran across them. This same farmer claimed they’re good eaten raw or lightly sautéed.

We just had them chopped up in a salad, and they provide a dry, slightly bitter taste along with an airy, crisp texture that seems to soak up sauces and dressings. Plus they make these cool star shapes when sliced. Give ’em a try if you see them around and let us know if you find out anything more about them.

They were at the nearly southern-most vendor at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market this past Sunday for anyone in the area and wondering, just before the mushroom tent.

Dramatic, pale, spikes plant of unknown species/genus, as shot with an old Holga.

New York may have the year’s best burger (which—hats off to NYC’s Superiority Burger—is meatless), but we’ve got Burgerlords, Los Angeles.

The modest take-out joint comes from two brothers already steeped in the LA restaurant world (they helped their father open the slightly less vegan-friendly Oinkster) who have an obvious love of burger-craft (Burgerlords is the namesake of their longtime Tumblr of the same name, which holds high all things burger). Much like Superiority’s menu, Burgerlords’ menu is brief and to-the-point—it features burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and soda. Unlike the Oinkster’s menu, though small, it’s vegan-friendly, offering not just vegan-apporoved patties, but housemade patties—”made fresh daily with a custom blend of grains & vegetables”—served with vegan Thousand Island dressing and a slice of vegan American cheese on the cheeseburger (Follow Your Heart, by our estimation).

Katie + I got the chance yesterday to visit the recently opened Burgerlords, located on the Old Chinatown Central Plaza, and we can report back with the utmost authority that it rules. Cheeseburgers are crave-worthy—I already want another—and the fries are crispy, just salty enough, and beautifully done. Get yourself there.

HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT, guys—speaking of Missy Elliott…Missy Elliott is back!

After years of relative silence (minus that last Super Bowl), Missy Elliot dropped a brand new single + video (the latter of which features a puppet Pharrell Williams) out of nowhere today and they are predictably fucking awesome.

Enjoy. You can purchase the single via iTunes.

Our bodies are so fragile; unfit vessels for such lofty things as souls.

With winter-like weather in both of the cities we consider to be our hometowns—NYC, where it’s currently in the lower-to-mid-fifties, pitch black, cloudy, windy, and on the verge of a GNR-approved cold November rain; and LA, where it’s crystal clear and in a solid, crisp mid-sixties (the approximate Los Angeles analog to the current New York weather)—we soldier on with an especially heated up Taco Tuesday entry.

These tacos are built around yellow farmers’ market Manzano peppers—an small apple-shaped chile (thus the name) with tiny black seeds, a bright, fruity taste, and a heat level between 12,000 and 30,000 on Scoville heat units (SHU) scale, making them anywhere from 2 to 12 times as hot as jalapeños. So, not for the light of heart.

We slice up the peppers into half circles along with farmers’ market red onions and mint and then quick-pickle it all, tossing the mixture in a half cup or so of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar and allowing it to sit for 15-30 minutes. This reigns in the heat of the peppers a little bit and plays up their fruity taste with the piquant of the vinegar. Then we cube and brown chunks of tempeh in olive oil in a heavy bottom skillet, removing from heat and tossing with a mixture of ground cumin + turmeric. Once that’s done, we set the tempeh aside and roast some fresh corn tortillas directly on the flames of the stove (we love these from Tortilla Land) flipping to toast each side and being careful to not burn them beyond edibility or set off our smoke alarms. Then we dress with a dollop of Vegenaise and some fresh arugula and add the tempeh and pickled mixture. The result’s a fruity, fiery, savory taco that’s quickly become a favorite at home.

Give them try to warm up your winter day. Just, yeah, don’t burn your kitchen down.

A few months back, we came across the Brooklyn band Eskimeaux and we were immediately hooked, wasting no time in heading to their bandcamp page and purchasing their new full-length, O.K. Their earnestly introspective + positive song-writing is a welcome, refreshing change and singer-songwriter Gabrielle Smith’s words + voice pull you in with welcome warmth.  We reached out to Smith to find out more about the young band, inquire about the Brooklyn creative collective Smith helped to start, and talk about a common subject on these pages—the changing creative landscape of New York City, a subject she’s got a pretty encouraging take on. Read on and stream the excellent new album O.K. below.

O.K. by eskimeaux

raven + crow: You started Eskimeaux as a solo project, right? Kinda like an experimental bedroom recording project?

Gabrielle Smith: Yes, exactly.

What inspired that? Were you in any bands before or do you have a background in music?

I was the singer of two bands before starting Eskimeaux, but I was never satisfied with them. I was also a member of many of my friends’ bands before having a live Eskimeaux band. I had to gain my on-stage confidence before I could present my own work.

But O.K. was recorded with a full band, right?

Yes! Each of us played the parts we had worked out for the live set on the recordings, except in the case of “Everything You Love.” We never worked that one out live, so Jack Greenleaf and I went wild on the arrangement of that one. We thought about all of the other songs’ arrangements as “embellishments upon the live version.”

Makes sense. Speaking of the live version, was that a big adjustment, blowing up the whole singularity of what Eskimeaux used to be with a full band?

No, it was a big relief! I performed solo always feeling frustrated because I was the only one who could hear the full arrangements in my head. Now that I have a band there are obviously still some parts of the recorded arrangements missing, but each person’s part fills out a necessary sonic range.

That’s good to hear—I feel like that transition can be tough for some. Ya’ll just finished a big tour, right? Howe was it?

It was amazing! We toured around the country with Mitski and Elvis Depressedly; both bands are extremely talented and fun to be around. All of the shows were really wonderful!

Yeah, I heard your all’s show at the Echo was jaw-dropping—congrats. Were there any tour highlights or places that surprised you on the road?

I was really surprised to play in places I had never been to with Eskimeaux, like anywhere past Chicago and Texas (headed west), and hear people singing our songs back to us. It was cool.

That’s awesome. So, what is The Epoch?

What is The Epoch…we aren’t even really sure. It was a name that my friends and I came up with to give ourselves a sense of collective purpose as artists during a time when we were the only ones who listened to each others’ music. Now, it serves the same purpose; it’s something that keeps us united as our styles and levels of recognition fluctuate. The name has since gotten away from us, in a way, but the traction it seems to have gained is pretty cool.

Very much so. Are there other bands or publicly performing artists that are part of The Epoch?

Yes. I’m not going to list them because I’m not even sure who considers themselves to be part of it or not, but we have a website with a list of members!

Right—I just realized we featured an Epoch-er on our most recent mixtape—Florist. So, I don’t know how long you’ve been in New York, but I hear a lot of people griping that it’s quickly turning into a kind of playground for the rich and that creativity is dying in the city, David Byrne amongst them. Would you give that a big ‘hell no’?

New York City is definitely very expensive and I feel very privileged to be able to live here. I grew up here and have definitely had to move pretty far away from Manhattan to be able to afford it, but part of the fun of living in any city is getting to explore the “nether-regions” of the place. I don’t think that creativity is dying here, especially since I’m constantly surrounded by inspiring, creative geniuses, haha. I can’t even begin to run off the long list of musicians, visual artists, and community organizers I’ve been lucky enough to get to know in the past couple of years.

Good to hear. What are some ways that you think the city’s changed for the better recently? Like, what are some developments or businesses or public works that you hold up as truly awesome?

The Silent Barn is a really cool DIY venue in Bushwick that’s trying to be self-aware about the gentrification element of opening venues that host predominantly indie rock bands and don’t interact with the community around them at all. Silent Barn regularly hosts hip-hop and other art from people effected by rent-hikes in Bushwick and tries to be a positive force in the neighborhood, not just a gentro-center. They actually just had a fire in the apartments above their venue and can use donation money, which you can give via their site.

Man, that place sounds like it’s doing it right. Speaking of the city changing, I saw that you all had played Glasslands a good bit—SO bummed that placed closed down; it was one of my favorite venues in New York.

Yeah, it was really cool!

Dogs—or, your dog, I’m assuming—seem pretty front + center in your album art, promo shots, et cetera, which I wholeheartedly applaud. Are you a big fan of animals?

I love dogs. My dog Frankie is my best friend.

Who did the album artwork? Is that…embroidery?

Yes, it is! Susannah Cutler made the album artwork. She’s an incredible visual artist and a very talented embroiderer.

The album cover’s awesome—more embroidery in rock. Finally, can you talk to where the name Eskimeaux came from? What’s with the spelling?

I’m adopted and the only information I have about my ancestry is that my birth father is Tlingit Eskimo. The name came from a period of anxiety about my identity. Discovering my racial ancestry helped give me a more concrete image of myself as a person, which is something I try to do with music also. The spelling is just a silly jumble of words, it doesn’t really have a meaning.

Well I like it, even more so now. Thanks again for taking the time to talk with Gabrielle.

You can listen to and purchase Eskimeaux’s new album O.K. directly from the band via their bandcamp page; they’ve just settled in after a long, cross-country tour, but they’re back at it again this + next month, so check their Facebook page for tour dates and do try to catch them if you can. New York, they’ll be playing the aforementioned Silent Barn Friday, December 11; Los Angeles, they’ll be at one of our favorite venues, The Echo, with the also awesome band Pity Sex Friday, December 18th.

Photo of Gabrielle by Manuela Insixiengmay.

Alright, as we near year’s end (crazy) and nearly a year of doing this series (also a little crazy), we aim to hone our skill in curating these monthly mixtapes. To that end, the goal is making them less simple, crude lists of 15 new songs by new (to us) artists and more sincere, sentimental nods to the cassette tapes we spent so many hours making so many years back. In those days, we sought to impress friends and hopeful girl-/boyfriends with thoughtfully arranged songs from sometimes obscure bands, being careful to never repeat a band on the same tape, and dedicating considerable time and energy to tape covers (like this one).

Today, technology’s made most everything in this aspect easier, but it’s also flooded our collective creative consciousness with an immeasurably deep field of artists, making the simple act of appreciating music daunting at times. Which leads me to another goal of these mixtapes—highlighting and sharing new sounds from new artists that might otherwise go unnoticed.

…okay, true, Santigold‘s on this mixtape and I don’t think there’s any fear she’d ever go unnoticed these days, but we just couldn’t resist her brand new, awesome single. Same goes for the new Miike Snow + Kate Boy—we’re suckers for good pop.

But, digging deeper, we start off this month’s mix with a magically beautiful new track from Stockholm-based songwriter, Johanan (highly recommend also checking out his other new track, “Holy Spirit”) before moving on to an amazing song from British multi-instrumentalist Georgia—think Missy Elliot meets the Knife—one of two female rappers this mix features, the other being the stunning Little Simz out of London. We’ve also got a new song from Canadian duo Majical Cloudz—a band we’ve never been into live but who’s wowing us with their new material—one from longtime favorite Computer Magic off her debut full-length (you can read an interview we did with her back last February), a bizarrely beautiful song from Dublin’s Cloud Castle Lake, and a ton more. Er. Six more. Math. Not our strong suit.

Give it a spin below or on our SoundCloud page and feel free to catch up on previous months’ entries.

We’d mentioned last week that we made a trip down to the Huntington Beach area, primarily for art + culture…but almost nearly as primarily, as an excuse to visit one of our favorite Southern California vegan eateries, Seabirds Kitchen in nearby Costa Mesa.

Started in 2010 as a food truck, Seabirds has since grown into a brick-and-mortor mainstay of the region, putting an emphasis on fresh, plant-based ingredients and embracing a mission to push the boundaries of vegan cuisine. As they say: “As we’ve grown from a food truck into our current restaurant, our artisan approach has remained true. We make our sauces and condiments from scratch. We base our menu around seasonal produce, unique flavor combinations and creative techniques and we use top-notch ingredients and locally grown fruits and vegetables.”

We always walk away happy (and very full) when we leave Seabirds, but we did so especially last week, enjoying a few firsts for us at the restaurant—prime among them, their delicious Birdy Marys—garnished with green olives, pepperoncini, fried pickles, wild rosemary, lime, and a celery salt rim—and a new entrée, the Chef’s Medley in Golden Consomme—a mix of wild mushrooms, tuscan kale, butternut squash, grilled tofu, green tea soba noodles, golden umami broth, and shichimi.

If you’re in the area, we’d definitely recommend a visit; if you’re not, it’s certainly worth the drive.

Above, a favorite staple, the Holy Smokes Bowl with brown rice, BBQ jackfruit, sautéed greens, broccolini, pickled red onion, coconut bacon, Seabirds sauce, Kentucky BBQ sauce, and avocado. Below, the aforementioned medley with broth being poured and Marys; Seabirds’ BBQ Jack Sliders; their Local Organic Broccolini with pickled peanuts and Purple Taquitos with purple potatoes, chipotle sour cream, fermented curtido, almond feta, cilantro; and a tiny Birdy Mary mouse.

Catching up with the rest of the world on the BBC’s new(ish), excellent adaptation of author Susanna Clarke’s excellent novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, faeries have been on my mind more often than usual of late.

Which brought to mind this blown-out, Impressionistic old Polaroid of Katie in the Japanese gardens at Richmond, Virginia’s beautiful Maymont estate + gardens, taken in—I’m guessing—1997 or ’98.