During our adventures in the American West last week, we visited the highly esteemed and oft-recommended Japanese-style mountain spa, Ten Thousand Waves. There, we enjoyed a day of lounging in the beautifully placed hot grand pool, moving every now and then from the warm water to their (very very) cold plunge pool, into the bamboo-and-teak sauna next-door, and back into the grand pool again, giving our bodies a relaxing, therapeutic run of the gauntlet  before checking into some much-needed massage sessions.

I know. Woe is us.

Best of all, in my opinion, at least, we got to visit the spa’s Japanese izakaya, Izanami, with its impressive views of the surrounding mountains, extensive list of libations, and vegan-friendly menu.

For anyone not already familiar with izakayas, they’re essentially Japanese pub-style restaurants that focus on drinks and drinking food; so, less sushi + formality, more quick, shared, rich dishes + fun. Which explains how the trend of Izakaya-style restaurants has spread so quickly in the State of late.

On our visit, we enjoyed some Japanese microbrew beers, a nice flight of rosé, and their daily sake special, which—as they promise on their Web site—trends to the more sophisticated palette with a deeper, less sticky-sweet taste than your common sake.

The vegan-friendly food centered around freshly made, simple vegetable-based dishes—like the chilled double soup of puréed carrot + sweet pepper (above); richly togarashi-marinated hot edamame itame; house-made  pickles of seaweed-mushroom, red cabbage kimchi, and saffron squash (below); and the vegan bento box with (below, clockwise from left) wilted spinach with ponzu-sesame dressing, vegetables with sesame-miso sautéed eggplant, additional house-made pickles of mushroom, seaweed, and carrot-burdock, rice, and vegan tofu dengaku.

The izakayu also offers a number of rice and noodle dishes, like the surprisingly delectable onigiri rice ball and their buckwheat noodles (both below).

I have no idea if the restaurant’s namesake is in fact Izanami-no-Mikoto—the mythical Japanese goddess of creation and death whose name means “she who invites”—but if it is, it’s very fitting; many would be happy to die after a meal at this inviting, beautiful  establishment. Definitely, if you’re planning a trip to the Santa Fe area of just looking for added incentive to plan a trip, Ten Thousand Waves + Izanami can offer you a lovely day of pampering and wonderful food + drink.

And yes, you can totally eat in your robe. Just watch your sleeve on the soup portion of the meal.

Late afternoon amber light, as seen through a very lovely IPA.

A little while back, the fine people at Louisville Vegan Jerky Company sent our studio a few sample bags of their new, non-jerky product, their Unreal Vegan Bacon Bits.

We’ve long been fans of their namesake product, which we first wrote up last year—it’s a softer, drier vegan jerky that (most importantly) is leans on short lists of simple, recognizable ingredients for their flavor-packed taste profile.

As it happens, the company’s jerky originated as a happy accident, as founder Stanley Chase explains:

“Louisville Vegan Jerky Company was started in my home kitchen back in 2012. Having spent some time in Oahu as a child, I was craving manapua one night and decided I would try to create a vegetarian version. Typically manapua is made by stuffing char sui (bbq pork) into a sweet dough and steaming it. I got an old recipe for the char sui from my mother and decided to bake the soy protein I was using instead of sauteing it. I was busy trying to get the dough ready and chatting with roommates when the smell of bbq hit my nose. I realized I didn’t set a timer. I ran into the kitchen grabbing the baking sheet out as quick as I could only to find overdone faux char sui. I was going to make another attempt from scratch when I decided I’d try the burnt char sui anyways. I couldn’t believe it, it was the worst char sui I’d ever had, but the best vegan jerky in the world! I scooped up what was on the tray, put the new jerky creation into ziplock bags and went to my favorite local bar that always has a full patio of people. I started passing the bags around the picnic tables, within 20 minutes everyone was talking about the jerky asking where they could buy it. Most of the people eating it weren’t even aware it was vegan! A couple of weeks later I had the first round of bags selling inside a couple of Heine Brothers Coffee shops and Rainbow Blossom grocery stores around Louisville.”

Louisville Vegan Jerky Company’s new faux bacon bits follow the same formula as their jerky, diverging from path of the crunchy, brittle soy bits (yes, Bac-Os are indeed vegan, as Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur recently informed Daily Show host Jon Stewart). The Unreal Vegan Bacon Bits instead focusing on flavorful, smokey, soft chunks of soy that make use of tamari, maple syrup, natural smoke flavor, and beet juice for their crave-worthy taste and pleasing color.

We’d highly recommend giving these a try the next time you’re looking to dress up a meal—Los Angeles, you can pick up LVJC’s products at Organix + nearby Follow Your Heart Market; the company’s store locator shows other physical locations along with online purveyors that carry both their jerky and vegan bacon bits.

Below, some culinary experiments we conducted with the vegan bacon bits, all wildly successful: spinach salad with homemade vegan ranch; loaded baked potato with melted Chao; Beyond Meat’s Beast Burger with Follow Your Heart slices; and pile of the delectable bits about to be eaten total on their own, which, I warn you, is a strong temptation to overcome when these things are just hanging around your house.

I’m not really a likely candidate to sing the praises of an establishment with a goofy name and Comic Sans-rich menus that include items called things like WeeBee Jammin and KaaNoodling, but, for Portland, Maine’s Silly’s, I have step out of my usual uptight aesthetic snobbery.

The restaurant had been highly recommended as a must-go-to by multiple close friends when we visited Portland a few weeks back, and—with a richly deep, vegan-friendly menu and huge portions of house-made comfort foods—it fell far from disappointing. We walked away from our lunch wishing only that our stomachs were bigger so that we could eat more.

I reached out to Silly’s owner, Colleen Erin Kelley, to find out more about the restaurant’s history recently. Read on to hear how she stepped from a long history of local food services to restaurant ownership, why having such a flexible menu is important to her, and get her twenty-nine (!) recommendations on what to do when next in town.

raven + crow: So I know that you bought Silly’s from a pair of sisters who owned it originally—what was it like back then?

Colleen Erin Kelley: Yes—Deidre and Stephanie nice. But I don’t know, interestingly enough—I had never heard of Silly’s nor had I eaten here. I fell in love with it when I saw it for the first time in July of 2002…I purchased it in November of 2002.

Love at first site then. I know a lot…if not all of the recipes originate with you, correct?

Yes they do…but there are a few that I enhanced. The only original is the lamb marinade.

Do you have a long history in the food business or has it just been a passion of yours for a long time?

I do—my parents owned a restaurant in Brewer and I started working there when I was 7. Then I went on to the Seacrest on Cape Cod at 10, getting paid through my sister’s check, sorting silverware in the dish room.  So 41 years. And yes, you have to have a passion for it because you have to devote your life to a restaurant.

Sounds like. The menu’s insanely vegetarian- and vegan-friendly, way beyond your run-of-the-mill portobello burger or pasta primavera—was it like that before or where does that come from—you?

Comes from me. A long time ago I had a guest in a large party only able to have a salad on the menu which broke my heart and she felt like a pain in the butt asking all kinds of questions about what is in things etc. I vowed that anyone with any dietary needs will have choices at Silly’s and not feel like an outcast.

That’s awesome, especially knowing how that feels so well for so many years before this whole thing caught on more. We especially loved the fried tofu in Buffalo sauce and Vegan Meltaway (both pictured below). Do you have any vegan-friendly favorites on the menu?

I love the Imperial Thai Fighter portobello with all the veggies, the meaty mushrooms, and the ginger miso sauce.

That does sound nice. We really need to come back. Then, did the Nice sisters come up with the name Silly’s?

Yes—they were on vacation to Jamaica and went to Bongo Cilly’s and, when they came back, they were looking for a name and landed on Silly’s as an honor to their favorite Jamaican restaurant.

So it’s not a direct reference to that Einstein quote?

Nope. That came later

You all state on your menus that you make everything—sauces, dips, dressings, bread, baked goods—from scratch; that the only thing you don’t make are the tortillas. True?

True–except like ketchup or mustard or cheese etc.

You don’t make your own tofu or vegan cheese though, right?

Nope. I have 2 full-time prep cooks now that can’t keep up.

And—not to find fault with an incredibly admirable system—why not the tortillas? I’m guessing it’s just a million times easier and/or cheaper to buy them?

I would have to make 1500 a week and I don’t sleep now….I truthfully couldn’t handle it.

Where does the desire to make so much food from scratch come from?

I think if you want to own a restaurant, then it is important to make your own food, not open a freezer and a bag.

We saw that you have a few walls of photos of people posing with your bumper sticker at famous landmarks. How long has that been going on for and what’s the most exciting one you’ve got?

Before my time, although I have added a lot. I think Easter Island or the one above the erupting volcano on Reunion Island.

How long have you lived in Portland?

I actually live in Standish, but 22 years.

Have you seen it change a lot in that time?

An immense amount, but definitely I like change.

Our first visit was just a few weeks back, but the city—which we loved in our few days there—seemed to be undergoing that somewhat familiar change that’s happened over the years in Brooklyn and the other Portland and so many other cities of young people moving in, driving up real estate prices, bringing in craft breweries and artisanal this and that. Any opinions on any of that? I love pickles and beer, but I know it’s a complicated issue and one that’s got a lot of perspectives to be considered.

I think it is a natural progression of a city. I frankly don’t know what to think although I love a place that has so many small businesses. I am just hoping Portland doesn’t make too many decisions that will cull the rise in them.

Agreed. Favorite thing about this city?

It has something for everyone to do, see, and eat.

For anyone visiting from out of town, besides coming to visit Silly’s, any sites you’d recommend seeing or things you’d recommend doing?

Walking the back cove; Victoria Mansion; the museum; duck tour; lobstering; Sea Dog game; farmers’ market; an afternoon picnic in Deering Oaks; ice cream at Beals; Portland Observatory; walking the Old Port and Congress; going to see a movie at the Nick; Bull Moose music; Longfellow Books; SPACE Gallery; the wine and cigar shop; Miccucci’s; Portland Pottery; Bayside Bowl for some bowling; frisbee at the East End Park; following the Freedom Trail; the Jewish Museum; Coffee by Design; Standard Baking; the Bakers Bench in Westbrook—you can get their cream horns at Coffee by Design; Brown Trading; Union Bagel; Holy Donut; and my all-time favorite is the Armory Lounge in the Regency for shrimp cocktail and lobster bisque.

Wow. So, nothing, then…? Thanks so much for taking the time to talk, Colleen—hope to see you again soon.

Thanks so much for coming to Silly’s and take care.

Silly’s is located at 40 Washington Avenue, open Tuesday-Friday, 11AM-9PM; 9AM-9PM on Saturdays + Sundays; and closed Mondays. We’d highly recommend it to omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike.

Pictured above, a local draft IPA in Silly’s aluminum mugs; Pity the Fu—Buffalo-style fried tofu; and the Vegan Meltaway. Below, the loaded Vegan Nachos. You can see Silly’s full menu on their site.

I know—not exactly the heights of culinary ingenuity or Holy Grail of refined palettes, but—as we recently re-discovered in trips cross-country—Johnny Rocket’s Streamliner veggie burger is 100% vegan and really pretty awesome in a pinch.

The burger itself is Boca’s Original Vegan Veggie Burger, but, as a whole, the Streamliner encompasses that classic, sautéd onion-covered, yellow mustard-smeared, crinkly paper-wrapped burger that you maybe still crave in a cathartic, regressive way that’s just perfect sometimes; like when you’re coming off a massive wedding weekend followed by a trip northeast, waiting for your plane back west. It’s not winning awards, but it gets the job done.

Actually, scratch that, according to every description of the burger the company provides, Melrose Avenue native Johnny Rockets describes the Streamliner as an “award winning meat-free hamburger”—maybe a reference to the 1994 Golden Chain Award the company received when it added the veggie burger to its original menu.

And, for all you longtime hardcore vegans out there checking out the photo of the burger bun with a questioning glance, yes, that too is totally vegan. Johnny Rockets is actually pretty great about ingredient transparency—you can find a full list of menu items ingredients on their Web site. So, American Fries + Sweet Potato Fries, safe; Onion Ring, not so much.

Can’t win ’em all.

Count among the relatively long list of things I did not know before moving to California: Artichokes actually have a beautifully vibrant blossom.

Our neighbors gave Katie a gigantic artichoke plant for her birthday (pictured here). We contemplated harvesting the edible portions—which are actually the buds before they flower—but are happy we didn’t or we would have missed its impressive blossoming.

Sorry, mouth, the eyes get this one. Better luck next time.

We recently held a fundraiser bake sale at MooShoes for Burrito Project LA—a group that fights hunger issues in the city by making vegan burritos and distributing them among the hungry and houseless of Los Angeles. You can read an interview we ran last week with the group’s co-organizer and MooShoes employee, Kathleen Truffaut to find out more about their work and visit their site to donate to the cause.

Prior to the bake sale, Kathleen asked us if we’d be interested in donating a baked good, so it seemed to me like the perfect time to re-debut a recipe I’ve been working on evolving over the past few months—our homemade biscuits. Formerly, we’d leaned heavily on vegan margarine for the biscuits’ buttery flavor and flakiness, but, of late, we’ve been pushing the more processed foods out of regular rotation, so I’ve been refining a version of the recipe—originally written up on these pages in 2011—that employs extra virgin olive oil instead. The result—a little less flakey, but much easier to make and, honestly, a little tastier in the end. The lack of fake buttery taste allow the vinegar-milk approximation of buttermilk to step forward into the spotlight a bit more and, overall, results in a rich, full flavor.

Here’s what you need:
• 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour (we like King Arthur brand)
• 1/2 tbsp Sea Salt
• 1/8 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 1/2 tbsp Baking Powder
• 1/3 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (we like the California-based companies, but we’re biased)
• 3/4 Cup Unsweetened Almond, Soy, or Oat Milk
• 1/4 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar

First off, yield: This recipe should give you about four extra-large biscuits or six medium-sized ones. Feel 100% free to double or even triple the quantities, as we did this past weekend for the bake sale. I’d just recommend breaking it into equal batches so you’re not dealing with twice or thrice the dough at once.

Now, before you start in on the dry goods, mix the milk + vinegar together in a measuring cup and let it sit for a few minutes. You’ll notice this’ll start to kind of curdle as it sits. This is a good thing—when it’s mixed in to make the dough, it’ll create little pockets of sharp flavor that will simulate the sour-sweet bite of buttermilk. If you’re not a huge buttermilk fan, use less or no vinegar, compensating with the milk so the total mixture equals one cup.

While that’s sitting pre-heat the over to 375°F and then combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix together thoroughly. With a utensil or your hand, make a little well in the middle of the flour mixture. Once the milk-vinegar mixture’s sat for a minute or two and started to separate out, slowly pour into the well along with the olive oil and mix gently with a fork until everything’s well-combined and you don’t have any pockets of dryness. This’ll result in a pretty wet mixture. If you feel like the dough’s too dry, add a little milk…but this might take some trial and error to spot. Don’t worry about it too much up front though—again, this is a pretty hard recipe to mess up too terribly.

Now, flour a clean counter-top or cutting board and turn the dough out onto it. Sprinkle some flour on top of the dough and, using your hands, gently fold the dough over itself three or four times, evening it out and flattening it down a bit each time. Using a rolling pin, gently roll the dough out so it’s about 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Try to move toward an end shape that’s roughly rectangular, keeping in mind how you’d like to divide it up for individual biscuits.

Place the resulting dough undivided on a baking sheet or (even better) baking or pizza stone. Cook for 10-15 minutes, watching for the dough to turn a light golden color, slightly darker at the edges. Once that happens, carefully remove the dough from the oven and divide into individual biscuits as desired, attempting to cut to the bottom and separate out the biscuits but not mangle them too much. Return to the oven and cook for another 10 minutes or so, looking for an overall golden brown color and crispiness on the tops.

Once that happens, remove and allow to cool. Then enjoy with preserves, as little ham + cheese sandwiches as we made for the bake sale, or as slightly more involved ones, like the tofu, steamed greens, sriracha, and cheese biscuit sandwiches we made a while back (pictured above). You can check out pictures from the bake sale on Burrito Project LA’s Facebook page.

After some time out of town, we paid a long-overdue visit to the nearby Hollywood Farmers’ Market yesterday in an effort to restock our fresh vegetable coffers for some much-needed home cooking. We then celebrated with a farmers’ market vegetable-rich curry dish inspired by a recent visit to Portland, Maine’s vegetarian Thai café, Green Elephant.

The dish is almost broth-y enough to be a soup, with the thin rice noodles absorbing a decent amount of the liquid and leaning on the tastes of both fresh and pickled vegetables to provide bursts of cool flavor to compliment the heat of the curry. Many prefer chilled salads and other cold foods in the depths of summer weather, but, for dinner, I often like to go the other route—hot, spicy, saucy meals that make you sweat and leave you satisfyingly exhausted afterwards, paired with a nice cold beer or chilled wine.

Here’s what you need:

• 1/2 of a 16 oz. Package Rice Vermicelli/Thai Rice Sticks
• 1 13.5 oz. Can Coconut Milk (not Light Coconut Milk)
• 1 4 oz. Can Maesri Brand Green Curry Paste
• 1 Block Super-Firm Tofu (we like Wildwood’s + Trader Joe’s knock-off of it)
• 1 White Onion
• 3 Medium Carrots
• 4-6 stalks of Kai-Lan or Chinese Greens/Broccoli
• 2 Scallions
• 6-9 Leaves of Thai Basil
• (optional) Pickled Vegetables for Topping
• Olive Oil

First, fill a medium stockpot with water and bring to a light (not rolling) boil and then remove from heat. Now carefully remove half the rice noodles (they’ll fly all over the kitchen regardless of how careful you are, but it’s worth a try) and put all but 1/8th of them in the hot water; set aside the rest. Fully submerge the noodles in the water and allow to sit for at least 15 minutes; more’s fine.

For the remaining noodles, heat a large cast iron skillet and fill with an inch or so of olive oil. Allow to heat (but not smoke) on medium heat and the crumble the extra noodles into the oil. They should almost immediately puff up with a sizzle. If they don’t, up the heat a bit. Cook for only a minute or two, carefully removing the crispy noodles from the oil and transferring to a paper towel-lined dish once they’ve puffed and before they brown.

Dice the tofu block into 1″ or so cubes and, using the same warm oil in the skillet, fry to a golden color, stirring and turning to assure most of the sides of the cubes crisp up. Once done, set aside in a paper towel-lined dish.

Once that’s done, you may have some excess oil in the pan you might want to drain (you only want a tablespoon or so for this next step). If so, drain the excess and then ad the onion—peeled and sliced into thin ribbons—over medium heat. Sauté until caramelized a golden-brown and then bring the heat to low. Once the skillet’s cooled a bit, carefully add the coconut milk to the onions, fill the can with purified water, and then add that water as well. Then mix in your can of curry, crushing with a fork or other utensil and mixing thoroughly. Warm until the mixture begins to bubble a bit in the middle and then remove from heat.

Meanwhile or beforehand, slice your kai-lan or greens into 1-2″ ribbons; slice carrots into oblong disks, cutting diagonally along the carrots’ axes (as in the diagram to the right); cut scallion into small circles and then set everything aside separately. With the carrots, we often like to salt them heavily after slicing to break them down a bit but still have them be fresh. Then, right before plating, we rinse the salt off them with some running water.

For pickled vegetables, we usually have a number of different things in the fridge, some using a variation of this bread + butter recipe with less sugar or using the quick pickle method of slicing a vegetable up and submerging in some rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar. This works great with thinly sliced beets (pictured). Then in this particular case, we also used some fresh bamboo from the farmers market that we had pickled using the bread + butter recipe, sans most of the sugar and playing with some different spices. But the pickles aren’t totally necessary, just fun to use in this and many other dishes. Or just to snack on.

When you’re ready to plate, grab two generously sized bowls, drain the noodles from the hot water, and divide among the two bowls. Then place your kai-lan + tofu down and top with most of curry onion mixture. Divide the crispy noodles and top the bowls, then drizzling the remaining curry overtop to saturate the noodles a bit. Add the rest of your fresh + pickled vegetables and enjoy. If you live in the east or other areas not so affected by drought, a nice, cooling shower is highly recommended after.

This Saturday, in our role as creative directors + store-runners of MooShoes Los Angeles, we’ll be hosting a fundraiser + vegan bake sale to benefit Burrito Project LA, a local group whose mission is to come together as a community and provide water and burritos to the hungry and houseless of Los Angeles.

The event will be held at MooShoes—3116 Sunset in Silver Lake—starting at noon Saturday and, in addition to many baked goods for sale to benefit the group, will feature raffles, a bevy of prizes, and tacos from our friend Mick at 100 Tacos. You can find out more + RSVP on the event’s Facebook page, but, in an effort to find out more ourselves about the group and their work, we took a few minutes out of our day to talk with Burrito Project organizer (and MooShoes employee) Kathleen Truffaut. Read on to find out more about the group and how to get involved or (if you’re not in the southern California area) start a similar project in your town.

raven + crow: Okay, so, first off, what is the Burrito Project and how did it start?

Kathleen Truffaut: The Burrito Project is the idea of having a group of people come together to help feed those in their community who are hungry and/or living on the streets. The beauty of it is that the Burrito Project chapters all over the country encourage others to get their friends together to start up their own Burrito Project—anyone and everyone can do it! To be honest, we’re not certain where or how it started. We had been volunteering at the Lincoln Heights and South Pasadena chapters and we just wanted to start our own chapter in central Los Angeles—an area where we and our friends reside. We figured that it didn’t hurt to have one more night where people were getting fed, and it’s an area where our friends without cars would easily be able to get to.

So are you all part of the larger, national project?

Yes, there are Burrito Project chapters all over the country—actually, we even came across a Burrito Project chapter in Toronto the other day on Instagram; so, in other countries, too! It’s not an organization in the traditional sense, as it is up to each chapter to pool their resources and raise funds for ingredients and water. Not unlike Food Not Bombs (another food justice group), there is no hierarchal structure or central chapter—it is more so promoting the idea that we can redistribute the wealth we have in our community to help feed those in need.

We are planning on launching a website for our own chapter soon—burritoprojectla.org—so be on the look out for that!

Cool. So, essentially, you all meet up, make burritos, and then hit the streets and give them to the needy + hungry, right?

We also provide water as well, but that is essentially the idea!

I assume it’s usually a pretty fun time?

It’s a very fun time! It’s honestly a great feeling to get together with your friends and others who want to donate their money, time, and/or energy towards helping others.

Where all do you all usually go in Los Angeles?

Since we started up our chapter in January, it has honestly never been one set place. We did decide that we wanted to distribute in our central L.A. neighborhoods (Koreatown, Echo Park, Silverlake, Hollywood, etc.) because we couldn’t find any food justice groups servicing those areas when we were researching that. With that said, we have noticed the past two months that many people have been living under the 101 underpasses, so we have been distributing to those places the past couple Burrito Project nights. There is also a handful of folks who live around the Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Sunset. It is difficult, though, as people living on the streets cannot necessarily stay in the same place.

Right—I think the underpass thing has something to do with a loophole in city/state law where that’s technically state property, so city cops aren’t supposed to hassle them if they’re there. Makes sense to match the transient nature of the people you’re serving though. But why burritos? Just ease-of-distrubtion and such?

That, yes, and also it’s an easy way to get your protein, grains, and veggies!

And the food’s always vegan, right?

Always! (Though we might add that we believe it is not necessarily the case with all Burrito Project chapters.)

Do you get many questions when you’re distributing the food on the whole vegan thing or are people just happy to get the meal?

Oftentimes we don’t have the time to explain that they’re vegan—we usually approach folks and ask, “Hello, would you like a burrito and water?”, give it to them, and then move on to the next person. Besides, vegan burritos are burritos—just without meat and cheese! We’ve heard some volunteers add “vegan” before “burrito” when they’re asking, but we’ve never seen anyone object to taking them on account of them being vegan.

Have you met a lot of interesting people out on the streets?

Yes, definitely! We are always so happy when we come across those who ask us if the food is vegetarian/vegan—their faces always seem to light up when we tell them they’re 100% vegan. Many have told us how difficult it is to find quality vegetarian food while living on the streets.

There was one time one of our organizers, Maria, was talking to a man on the streets who didn’t want food or money—he needed diapers for his baby. That really stuck with her.

Does the group have any plans to grow outside of that very direct action and weigh in on policy or do you like the more pure action and result model?

Maria and I do plan on expanding our group to help out with other efforts needed in the community (i.e. donating to transitional shelters, letter-writing events for various campaigns, participating in Black Lives Matter marches, etc.), but we don’t have any plans for weighing in on policy—we prefer direct action!

Awesome. In terms of policy though, do you—either as a group or individually—have any insights as to what the city needs to do to better serve the hungry and homeless here?

While we can’t speak for our individual volunteers, we as the organizers of this Burrito Project chapter can say that we would like to see the city investing in and following through with offering housing programs, as well as programs that would help folks living on the streets with medical issues and job placement.

100% agree. I’m personally more knowledgable on the specific situations for the houseless in New York + Washington, DC and totally acknowledge that significant nuances differ from city to city, but supportive transitional housing seems to be such an important, consistent theme running through every urban narrative. Speaking of though, can you explain the use of the term ‘houseless’ instead of ‘homeless’?

We prefer to use the term “houseless” because “homeless” implies that these people don’t have a home. They may not have a house, but they have homes; albeit, not in what one thinks traditionally in the sense of the word, but whether it be a shelter, a tent, a makeshift abode, or what have you, those are their homes. This was actually brought to our attention by one of our volunteers who used to live on the streets when they were younger. They never wanted to be referred to as homeless; in fact, they felt that the word “homeless” reinforces a negative connotation of those living on the streets.

Makes sense. Who does you promo campaign? We love the little faces drawn on the burritos.

Maria, one of our organizers! She’s a great graphic/web designer (obviously! but we’re admittedly a bit biased), so if you or anyone you know would like to hire her for some graphic and/or web design work, feel free to shoot her an email!

Nice! And if someone wants to get involved, how can they do that?

The easiest way is to follow our Facebook page as we post an event page for each Burrito Project night that we host. If you’re not on Facebook, feel free to email us and we’ll send you the details. Right now we are hosting our Burrito Project night on the last Thursday of every month at 5 pm.

Awesome.

And, for anyone and everyone in southern Cali this weekend, come out Saturday for the bake sale + fundraiser—it should be a superb time. We’re thinking of making vegan ham + cheese biscuits. You heard it here first.

Spurred on by Eater’s recent write-up of Scott Zwiezen’s new modest but excellent middle eastern café in Atwater Village, we’re officially adding our numbers to the roster of Dune‘s unofficial fan club.

Zweizen, who runs Elf in Echo Park—one of our favorite vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles—opened the standing room only, light-filled space a little after the new year. We just got a chance to swing by and test out the much-buzzed-about Organic Green Herb Falafel a little over a month ago and are overdue for a trip back.

The highlight of the stripped down menu, for vegans and non-vegans alike, is Dune’s Organic Green Herb Falafel (above)—a beautifully chaotic culinary maelstrom of crispy-on-the-outside, fresh-flavor-explosion-on-the-inside balls of falafel, hummus, tahini, herbs, crispy shoestring potatoes, and pop-of-color house pickles all wrapped up in house-made flatbread.

Dune’s located at 3134 Glendale Boulevard and open seven days a week, but with one of our favorite farmers markets across the street on Sundays, we love stopping by after loading up on fresh vegetables for the week. You can see Dune’s full menu on their equally pared down Web site.

Next up in the southern California world of falafel: Grand Central Market’s new spot, Madcapra!