My Great Outdoors: Lauren's Middle Eastern BBQ

Name: Lauren
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Type of space: Backyard garden
Tell us about your outdoor project and how you enjoy it: My family hosted a backyard BBQ to celebrate my recent graduation. Since my Dad is Arabic, our menu was mostly Middle Eastern, including a huge batch of lemony homemade hummous, tabbouleh, lentil salad, olives, feta, falafel, kifta kabob (spiced meat), and turkey sausages. Our family is used to this kind of food but we knew it would be a treat for my friends.

How did you create it? We spent a few hours the night before squeezing lemons from our tree, removing parsley stems, and getting all the salads ready. We picked up some fabric from a fabric store to use as a table cloth and loaded up on turquoise balloons, paper plates, and silverware. We made everything ourselves except the falafel, and the weather was perfectly sunny for a BBQ.

Recommended store, site, product or resource? We knew we had a big menu so in order to be efficient we bought 60 falafel from one of our favorite places in LA--Falafel Arax. It's in Little Armenia and a small family business with the best shawarma and falafel in town.

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Comments (4)

I feel so lucky to be one of your friends. And I have new standards for Arabic food.

posted by denised on July 4th 2009 at 10:22am
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This is a beautiful spread. Looks delicious too.

posted by yutjangsah on July 6th 2009 at 8:10am
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Oh my, this is really beautiful. Yum I love this type of food! What a good idea for a party menu.

posted by plumeria on July 6th 2009 at 1:00pm
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This is the food I grew up eating. My Syrian grandmother made all these things (minus the falafel) from scratch...what a fantastic meal to share with your friends! Thanks for the photos.

posted by hobsy on July 6th 2009 at 1:18pm
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