The Brief

LAist reporter Yusra Farzan has enjoyed iftar, the meal to break the fast during Ramadan, since she was a young child. LAist food editor Gab Chabran had never been to one and was intrigued. They decided to experience it together.

Yusra's love of iftar

Ramadan is my favorite time of the year. The holy month, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, means specialty dishes and a time to catch up with friends and family.

When I moved to Southern California eight years ago, Ramadan was the first time I felt a little less homesick. It doesn’t matter if you live in Dubai like I used to, or in Los Angeles, there are some things everyone does. You break your fast with dates or water, read the Qur’an and pray together, and you rarely feel alone in community spaces like mosques or halal restaurants.

When Gab told me he had never experienced an iftar, I figured it was about time he went to one. I wanted to take him to someone’s home, not because the restaurants aren’t great, but because of the hospitality and camaraderie that comes from breaking bread together in a cozy setting.

I put out a call to Muslim community leaders asking if there was a family who would like to host us. Sandy and Nasser Hamideh in Rowland Heights generously responded and invited us to their home.

Gab's first impressions

Walking up to a large house on a hill inside a cul de sac in Rowland Heights, I didn’t know what to expect other than I would be participating in an iftar dinner.

As LAist photographer Julie Leopo and I approached, we noticed a sizeable inflatable lawn decoration that read “Ramadan Mubarak.” I found out later it translates to "Blessed Ramadan."

Festive Ramadan decorations.

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Soon after, our host, Nasser, and two of his children came to the door to welcome us. We were led through the house to the backyard, which featured a panoramic view of the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains and valley at sundown.

Lamb chops courtesy of Nasser Hamideh in his backyard in Rowland Heights.

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Bathed in the golden hour light, Nasser invited me to help with the grill. While we basted the marinated halal lamb chops with olive oil and garlic, he told me about growing up in Rowland Heights.

Nasser was born in Palestine, but his family moved to the United States in the late 1970s. Meanwhile his wife, Sandy, was originally from a small Muslim community in Baton Rouge, and had her own version of culture shock when she arrived in California. As we talked, the smell of the cooked lamb filled the air.

Soon after, other guests, including several members of their extended family, arrived.

The Hamidehs and their extended family during iftar.

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Then a tray of artfully arranged dates magically appeared to break the fast. They were some of the largest, softest and sweetest dates I’d ever experienced.

Yusra's favorite dish

After I arrived and broke the fast with dates, we offered the evening prayer together with Muhamad, their son, leading us. It’s a very simple act, but I think praying together is one of the reasons for the feeling of community is heightened during Ramadan. You would often hear imams commenting about how Ramadan is the one time of the year the mosques are packed with people. And it helped break the ice — their son had memorized one of the longer verses of the Qur’an, one that, alas, my 30-something self still hasn’t (I hope my dad isn’t reading this.)

Cups of lentil soup are enjoyed as the starter.

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As we sat, bowls of rich yellow lentil soup were served. The soup — which had hints of olive oil, garlic and carrot — was accompanied with a glass of homemade mint lemonade.

I made a beeline for msakhan (which is one of my favorite foods of all time at iftar). I have had the privilege of eating Palestine’s national dish a gazillion times and even make it at home, but Sandy’s was by far the best I have had.

Msakhan, a roasted chicken dish served over taboun bread.

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Taboun bread is layered with sumac spiced onions and topped with chicken. The chicken was still moist with a hint of tang — was it lemon, stock, or just well seasoned?

But the star was the bread. Sandy’s mother bakes the taboun bread herself and this is key to a good msakhan. The bread acts as a sponge soaking up all that chicken flavor, as well as the copious amounts of sumac flavored olive oil the onions are fried in. I have had versions with pita bread and naan masquerading as taboun and that just will not do. It has to be taboun.

Sandy had also prepared shatta, a Palestinian chili paste, with sweet peppers, carrots and jalapenos instead of red chilies like it’s typically made because of the kids. This made the lamb chops that Nasser and Gab grilled sing.

Vegetables tend to be overlooked on most iftar tables, but Julie, our photographer, is vegan and Sandy made sure to have potatoes, eggplant and cauliflower in a tahini sauce. My body appreciated the fiber especially after a long day of fasting and my taste buds rejoiced at the nuttiness of the tahini sauce against the fresh tabbouleh salad.

Gab's maqluba experience

Maqluba, a rice pilaf combined with meat and vegetables.

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I became a (reluctant) center of attention when the maqluba, a rice pilaf with meat and vegetables, arrived. It's cooked in a pot flipped upside down, and when the dish is done, a person is tasked with holding it and turning it over.

LAist's Gab Chabrán flips the maqluba pot.

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I was elected as the person to take on the task that evening.

Everyone crowded around me as I took the two pot holders to slide the plate slowly off the counter onto a large platter, which I then flipped over. I’m not going to lie — I was a little intimidated by the heavy pot full of food, but my efforts were successful. We were rewarded with the beautifully aromatic rice pilaf, topped with a large sliver of eggplant wrapped around like a large ribbon. Each nook and cranny was stuffed with potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and large chunks of tender meat.

Yusra's coffee (and dessert) cravings

Meal over — my eyes wandered towards the coffee machine wondering how to politely ask for a cup. (I drink copious amounts of coffee and after fasting, I need it to keep that caffeine headache at bay.) It’s like Sandy read my mind and soon a steaming mug appeared.

A knafeh dessert dish is soaked with a sweet, sugar-based syrup called attar.

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Knafeh (top left), imtabak (bottom left) and qatayef (right).

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The bitterness of the coffee perfectly complimented my all-time Ramadan must-have: qatayef. Suna brought the thin pancakes stuffed with cheese. With my fork, I made a small crack in the outer shell, and the inside warm cheese immediately oozed out.

Gab's heavenly knafeh

Another dessert served that night was knafeh from Knafeh Queens. It contains two layers of spun phyllo dough-like pastry between a helping of stretchy, slightly salty white cheese. The pastry is then doused with sweet syrup and sprinkled with pistachios before serving.

We also sampled Imtabak. The name translates to layers and is made with a phyllo dough with a sweet, salty, heavy cream filling. The flavors of the cream seeped into the corners of the dough, making it all the more heavenly the longer it sat.

Yusra's farewell song

Coffee, dessert and conversation flowed into the night as Sandy and Nasser’s kids took part in a tradition — similar to an advent calendar. Over 30 days, in a calendar, Sandy hides riddles for the children to solve and a small treat. She also includes a note with a good deed for the kids to do.

I had already announced that I needed to start heading out, when Asad, a cousin, said that he had a song he wanted to play to send us off. It was a folk song about people being forced to leave their homes and longing for the home they grew up hearing about.

When he finished the song, he remarked how he hadn’t sung that song publicly in almost 30 years.

At that point, something occurred to me about the evening celebration. Cultural traditions are a way for us to stay connected to ancestral roots, so we must pass them down to ensure they survive for future generations.

I didn’t grow up in Sri Lanka because of the country’s civil war (our family moved to Dubai) and I've wondered what it would have been like. In homes like Sandy’s and Nasser’s and my own, we are holding on to foods, traditions, languages and culture to reinforce our identity and help us carve out a place in this world.

All of us really are just trying to belong.

This story was produced with support from the Round Earth Media program of the International Women’s Media Foundation. 

A federal appeals court has upheld a court order requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to build more than 2,500 housing units on its West Los Angeles campus.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the VA to construct 750 temporary units for veterans within 18 months and 1,800 permanent housing units within six years.

The ruling found the agency had “strayed from its mission” by leasing land to commercial interests like a UCLA baseball field and Brentwood School sports complex, instead of caring for veterans.

“There are now scores of unhoused veterans trying to survive in and around the greater Los Angeles area despite the acres of land deeded to the VA for their care,” Judge Ana de Alba wrote in the opinion.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Powers v. McDonough case say the ruling could end veteran homelessness in the Los Angeles region, which is home to more than 3,000 unhoused veterans, according to official estimates.

"It's the most important ruling in the history of this country concerning the rights of veterans," said Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney with Public Counsel, during a press conference Wednesday. “After this case, there should be no such thing as a homeless veteran.”

The VA did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment on the ruling.

‘Long overdue’

The appeals court affirmed most of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter's 2024 ruling, which found the VA discriminated against disabled veterans by failing to provide adequate housing on the 388-acre property deeded as a soldiers' home back in 1888.

The main plaintiff named in the class-action lawsuit, Jeffrey Powers, lived in a tent outside the gates of the VA Medical Center.

At a press conference Wednesday, Powers told reporters this week’s appeals court ruling delivers “about 80%” of what he wanted.

“We got the most important thing, which was to get veterans off the street,” Powers said. “And for that, I'm happy with the outcome.”

The case stems from a 2015 settlement in which the VA promised to build 1,200 housing units, with more than 770 completed by 2022. The department missed that deadline, prompting the new lawsuit.

Iraq War veteran Rob Reynolds came to the West L.A. VA for PTSD treatment in 2018, met veterans sleeping on the streets outside and began advocating for them.

During Wednesday’s press event, he called this week’s Ninth Circuit ruling “long overdue.”

"There should never have been a lawsuit filed in the first place,” Reynolds said. “ They were using the property for everything but what it was intended for, and that's housing.”

The veteran plaintiffs argued that lack of on-campus housing prevented disabled veterans from accessing physical and mental health services at the facility.

As of late 2024, the VA said there were 307 veteran housing units open on the West L.A. campus and 461 units under construction.

Robert Reynolds (right), a veteran advocate with AMVETS, walks with Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva as they tour the Veterans Row encampment along San Vicente Boulevard in November 2021.

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Commercial leases

The appeals court ruling invalidated most commercial leases on the property, including Brentwood School's 22-acre sports complex and an oil company's drilling license.

However, the court overturned the district court's previous invalidation of UCLA's lease for its baseball stadium. Rosenbaum said he plans to refile that portion of the case, which had been argued on different grounds.

Reynolds criticized local leaders for what he said was inaction at the West L.A. VA Campus. He said local officials’ personal connections to Brentwood School and UCLA played a role.

“ A lot of these special interest groups on the VA land have so much influence politically in Los Angeles,” he said. "That's why you've had a lot of our politicians remain quiet about this."

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the VA secretary to declare the West L.A. VA campus a national hub for homeless veterans and develop a plan to house 6,000 people there by 2028.

That housing goal is even more ambitious than the court order, but local advocates say they haven’t heard anything from the Trump administration since it was issued.

“They need to speak to the people that actually live on that property,” Reynolds said. “I'm hoping now that we have this Ninth Circuit ruling in, that we'll be able to have some more discussion with the administration and with the VA leadership to try to figure out what the next steps are.”

As a result of this week’s ruling, the case has been sent back to the District Court judge to implement the housing order and oversee construction

On a chilly December night in Sandy Spring, Md., dozens of people crammed into the Woodlawn Manor for a Victorian-era Yuletide dance lesson, the wood floors creaking under the uncertain steps of 21st-century people learning 19th-century English country dances.

"Every good party has dancing," said Angela Yau, a historical interpreter for the parks department who was teaching the dances — and the Victorians loved a good Yuletide shindig.

Angela Yau, a site manager for the Montgomery County parks department who also works in cultural and natural history interpretation, wears an 1840s-style dress while teaching Victorian dances to the room.

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The merriment was emblematic of how many think of Yule; today, it's synonymous with Christmas. But centuries ago, before crooners sang about carols being sung by a fire, Yule meant something different: a pagan mid-winter festival around the solstice, dating back to pre-Christian Germanic people.

It was particularly important to Scandinavian communities during that time of year, beset by late sunrises and early sunsets, according to Maren Johnson, a professor of Nordic studies at Luther College.

"All these kinds of winter traditions are tied very intricately into small communities," she said. "You develop between yourselves a folklore about this winter time and this period of darkness."

In this week's installment of "Word of the Week," we travel back in time to the origins of Yule festivals, and trace those earliest traditions to modern-day Christmas celebrations.

Feasting, drinking and animal sacrifices

Scholars of these early pagan festivals don't have much concrete evidence of what actually went on at them, according to Old Norse translator Jackson Crawford, because much of the written record comes much later from Christians. But what is clear, he said, was that feasting and drinking were abundant.

Terry Gunnell, a professor of folkloristics at the University of Iceland, agrees. Drinking copious amounts of ale was not only encouraged but required, he said, and animals were slaughtered as part of the sacrifices to gods and spirits typical of these early festivals.

"The snow is coming down the mountains and in a sense, the nature spirits are moving closer," he said — and people wanted to appease them.

And then, there was the oath-swearing. Crawford said this was one of the major hallmarks of early Yule celebrations as recorded in myths like The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek from the 13th century. In it, a man swears to the king of Sweden that he'll marry his daughter with no real prospects of doing so.

"But your oaths during Yule are kind of sacred, extra binding," he said. "So he has to try to fulfill it," even though he eventually gets killed.

Crawford thinks that this oath-swearing could be where the word "Yule" actually comes from. The earliest roots could come from Indo-European words for "speaking," he said, and then Germanic peoples came to use it for more judicial purposes like admitting, confessing or swearing.

There's other theories out there, though, the dominant one being that the word could come from the Old Norse word hjól, meaning "wheel" — as in the "wheel of the year" that keeps turning with the seasons, Gunnell said.

Yule gets co-opted into Christmas

Christianization of this part of Europe, however, changed how people celebrated Yule. The church began to align its own holidays with pagan celebrations, Gunnell said. Easter replaced the festival at the beginning of summer, for example, and St. John's Day replaced midsummer. "And then we hear in Icelandic source material that [Yule] was replaced with Christmas," he said.

"So what the church is really doing is to allow people to go on doing what they had done before, but now under a Christian name," he added.

Around the 900s, Crawford said, Scandinavians started saying "Yule" and "Christmas" interchangeably.

"I think it suggests that, fundamentally, both of them are basically parties," he said.

That's not to say that Christmas was the exact same as the Yule celebrations of old. There was a new emphasis, Gunnell said, not so much on winter spirits but "a period of joy with the birth of Christ." But much of the feasting and drinking spirit of Yule stuck around — and became Christmas traditions throughout much of Europe.

Fast forward to the Victorian era, where the spirit of merriment became embedded in English culture, thanks to two important cultural influencers: Prince Albert, who imported traditional Yuletide customs popular in his native Germany, and Queen Victoria.

The queen fell in love with the traditions, Yau of the parks department said. And since she was a fashion icon, "These Christmas traditions really spread from the royal couple out through England and out through the colonies and everywhere else." And, as cultural customs are wont to do, the traditions morphed — creating, among other things, Santa Claus.

Still making sacrifices — just sweeter

Although slaughtering animals to please winter spirits is perhaps less typical of modern Yuletide celebrations, the spirit of sacrifice still remains, according to Gunnell.

That's particularly true in Scandinavian Christmas folklore. People leave out porridge for nisse and tomte, small trickster spirits who live in local forests, around the winter solstice in hopes of placating them or receiving gifts. (Though these days, Johnson said, many Scandinavians also celebrate the Julenisse, more of a Santa Claus figure.)

In Iceland, there's not really a Santa Claus figure at all, Gunnell said. Instead, there's the "Christmas Men," also known as the Yule lads. As the stories have told it, the mystic men – with names like "Window Peeper," "Sausage Swiper," "Bowl Licker" and "Meat Hook" — come one by one down from the mountains by your community, play pranks and steal things from homes. (To be fair to them, they'll also leave presents in windows for children.) On top of that, they have an ogress mother, Grýla, who eats misbehaving children "like sushi for Christmas," Gunnell said.

And although he doesn't swipe sausages or eat children, Santa Claus is not a completely dissimilar figure.

"The idea of sacrifices remains in leaving out a little bit of sherry or whiskey for Santa Claus and some food for the reindeer," Gunnell said.

It's something to consider the next time you leave out cookies and milk.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Carmen Peterson's son Ethan is a big fan of Elmo and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. And although Ethan is nonverbal, he loves to sing along in his own way.

"He's a really fun-loving 8-year-old. He doesn't speak, but he gets his point across," Peterson says.

Ethan has a rare genetic disorder — Syngap1 — which, among other things, causes a kind of seizure that can make him drop to the ground without warning.

"Everything just kind of shorts out for a moment," Peterson says. "And the danger of that — and I've seen this — is him falling on hardwood floors, concrete, off of stairs, like all of these things."

She says he's gotten hurt and she's had to rush him to the emergency room.

Ethan takes a medicine called Epidiolex that prevents these seizures. But last holiday season, a thief stole it off the family's front porch in Charlotte, N.C.

Peterson remembers finding the empty box and then checking her Ring doorbell camera footage. "I see this guy walking off … and I am just livid," she says.

Then, she had to figure out how to get this medicine — worth $1,800 — replaced so her son didn't miss a dose. It turned out to be a challenge.

How many stolen packages?

December is a busy time for package deliveries and for porch pirates who steal them. Sometimes the thieves run off with mail-order medication instead of getting an iPad or a Labubu.

E-commerce took off during the pandemic, and December remains the busiest time of the year for package deliveries, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

Still, it can be tricky to get the whole picture when it comes to package theft.

As easy as it is to buy stuff online, getting it to customers is actually really complicated. That's because so many people and companies interact with a package before it's delivered, according to Ben Stickle, a professor of criminal justice administration at Middle Tennessee University.

"So it's really hard to get, you know, what happens from the point that you click a button to when it gets delivered, all put back together with enough detail to find out when and where these thefts are occurring and then actually do something about it," he says.

Stickle worked on a study with the Postal Service published earlier this year, and says that victims of theft wind up reporting it to different places that don't share information with each other or even necessarily record the missing package as "theft." And sometimes victims don't report it at all.

"There's a lot of packages stolen," he says, explaining that according to security research company SafeWise, it's about 250,000 packages every day. Stickle has worked with SafeWise.

The Postal Service report estimated that at least 58 million packages were stolen in 2024. "So what are the odds that one of those, unbeknownst to the thief, has some type of medication in it?" Nobody really knows for sure, he says.

Ways to lower theft risk

So what can you do? Stickle says scheduling deliveries for when you're home and having a delivery spot that's hidden are good ideas. Even a locker for your porch that doesn't lock is a good deterrent.

"If a thief can see that there's a package, even if it's an envelope on your porch from the roadway, it seems to be far more likely that it's going to be stolen," he says.

According to Express Scripts and Optum Rx, which are two companies that offer mail-order pharmacy services, medication theft is pretty rare.

CVS Caremark, another company that ships prescriptions by mail, said it offers customers package tracking to prevent theft, but didn't answer NPR's question about how common medication theft is.

Pharmacies, including Walgreens, say they offer order tracking and use discreet packaging to help prevent theft. Customers can also opt to require a signature when their medicines are delivered.

Making sure patients don't miss a dose is a top priority, says Stryker Awtry, the director of Loss Prevention and Transformation for Optum Pharmacy, part of Optum Rx.

"Especially during the holiday seasons when deliveries surge, we want to make sure we build in peace of mind for our customers," he says. "So if a theft were to happen, No. 1, contact the pharmacy right away."

He says to also report the theft to your prescribing doctor and local law enforcement.

A lost prescription replaced  

As for Carmen Peterson in North Carolina, when she called her insurer's pharmacy to get Ethan's medicine replaced, the answer was no. But Ethan missing a dose and having a seizure that put him in the emergency room again? Not an option for her.

"It's just like it's one of those things that you just don't have a choice," she says.

If forced to, she would have found the money to buy the medicine herself.

"It was just unfortunate that the … company was so ready and kind of willing to just wash their hands of it because they felt like they had done what they were contracted to do, which is deliver the medication."

That company, Liviniti Pharmacy, said it couldn't comment on the Peterson family's experience because of patient privacy laws.

Unwilling to give up, Peterson reported the theft everywhere and made noise about it — including on her local news stations. That worked. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug Ethan needs, saw the stories and replaced it for her within a week.

Now, she recommends getting important medicines delivered to a P.O. box, a workplace or just going to the pharmacy to pick it up yourself.

Copyright 2025 NPR