The third Tucson Food-Truck Roundup takes place tonight, Tuesday, Dec. 20, and this time there's a holiday theme! There will be a dozen food trucks or more this time, too, so bring your appetite.

The area around Dinnerware Artspace, where this event takes place, has certainly been hopping lately. The opening of Borderlands Brewing, which shares the space with Dinnerware, had lines out the door a few weeks back, and these food truck events attract hundreds and hundreds of folks. The art center also offers all sorts of classes and workshops on a regular basis. Good times.

There's more about the offerings at Dinnerware Artspace over yonder.

• Rita Connelly

My writing takes me to the most amazing places.

The Foundation for Inter-Cultural Dialogue invited me to be a judge at their Noah's Pudding contest. I had never heard of Noah's Pudding, also called Ashure. So I had to do a little research.
Noah's pudding gets its name from the dish Noah made when the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat after the Great Flood. There was very little food left, so everyone gathered together what they had and created a pudding: nuts, grains, beans, and fruit....whatever was at hand.

Two locations of a new restaurant called U Like Buffet are expected to open in the coming months.

Co-owner Daniel Lu tells us the location at 330 S. Wilmot Road should be open in mid-January. The other location is expected to open in March at 5101 N. Oracle Road. Both locations were formerly Home Town Buffets.

Lu says both locations will feature sushi, hibachi-style dining, salad bars, all-you-can-eat Chinese and Japanese food and a few American dishes.

The first Tucson location of the chain restaurant Genghis Grill opens today at 4386 N. Oracle Road, No. 150. You pick from about 70 ingredients and the employees take your meal for a wok (ha!). Sorry about that.

Anyway, the legend goes that Mongolian warriors cooked their meals on their shields while away at battle, launching this tradition of cooking in large woks. Truth? Historical fiction? Either way, it makes for a slightly better blog entry than the mere opening of a Mongolian stir-fry restaurant, so there you have it.

There's more on Genghis Grill - which corporate folks tell us is the largest chain of Mongolian grill restaurants in the country - over here.

Jax Kitchen at 7286 N. Oracle Road is collecting canned goods for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and if you donate four or more they'll give you a dessert of your choice.

Lots of restaurants collect canned goods this time of year, but offering up free eats - especially the amazing desserts available at Jax Kitchen - is especially generous. Nice job Jax Kitchen. Nice job indeed.

There's a little shindig this evening from 6 to 8 p.m. at Avenue Boutique at 3050 Broadway Blvd. The ladies at Monsoon Kitchen dropped me a line to say that one of their members will be providing snacks and beverages for the event, and that there will be live music, too.

Also, for those of you who got on my case for not divulging my superior underground-supperclub knowledge, check in with the Monsoon Kitchen from time to time. I'm not going to give you next directions to the next event or anything - that wouldn't be very underground, now would it? - but you should really keep tabs on what those ladies are up to.

That is all.

So I spend like three hours a week helping feed the homeless, which means I actually do almost nothing. But working at Casa Maria over the years has been a good education. That's why I keep going back week after week.

One of the things I've learned is that life on the streets is especially hard for women. Some are vulnerable and end up stranded in abusive relationships just to add some semblance of security to their lives. Others turn to darker, more drastic things to keep their lives afloat.

And what's strange is that there isn't a single shelter in the city just for homeless women, at least not that any of us at Casa Maria know of. But a couple of ladies are working to fix that, one bag of soup mix at a time.

Like I mentioned in this week's Noshing Around, Annie O'Connor and her crew are selling soup and brownie mixes to raise seed money for a homeless women's shelter. The amount of suffering such a project could alleviate is hard to estimate, but it would be plenty.

If you're looking for something nice to do this holiday season, call 749-1021 to place an order.

• MaFooCo will be at The Great Cover-Up on Saturday.

For those of you who haven’t tried the Asian-Mexican fusion food of MaFooCo, prepare to be blown away by how awesome kimchi quesadillas taste. It is almost unbelievable. Jaime’s Bitchen Kitchen serves some astonishingly tasty Cuban-inspired fare, and Street Delights, man, all I have to say is … wow.

There are several ways to approach this sort of food-truck diversity. You could starve yourself that morning and binge eat your way through several trucks, or bring friends and do a tasting tour of Tucson street food. Either way, you’re guaranteed some good and interesting food, followed by good and interesting music. I am so in love with Tucson right now.

In other news, the next Tucson Food-Truck Round-Up goes down next Tuesday, and this time it will have a holiday theme. Woo hoo! More on that here.

Noble Hops Gastropub just put out a new menu. If you like fare that starts at dressed-up pub fare and ends somewhere near fine dining, head over here.

Or you could head over here and check out the new menu at Sir Veza's Taco Garage. It also has a new happy hour from 3 to 6 p.m., and areverse happy hour that starts at 9 p.m., with TONS of drink specials and half-off appetizers galore.

Eat well my friends.

Admittedly, this isn't as strange as the same nation's Burger King ad, and the theme is similar to the brand's ads in the US, but Mickey Rourke is involved in this Russian Snickers commercial, so that's at least a little weird.