LOS ANGELES — Instead of trashing it, Café Gratitude Chef Dreux Ellis turned cauliflower into his special for LA Food Waste Week, a weeklong event focused on ways to save food. It’s hosted by Imperfect Foods, an online food rescue grocery store.

“Cauliflower is one of the most used ingredients that we have on our menu, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a cauliflower steak on the menu, so it seemed like the perfect marriage,” Ellis said.

Café Gratitude, a vegan, eco-conscious eatery, is one of the local Venice spots joining the event as a partner restaurant.

For every meal sold, Imperfect Foods will make a donation of $5 to the Hollywood Food Coalition, a nonprofit that feeds the hungry.

“Any way in which we can make the most effective use of food is a really important statement to make in a world right now, where there are food shortages all over the place, and the last thing we want to be doing is wasting food,” Ellis said.

At the Imperfect Foods warehouse in Walnut, food is salvaged, instead of contributing to the 35% of food wasted in the U.S. — all while 38 million people across the country go hungry.

Food waste also affects the climate and the economy. Maddy Rotman, Imperfect Foods’ head of sustainability, said they’re working to close that gap by rescuing unwanted — but perfectly good — food and shining a light on the crisis.

“We know that our food system is broken, and there’s a lot of solutions on how we can eliminate food waste together,” Rotman said. “And Imperfect Foods is hosting LA Food Waste Week in an effort for everyone to come learn, engage and eat some good food at the same time.”

Through weeklong activations, panels and partnerships with local restaurants, LA Food Waste Week aims to get the community involved and save 1,000 pounds of food from waste.

Ellis hopes this week will grab people’s attention.

“Just really getting present to what we throw away daily in our culture that can be salvaged and put to good use,” Ellis said.