Leena Eats, Gourmet Communication ... Food, Travel, Gastronomy

LeenaEats
LeenaEats

Leena Eats: Pedrick’s Produce in Dixon, CA

Leena Eats: Pedricks Produce in Dixon, CA

The outside of Pedrick's Produce from the highway.

When you drive through Northern California and you are not super close to San Francisco, you constantly see signs like the ones above, especially as spring and summer start. Tons of locally grown, delicious produce at dirt cheap prices. When you see signs like this:

Leena Eats: Pedricks Produce in Dixon, CA

Mmm, cheap and local strawberries!

it is difficult not to pull a 360 on the highway, taking out a few mini vans in your quest for some delicious, cheap strawberries. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it happens, people.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Eats (and Drinks): Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival (Photo Essay)

Leena Eats (and Drinks): Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival (Photo Essay)

The Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival: a WHOLE lotta goodness under one tent...like Tyler Florence!

Not too long ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Pebble Beach Food & Wine festival. This happened for two reasons: because the kind folks at Foodbuzz rock (and needed some cheap, on the ground bloggers to the cover the event) and because apparently I WILL work for food and (a few food celeb photos). But with people like hottie meatloaf master Tyler Florence and one of my favorite all-time Top Chef contestants ever, Carla Hall, could you really blame me for being weak?

I sure as hell can’t. More food porn and food celeb photos after the jump, because photos are the ONLY way to describe the orgy of food, wine and celebrities that was Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival.

Get ready. And pack some Tums.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gastro Friday: Leena’s NoCal Food Road Trip!

Gastro Friday: Leenas NoCal Food Road Trip!

Starting the day off at Cowgirl Creamery cheese shop...how could this be a bad thing?

Ah, how I missed living close to wine country and other wonderful food cultures! Although Northern California is a bit more pretentious than my beloved South Australia, it’s still a damn great place to explore food.

For this road trip, we made stops at a popular cheese shop and a local winery to gather goodies for our oyster barbecue at Hog Island Oysters in Marshall (just north of SF) on Tomales Bay.

(Okay, TECHNICALLY, we went to the cheese shop, did the bbq and then went to the winery, but if I had to do the day over again, I would definitely squeeze the winery in BEFORE the barbecue, so we could have wine with our oysters. Trust me. It’s just better this way.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Gastro Friday: Trip to Turkey and Food Travel Tips with Claire!

Gastro Friday: Trip to Turkey and Food Travel Tips with Claire!
Claire in Turkey, surrounded by food, just as she should be.

Last Christmas, a lackadaisical Jew (Dan) and a lapsed Catholic (myself) spent 13 days eating their way through 6 cities of a secular Muslim country (Turkey). After we got home, Leena so very kindly offered up the use of her blog for me to poop on. I mean, post on. Sorry. I found out the hard way that a diet of nothing but Turkish food really tests the sturdiest of GI tracts.

We started and ended our trip in Istanbul ? the geographical and cultural bridge between Europe and Asia. Therefore, I?ll discuss two food-related highlights of our trip ? one at the beginning and one at the end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gastro Friday: Leena’s Care Package from Oz

Gastro Friday: Leenas Care Package from Oz
A care package from Oz that is almost entirely edible. My friends know me too well!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I had the pleasure of living in Australia for a year and a half while earning my Masters in gastronomy. I made a few mates while living down under, and every now and then, they spoil me with bits of Australia.

Case in point: the package sent by Andrew and Mel, some of our favorite people living in Australia. Come peep my Aussie food porn and learn a bit about Australian cuisine!

Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Drives & Eats: Colorado (and bits of Nebraska)

Leena Drives & Eats: Colorado (and bits of Nebraska)

Cats, Chex Mix and Pixy Sticks: Road Trippin, Leena-style!

During my massive road trip from Chicago to San Francisco, I ate a lot. Like, more than any one person driving across country should, but then again, that’s how I roll. And I may have glandular issues, so leave a bitch alone. When I wasn’t eating my way through major cities across the country, I was eating homemade Chex Mix (7 cups barely made it past Nebraska…) and pixy sticks. Always with the pixy sticks. I also had time to pose for super awesome pictures with inanimate objects.

Leena Drives & Eats: Colorado (and bits of Nebraska)

This is a HUGE reason why we married: we both love taking realistic photos with inanimate objects.
Leena Drives & Eats: Colorado (and bits of Nebraska)

See, it’s funny cuz it’s IRONIC. Cuz I’m brown, see, and brown cowboys didn’t exist. And he is white, see, and white Indians didn’t exist. Unless you count all the white people who like to wear saris and dots on their heads and pretend they are Hindu. But that’s a different kind of Indian. Dot, not feather.

Proper eating after the jump…I promise! Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Drives & Eats: Omaha–YES! Good food exists here!

Leena Drives & Eats: Omaha  YES! Good food exists here!

Omaha–yes, good food exists here!! I mean, what else is there to do in Nebraska but eat?

I have been to the great state of Nebraska many times, as that is where my husband hails from, but I have not really had a good opportunity to write about Omaha food until recently, when I drove across the country to my new home in San Francisco. Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Eats: SF–Day three, part three: Japanese Sweets and The Slanted Door

Cari and I played hooky during BlogHer Food ’09 for a bit and stumbled upon a Japanese sweet shop…

Leena Eats: SF  Day three, part three: Japanese Sweets and The Slanted Door
Japanese Sweet Shop in downtown SF.
Leena Eats: SF  Day three, part three: Japanese Sweets and The Slanted Door
Sweets that look delicious and most likely filled with sweet bean paste.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Eats: SF–Day three, part two: BlogHer Food Conference

Leena Eats: SF  Day three, part two: BlogHer Food Conference
Rolling up to the conference with my food blog bitches: myself, Amanda and Cari! We know. We look hot.

Not many photos from day three, as I was busy conferencing, networking, eating Pixy Sticks and slowly but surely, getting the worse flu of my life. BlogHerFood was a giant conference held in San Francisco for food bloggers from around the country. The conference had three different tracks of interest to pick classes from, a visual track focusing on food photography, a vocation track focusing on food blogging as a career, and a values track focusing on the ethics and politics of food. You could hop back and forth between tracks, which is pretty much what I did. Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Travels:SF Day Three Urban Hike with Becks n Posh!

Leena Travels:SF Day Three Urban Hike with Becks n Posh!
The bright-eyed and bushy-tailed food bloggers on the hike: Nikki, myself, Alice, Sam and Alana.

On day three of my San Fran trip, I was planning on attending the BlogHerFood conference. Then around 11pm the night before, I read a tweet from one of my favorite food bloggers, Sam from Becks and Posh, about an pre-conference urban hike through the city at 6 a.m. Being the hardcore lady I am (READ: CRAZY!!!) and eager to meet Sam and other food bloggers, I decided to participate (and my husband even joined along). I can honestly say it was one of the most kick-ass things I have ever done on a trip. I had some great conversations with fellow food bloggers and writers and got an up close and personal view of the city I would soon be calling home at sunrise. To see the exact route we walked, check out this post by Sam. In addition to Sam, I was lucky enough to meet Nikki from Art and Lemons, Alice from Alice Q. Foodie, and Alana from Kitchen Parade. These ladies rock. So lucky to hike with them! But on to the photos… Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Eats: SF, day two, part two–Dinner @ Fish & Farm!

*********************************************************** This is the second part of my second day in San Francisco. To read about day one, go here. To read part one of my second day, go here. *********************************************************** For dinner, we hit up Fish & Farm, a relatively new restaurant in the city (opened June 2009 near the Civic Center/ Tenderloin, according to Yelp) that focuses on sourcing local, sustainable seafood and artisan meats in a upscale yet casual atmosphere. FYI, this restaurant was named to have the best burger in the entire city. Reason enough to dine here. Read the rest of this entry »

Leena Eats: SF, day two, part one- Berkeley Bowl and SF sights

Leena Eats: SF, day two, part one  Berkeley Bowl and SF sights
If this doesn’t get you hungry, I don’t like you.
Leena Eats: SF, day two, part one  Berkeley Bowl and SF sights
Two food lovers on the loose—lookout, Berkeley Bowl!!

On day two in San Francisco, we went apartment and sight seeing around the East Bay. One of our first food-related stops was the Berkeley Bowl, a giant grocery store with tons of selection, ethnic foods and other yumminess. Lucky for me, I had my partner in food crime Cari to stake out the joint. (By the way, you can check out Cari’s blog and her take on our SF food trip here.) Read the rest of this entry »

About | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact | 2010 LeenaEats.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.