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

I have a four and a half month old daughter, and I’m not gonna lie—I made a damn cute baby. I love holding her on my lap in the early morning light, seeing her slowly rub her eyes and wake up. She stretches this adorable baby stretch, turns her innocent blue-gray eyes towards mine, and coos a little, making my heart melt. And that is when I hear a familiar sound, an almost-empty ketchup bottle-style fart vibrating across my thighs.

And I treasure the moment.

But the more moments that I treasure, the less time there seems to be for one of my favorite past times—cooking. Most of her treasured moments come with a lot of clean up, so if I actually want to cook something, it needs as little active cooking time as possible.

Read more after the jump!

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Happy Halloween from Ella and the Leena Eats crew! If you’re baby is young enough (hell, even if they are old), I hope you manage to steal your fair share of Halloween candy from them. It’s your God-given right as a parent! And before you ask, yes, I totally shoved a bag into Ella’s little fist to Trick or Treat and then ate all her candy. All of the Halloween magic, half of the effort. Score.

~LTG!

Ah, mac and cheese. What could be bad about a bowlful of pasta with cheese and other delicious tidbits? This dish is a perfect example of how American cuisine has formed: a dish was brought in by one country, and left looking like an entirely different dish. Refugees of the French Revolution introduced macaroni and cheese as French food, but it was quickly adopted by the South and turned into a true comfort food dish, richly packed with more cheese and cream than the original recipe. If slapping some extra cheese on a dish doesn’t equal American food, I don’t know what does (HELLO, cheese-stuffed crust pizza, I’m looking at you).

And we Americans do love our cheese with pasta. Whenever I leave my husband for a few days, I can rest assured he will eat at least one thing: mac and cheese. Boxed mac and cheese to be specific, the same kind he grew up eating with the neon orange cheese powder. So when Homeroom, a mac and cheese restaurant popped up in Oakland, we were on that shit like white on rice. More food porn and the review after the jump.

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Spinach budjiya was one of the first and only Indian foods I enjoyed eating while growing up. They were fried crispy on the outside, warm and fluffy on the inside with a bit of spice. Because budjiya batter is often dropped from a spoon into the hot oil, they take on funny shapes, and I used to love eating those extra crunch tentacles of dough it created.

I wanted to whip out something delicious, fast and Indian for a small baby I was having, and I was shocked when I found out just how easy and popular it was. If you’ve ever seen fried vegetable pakoras on an Indian restaurant menu, this is in the same family. If you have trouble sourcing ingredients, try to find an Indian grocery store or check a health food store like Whole Foods. Trust me–this is so worth the extra effort. The recipe for spinach budjiya and cilantro chutney recipe after the click.

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After my recent trip to a vegan Mexican restaurant, I was in dire need of some meat. Thanks to yelp, I came across this little taco cart in the Fruitvale hood of Oakland. It was known to have killer al pastor, and Anthony Bourdain had even visited it on his last trip to the Bay Area for his show, No Reservations. Pork and Bourdain? Why the hell not?!

Heaps of food porn and my take on the meal after the click!

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