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Take your place at the table

Last week’s trip to New York was nothing short of awesome. Parker and I had a blast on Friday.

Despite being the focus of this blog, Parker sometimes gets nervous when he is made the center of attention. So Friday’s photo shoot for Rachael Ray’s magazine put him to the test.

And he did so great. He loved the whole process, including being silly for the cameras.

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The folks at Rachael’s magazine were amazing to work with. We had a lot of fun during the shoot.

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After the shoot, we hung at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perfect for a rainy afternoon. We both loved the Egyptian stuff, not to mention all the Greek and Roman stonework.

And after our big day, we decided we needed cake. For dinner. So we headed to Lady M bakery and decided a little of everything was called for. Delicious!

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We kept rotating the plates on the table, taking a bite and passing it on. We both were kind of sick to our stomachs by the time we were done, but we had a nice three-hour train ride home to relax.

And today it’s back to reality, though only briefly. Tomorrow is Parker’s last day of school. Which means he and I need to go shopping this afternoon for his last-day-of-school-anything-goes lunch.

For today, I just worked with what I had. And that means leftover steak from last night’s dinner and a slab of casava bread smeared with cream cheese and Parker’s favorite red pepper-garlic jelly we get at the farmers market.

I also added a leftover cherry clafouti, a batch of which I made for breakfast on Sunday.

These things were crazy easy to make and really delicious. Best yet — they actually are pretty healthy. I was inspired by this recipe for blueberry buttermilk clafouti on the Baking Bites site.

It seemed so easy, but I decided I could make it even easier. I did the whole thing in the blender. All I did was combine 1 cup of buttermilk, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, the zest of 1 lemon, 1/3 cup sugar, a pinch of salt and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder in the blender. I blended that until smooth, then — with the blender running, sprinkled in 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour. I blended just until mixed.

The Baking Bites recipe calls for baking it as one large item, but I divided it into seven mini tart pans (coated with cooking spray). I didn’t have blueberries, but I did have a 12-ounce bag of frozen cherries. I dumped that into a saucepan and simmer until thawed, then used a slotted spoon to distribute the cherries among the tarts.

That’s it. About 25 minutes (individual tarts cook faster than one large one) at 350 F and they were delicious. They also are low in fat and sugar. Buttermilk is naturally low-fat and there is only 1/3 cup of sugar in the entire recipe.

Easy lunch ideas for kids and adults: leftover bison steak with lemon wedges; casava bread with cream cheese and red pepper-garlic jelly; and a buttermilk cherry clafouti. http://www.LunchBoxBlues.com

Read the original on: Lunch Box Blues

Lunch Box Blues, J.M. Hirsch

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J.M. Hirsch is the national food editor for The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He is the author of several cookbooks, including "High Flavor, Low Labor" and the upcoming "Beating the Lunch Box Blues" (9/2013).