Rachael Ray

As if lunch duty isn’t hard enough… Parents also have to master the art of the after school snack. And as most of us will attest, it’s harder than it sounds. Snacks have to be fast and easy because the clock is ticking. Homework, chores, sports and other activities are all demanding attention from your child (and probably you). They have to be nutritious because… Well, they just do. And they have to strike the right balance of fueling your kids through the rest of the afternoon without leaving them too full for dinner. For all those reasons, my No. 1 go-to after school snack for my son is yogurt. It’s healthy, filling (but not too filling), fast and easy (he can [...]...

My daughter turned 13 earlier this month and when a friend said to me “how is that possible that you have a teenager?” I looked in the mirror and was not at all surprised. I am so pleased by the person she is becoming - lovely, sensitive, funny, generous, kind. All of the work that my husband and I put in early on seems to paying off - with all three of our children. They are (usually!) fun to be around, pleasant company - I think at its simplest, that’s really the gist of parenting - raising kids who are good people. My newly teenaged daughter loves chocolate, but she also loves my lemon squares, and I don’t make them very [...]...

Lunch duty is a trial-and-error (and trial by fire) sort of thing. Sometimes you just need to try things and hope you learn something along the way. So in that spirit, here are seven highs (and lows) I learned last week over at LunchBoxBlues.com. Purchased crepes only sound like a good thing. You know the ones I’m talking about. The grocers sell packages of them in the produce section. Got me thinking how creative and delicious it would be to wrap a few of those around some fruit and pop them in a lunch container. Except they act like sponges when wrapped around anything moist. Which means you end up with a big pile of mess by lunch. If you want [...]...

With the help of nothing more than a large whole-wheat tortilla, I can turn just about anything into lunch box-friendly sushi. Well, perhaps “sushi” overstates it a bit. But I can create sushi-like bites that are easy to pack, fun and nutritious. And so can you. And the best part — no raw seafood needed. The first time I tried this was with a banana. I’d planned to make my son a peanut butter and banana wrap for lunch. So I smeared peanut butter over one side of a tortilla, popped a banana onto it and rolled it up. Trouble was, it didn’t fit in the containers I usually pack his lunch in. So I cut it in half. When I looked at [...]...

As far as Mondays go, this one is not so bad. It’s finally sunny. It’s not snowing - or hailing - both of which it did this weekend, at the end of April. I am not panicked about any specific issues relating to any of my children (at the moment - this could change at any time). Today is also a bit of a monumental day as we are getting new counters in our kitchen. We have lived in our 100+ year-old Victorian for 12 years and we are not a family that moves into a house and immediately re-does it top to bottom. Quite the contrary. We had originally budgeted for one house project per year which afforded, among [...]...

I have never liked Mondays - back to school, back to work, the weekend is over. You would think I would feel differently now that I work from home, but oh no, I still suffer from the Monday blues. My older daughter has inherited this attitude - or more like she has observed her mother who is not setting a very positive example - shouldn’t we be taking the week by storm? seizing the day? Oh well. Is it Tuesday yet? Instead I decided we should embrace our least favorite day of the week and try to do something fun. I told my daughter we would bake something special on Monday nights so at least one good thing could come out [...]...

I did the math and I’m not much impressed by myself. I have survived the packing of a daily lunch for my little demon for roughly five years now. It feels as though the tally ought to be substantial. But even with generous rounding, I can’t get a decent count. You figure 180 school days a year, times five years, plus a few months of camp each summer… And maybe we’re at 1,100. Which is not insignificant. And I don’t know what number I was expecting. It just seems that for all the pain, suffering and yogurt cups I’ve contributed to landfills, it should be… I don’t know… Something bigger. Still, those 1,100 lunches have helped me squirrel away a few tricks and tips [...]...

We were recently at a friend’s house for dinner and when we walked in a platter of heart-shaped Jello cutouts were on the counter, beautifully displayed. My kids went bananas - they have only had Jello of the store-bought cup variety at our house - they had never seen these before (You would have thought it was a platter of caviar. Not that most kids like caviar. At least not my kids. They haven’t had caviar. I digress. Maybe a platter of hot fudge sundaes).  I remember having something similar at a friend’s house when I was little but her mother called them Knox Blocks and they were cut in squares, not cookie-cutter shaped. We made some at home this week [...]...

March is tomorrow, perhaps my least favorite month. You think the winter is over, but oh no. It seems to go on, and on, and on. I am ready to put my boots away, yet I am fooling myself, I will most likely be pulling them out in April. I wanted the snow in January, yet it was no where to be found, it was waiting for March. I tend to do a lot of baking in the ho-hum days of March, and these chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting will brighten any gray March day. I am a fan of any chocolate+peanut butter dessert, and these cupcakes are moist and chocolate-y with a rich and creamy peanut butter frosting [...]...