little LADIES WHO LUNCH

This is *so* easy to pull off, folks, and so delicious.  I hope you give it a try! 

All you need is your fruit of choice and a high quality dark chocolate bar.  Melt the chocolate in a water bath.  Don’t know how?  No longer a valid excuse:

• Chop the chocolate bar into semi-uniform pieces to ensure even melting. Do not just chuck the entire bar into a bowl and expect things to go well.
• Avoid all contact with water, as even a single drop of water will spoil the fun! Make sure your bowl and spatulas are completely dry.
• Heat water in a sauce pan or other pot, and insert bowl so it sits directly over the water or just inside of it — again, not allowing any water to chocolate contact.
• Melt the chocolate slowly over low heat. Chocolate is delicate and can become grainy if overheated.
• Stir the chocolate frequently with a rubber spatula once the outer edges start to melt.  Continue stirring until chocolate is thoroughly melted.
• You’re done.

Now either drizzle the chocolate over your fruit of choice or dip your fruit into the melted chocolate and set on wax paper.   Don’t be shy — go ahead and experiment.  Dried fruit (such as apricots) is yummy as well, but for Valentine’s Day I’d encourage chocolate covered organic strawberries or pomegranate seeds with a chocolate drizzle.

By the way, Little Ladies Who Lunch is one year old today.  I want to send a special thanks to our Tumblr followers.  There are just shy of 9,000 of you, and YOU ROCK!

This is a look back at last year’s Valentine’s Day post, when my friend Diane shared with me her family’s tradition of making a non-food Valentine favors for her children’s classmates.

She rightfully says it’s a great way to put old, cracked crayons to use. Bonus: her kids are now old enough to actively participate in the process she first spied in a magazine years ago.

First, gather your broken crayons:

Peel off the paper like Diane’s daughter Francine is doing here, and break the crayons into smaller bits:

Francine is holding the family’s faithful silicon heart-shaped cupcake pan.

Fill molds with broken crayons and bake low and slow, checking on the melting process along the way.

Here is the finished product: attractive & functional heart-shaped tie-dyed Valentines.

Here’s Diane’s son Tommy right before they placed 2-3 of the crayons into bags tied with pretty ribbons and a card.

There will be enough candy in and out of the classroom on Valentine’s Day. Why not go for something unique and fun?

Valentine’s Day seems as good a time as any to debut a labor of love.  We’ve been sinking our teeth (no pun intended) into the challenge of creating fun, nutritional, low-fat lunches since the start of the school year, and have been asked many times to log our meals for public consumption (uh, there I go again).  Rather than continue to speak in puns — something I am prone to doing on Monday mornings following an action-packed weekend —I’ll end by saying that the Little Ladies are very excited about our launch, and so am I!  We do hope you’ll enjoy our 3 part Valentine’s Day entry:  lunch, a special dessert to follow dinner with your Valentine(s), and a useful and utterly adorable non-food classroom party favor from my friend Diane Pallini (complete with photos featuring her 2 beautiful children).  Love…from our house to yours. 

Two organic, nitrate-free turkey breast slices on heart shaped multi-grain bread; a trio of mini low-fat cream cheese & organic strawberry jam sandwiches on whole grain bread; red fruit salad (strawberries, watermelon balls, apples, red grapes); plain organic yogurt sprinkled with cinnamon, chopped almonds and dried cranberrries; 6 sweet potato and beet chips.

The evening’s sweet treat:  Indoor Smores!

Inspired by this post on EatingWell.com, we tweaked the recipe by doing the following:

• We made our marshmallows from scratch.  It’s an easy process — save for the clean-up — and completely worth the effort as far as taste goes.  It’s also a project kids love (see photo of my youngest stepson in action below), although strict supervision is needed for the boiling process.  Vegans/vegetarians and anyone who is skeeved out by gelatin can use a plant-based product instead.
• We used New Morning brand organic low-fat honey grahams and dark chocolate and used a kitchen torch for browning (just because using the torch is a blast!).

Last but not least, my friend Diane shared with me her family’s tradition of making a non-food Valentine favors for her children’s classmates every year.  She calls it a simple process, and her kids are now old enough to actively participate in the process she first came across in a magazine years ago:

First, gather your broken crayons:

Peel off the paper like Diane’s daughter Francine is doing here, and break the crayons into smaller bits:

Francine is holding the family’s faithful silicon heart-shaped cupcake pan.

Fill molds with broken crayons and bake low and slow, checking on the melting process along the way.

Here is the finished product:  attractive & functional heart-shaped tie-dyed Valentines.

Here’s Diane’s son Tommy right before they placed 2-3 of the crayons into bags tied with pretty ribbons and a card.

We’re grateful that Diane gave us the opportunity to peek into her home!

Thanks for joining us on our inaugural post here on LLWL.  Check back tomorrow for our next lunch post!