Breakfast Quesadilla Recipe

My take on the breakfast quesadilla is part omelet, part cheese quesadilla. Don't let the name fool you though; the combination makes for an easy and tasty school lunch. I serve them at room temperature, along with salsa so the children can dip them. It's playful and no utensils are required. The recipe can be adapted with additional ingredients that you have on hand.

Tuna Nicoise Salad with Goose Eggs

Today, I made a French salad recipe called nicoise salad. I filled the salad with a combination of salad greens, capers, tuna and goose eggs. I was testing the recipe because school is about to start, and I'm not a big fan of the ready-made all-inclusive food trays. They don't contain much except a few crackers and small pieces of cheese and cold meat that are usually packed with salt, sugar and fat.

The salad received two thumbs up from my little munchkin. She loves hard-cooked eggs, which makes folding in the other ingredients much easier. As an added bonus, hard-boiled eggs are easy to pack. If you're planning on making this for your kids, the nicoise salad dressing can be packed separately so the salad is still crunchy and fresh when lunch time finally arrives.

A Pham Fatale reader named Karen left a wonderfully insightful comment last week where she described the challenges of preparing lunches for her kids. While my little munchkin hasn't experienced the teasing from her classmates (yet) even though her lunch box is different from her friends, I understand the issue. It has inspired me to come up with back-to-school recipes that covertly sneak nutritious ingredients into dishes that are familiar to kids. What could be more femme fatale worthy than that?

Back to School Lunch Ideas

It's almost the end of summer vacation for the little ones in my home. The girls have already started filling their backpacks with new school supplies in anticipation of the new year ahead.

But homework for mommies doesn't end at buying binders and erasers; we must also fill their stomachs properly if we expect them to fill their minds with knowledge. To help, I’ve listed some ideas for kids' school lunches, that are healthy, flavorful and easy to make. I hope it will get you inspired!

Hazelnut Plum Pie Recipe (Tarte aux Prunes)

We harvested our last batch of plums from the garden this week. I've been the only one who enjoys eating them fresh due to their sour-tasting skin, even though the flesh is tremendously sweet.

With the remaining fruit, I made a rustic plum pie. I layered hazelnut-flavored butter cream at the bottom of the pie shell and covered it with halved, peeled plums. I then covered the whole pie with another disk of pastry dough that I pricked using a lattice-dough pastry tool. Serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a hot cup of tea and you're all set for your next tea party with your girlfriends!

Turbot Fish in Tomato Sauce (Breaded Fish Recipe)

Turbot is a flat, white-fleshed, delicately flavored fish. To avoid overpowering the mild fish, I breaded and pan-fried it to create a crispy outer layer, and then placed the fish on a bed of simple tomato sauce.

I garnished the top with Castelvetrano green olives, which added a mild, lightly salted, briny taste. The fish was both flaky and meaty in texture and full of flavor.