Lighting of the Rockefeller tree inspired lunch.

Today they officially light the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, not that I've ever seen it in person but it sounded like a good thing to use as inspiration for today's inspired lunch.

Main Compartment:

Christmas tree - this is a oven pancake tinted green with food coloring and has sprinkles added for the ornaments and lights. If you have never baked a pancake it's a great multitasking tool.

Baked pancakes: preheat oven to 375 degrees, mix 2 cups of your favorite pancake mix and pour into a greased jelly roll pan. Bake for 15-17 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Note you can tell if the middle looks set. This gives you a sheet of pancake that you can either divide up into pancake squares or cut with a cookie cutter but does not require you standing in front of the stove or griddle and all the servings are done at the same time. In this case I used a 8x8 square pan and only 1 cup of the pancake mix because which really would be enough for 2 adult or 4 kid servings. I tinted the pancake batter with green food coloring for the tree but you could make some that were red swirrled if you wanted to do candy canes or orange for pumpkins really its a mommy can be making pancakes, emptying the dishwasher, and making lunches at the same time technique.

Tree skirt - this is a small slice of black forest ham cut into the shape of the tree skirt.


Top Right Compartment:

ornaments = green grapes dusted with a little sugar to look like frosted ornaments


Bottom Right Compartment:

Strawberry package - I emptied a tube of low fat strawberry Greek yogurt into the compartment then I free hand cut a organic strawberry fruit leather to look like the ribbon wrapping the strawberry present.