Cooking With Kids: Pizza Burgers and Parmesan French Fries

When you have kids, chances are that you will be spending some amount of time during the week shuttling kids from one activity to another. It is easy to take a quick run through the drive thru in order to keep your busy schedule and feed your family. But at what cost? Families that eat fast food several times a week are more likely to have children who are obese, have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and an increased rate of type 2 diabetes. So in order to keep you out of the fast food drive thru and keep the health of your family first, you need some quick and easy recipes for those busy nights. With a little bit of planning and some help from the kids, your busy night meals can be the ones that you most look forward to. Here is a great one that my mom used to make for us and now I make for my children.

Some additional topping or mix in ideas for the pizza burgers are:

• mushrooms
• green peppers
• tomato slices
• pepperoni

Anything that you enjoy on pizza would be great in these burgers.

Making homemade, oven baked fries is easy and fun for the whole family. We make oven baked fries often and add different seasonings to change up the flavor a bit. Here is how we make our Parmesan flavored fries.

• 4-6 medium sized potatoes that are peeled and cut into lengthwise strips
• About 2 Tbs. of olive oil
• 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
• 1 Tbs. of coarse salt

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. You want the oven to be very hot.
2. Peel, wash, and slice the potatoes into long strips about 1/4 inch in width.
3. Place the fries in a 9x13 inch glass pan or on a cookie sheet.
4. Coat the fries with the oil followed by the cheese.
5. Place in the oven for about 20-30 minutes or until golden and crispy.
6. Place on paper towels to absorb any excess oil and sprinkle with coarse salt immediately. By doing this while they are still hot, the salt will 'stick' to the fries better.
7. Let cool slightly and serve!

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I closely supervised my daughter at the stove while she was adding ingredients for our meal. It is important that you never leave your child unattended near hot surfaces or sharp objects. Although Grace is just five, I knew that I would be able to trust her to follow directions and be safe near the hot stove. You know your child! If you do not think that your child will be able to handle the safety precautions of being near a hot object, do not allow him or her to participate in that part of the cooking. I did remove the pan from the direct heat for her but the pan was still hot.

I knew that my son would not be quite ready for cooking at the stove. He was able to help coat the fries with the olive oil and Parmesan cheese. He had great fun with this part and was very ok with not "cooking" at the stove. He cheerfully declared that he'd never played with oil before!

Play to your child's stregths and interests. My daughter likes to be just like me and so she was more interested in actually cooking. My son loves to get messy so coating the potatoes was a perfect task for him! We hope that you enjoy this recipe and have as much fun cooking it as we did!