"Popeye Basil" Burger and Oven Baked French Fries

Behold: the "Popeye Basil Burger" with oven baked French fries.  My husband coined the title of this recipe last night as we were discussing, surreptitiously of course, what the secret ingredients were that I mixed into this delicious riff on a traditional hamburger.  (Our kids were, obviously, sitting at the table, blissfully enjoying their burger which had been loaded with extra ingredients that they would normally not touch with a ten foot pole.)  I started with a pound of organic, grass-fed, ground beef that I actually found last weekend at my local grocery store.  Being the queen of re-purposing that I am, I also had some bagged spinach in the refrigerator that was threatening to go totally manky on me if I didn't use it.  So, I decided to finely chop it in my little food processor, add some garlic and then add the mixture to the ground beef to "stretch" the beef, as it were.  While I was doing this, my two older children were watching TV, so I was trying to get this all done and pitch the packaging before they had a chance to come into the kitchen to investigate what I would be serving them for dinner. 

In addition to the spinach, which my younger daughter once described as making her "tongue all angry",  I also chopped up ten ounces of button mushrooms and tossed those into a skillet to brown.  Once those were done, I cooled them off a bit, tossed them into the mixing bowl with the spinach, garlic and beef; then, I added a beaten egg, bread crumbs and salt and pepper.  By this time, my younger daughter had finished her TV time and had arrived in the kitchen to check out the dinner preparations.  She looked into the bowl, where the ingredients awaited mixing and forming into the hamburger patties, said, "that looks pretty good.  What is all that green stuff?"  I fudged my answer (DUH!) with, "oh, it is some herbs and spices that I am putting into the hamburgers".  She walked away satisfied and I was left to continue my food deception for a little while longer.  

I grilled the burgers on my favorite kitchen gadget, which I may have mentioned before - the Griddler by Cuisinart - topped a few with Swiss cheese (for my husband and me - the girls don't care for Swiss or any white cheese for that matter) and popped the burgers onto toasted sandwich thins.  I served them with hand-cut (like that really matters, but burger joints are forever touting the fact that they actually cut their potatoes with a knife.  Puh-lease.), oven baked French fries, which began as russet potatoes, thinly sliced and tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper and a seasoned salt blend.  They were baked in a 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes until crisp and golden brown.  My oldest daughter pronounced, "well, at least the fries taste the same as usual."  

The burgers may not have tasted the "same as usual", but they were eaten with nary a complaint and nary a question as to what "Popeye basil" actually is.  The mushrooms were completely undetected - score one for me (or two I guess, since I got spinach and mushrooms down their throats without them gagging)!  My younger daughter even had seconds!  So, I think this recipe was a resounding success: I stretched well made beef into 8 hamburgers; I used up an item in my fridge that would have probably gone to waste otherwise; I got my kids to eat - and enjoy! - two veggies that they really dislike; and, best of all, I have an extra hamburger for me to enjoy when my son takes his mid-day nap!  Guh-guh-guh, indeed!  (That was my dialectal Popeye.....just to be clear.)