No-sweat summer cooking: burgers and homemade chips

Welcome back to my weekly "no-sweat summer cooking" post - meal ideas that are light and simple to prepare, don't heat up the house (or you!) and are hopefully delicious and kid-friendly.  Click here to see previous posts.

Okay, no points for creativity this week - summertime and burgers are pretty much a given, right?  Well, I never claimed that these would be unique meal ideas, just ideas. ;)  Also, I cheated a little - Carey did the BBQing while I was inside getting other things ready.  And.... I didn't get any photos of our meal this week - I'm not a food blogger, so I don't always think to take a picture before digging in!! :P

Carey always tells me how much he enjoys my homemade burgers, so the other day I made a batch and stuck them in the freezer so they'd be ready to go when we wanted them.  I'm finding that the key to easy summer cooking is really in the prep - with a bit of foresight and planning, things are much easier (hmmm, I guess that could be true for many things!).  Here's my burger recipe, handed down from my mother-in-law and sister-in-law (when Carey and I got married, his sister made us a recipe book full of "family favorite" recipes and it's gotten a lot of use!).  I've made a few changes (I don't add onions).

Hamburgers

Ingredients
700-800g ground beef
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp each salt and pepper
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
Diced onion (optional)

Mix all ingredients, form into patties and freeze for future use or cook immediately.  I get about a dozen burgers from this recipe, but you could get more or less, depending on how big you like your burgers.


While Carey was out BBQing the burgers, I was trying out a recipe I found a while ago for homemade potato chips - done in the microwave!  You can find the recipe here.  I was really intrigued by this recipe, as it seemed so quick and easy, and I have a love of homemade potato chips (not that I've ever made them before, but whenever I see them on the menu at a restaurant, I always get them).  I'm not sure what I did wrong, though, but my chips did not turn out like hers.  They were good potatoes (Emmett even ate some, and he's not a potato guy), but definitely not chips.  Not really crunchy at all.  Maybe I didn't slice the potatoes thin enough... cook them long enough... let them cool long enough???  I don't know.  If you try out this recipe and it works for you, please let me know what you did, as I'd love to know what I did wrong.  

Other than the "chips" being a bit of a dud, the rest of the meal was a hit.  The kids split a burger between the two of them, and they both really enjoyed it.  We even ate outside on our deck, and it was a gorgeous summer evening (again, wishing I had taken a pic...). :P

Do you have a "no-sweat summer cooking" meal idea to share?  Leave a link to your blog post (or to a recipe online) in the comments!  Thanks!!