Homemade Happy Meal

My five year old has been bugging me to make homemade kids’ meals for the past week or so. I think it’s because we never buy kids’ meals at the fast food joints – it’s much cheaper for me to just get the 4 piece nuggets and value fry – not to mention I don’t have to worry about them getting some crappy cheap toy. Today I finally had the time to get everything prepared, so we had chicken nugget kids’ meals!

We invited some friends over for lunch after kindergarten and got to work.

I printed out templates for the french fry boxes from this website. The template had two boxes on each page, which was perfect because we did one for french fries, and one for chicken nuggets. I pulled out the crayons and stickers and let the kids decorate their boxes (before they were folded and taped – I figured it would be easier that way).

For the bags we used brown lunch bags and the kids stickered and colored those as well. Decorating their paper goods may have been their favorite part.

While the kids were decorating, I got busy making lunch. I cut a bunch of Russet potatoes into shoestring fries (by hand – you could also use a fancy kitchen gadget). I rinsed them in hot water and dried them off before putting them in the oven. Supposedly that makes them crispier, but you probably have to not use so much oil. Oops.

Chicken nuggets are easy – I cut some chicken breasts into bite sized cube, doused them in some scrambled eggs, and tossed them in a baggie full of flour and seasoned salt. Shake and bake? Then I fried them in a little oil in a frying pan on the stove. you could use a deep fryer, or you could even do them baked styled in the oven (how I usually do them, but since I was doing fries too I figured the stove would be easier).

Once the food was cooked, we loaded up the fry boxes and the bags, I served up some ketchup, we doled out juice boxes, and the kids felt like they were at their favorite fast food joint!

I meant to let the kids pick out some toys or crayons or something for their kids meals. Or books, like Chik-fil-A. Next time.

This may become a tradition (once a month?) because it really was a lot of fun, and it made lunch time that much more enjoyable!

What’s your favorite lunch time tradition?