Plain Jane Baked Potato

Circumstance drives me to Jason’s Deli many times each year and I always order the salad bar. I don’t know what it is about their fixins that makes their salads so good, but I just can’t resist.

Now everyone knows the best thing about a salad bar is you get to put whatever you want on it. I suppose my salads are “salads” in the technical sense: they contain traces of lettuce and were assembled under sneeze guards. But my salads are manly salads. They’re topped with shredded cheeses and adorned with bacon bits, cashews, and other crunchy things. At least two hard boiled eggs always find their way into the mix. I avoid vegetables at all costs.

But this week I tried something a bit different. I got the extraordinarily innocuously named Plain Jane Baked Potato. “Potatoes are healthy, right?” I said to myself. “Especially a nice plain one. Besides, this is Jason’s Deli: the restaurant positively awash in organic and healthy propaganda. They wouldn’t steer me wrong.” So I ordered it.

So imagine my surprise when this son of a biscuit eater showed up:

I know photos can be deceiving, but trust me this was one big freakin potato. Here’s a different image to better help you gauge its size:

And did I say, “one big potato?” No, it’s actually TWO potatoes surgically attached into one big frankenpotato. And did my eyes deceive me? Did the menu actually call this the plain jane? What kind of “plain jane” potato comes covered in a pound of cheese, bacon bits, sour cream, and a giant wad of butter?

The Point of This Post
This is the “No Help Here” category where I attempt to help you. We’ve discussed hidden calories, dangerous restaurant menu items, and topics of this sort before. And I’ve always said, “C’mon, people … this is obvious stuff. We know what ‘bad’ food looks like. No one should ever have to tell you to NOT eat ginormous platters of food.”

But I must admit that even I, the Snarky Wonder, was taken aback when afterward I decided to look up the damage on the organic this, no artificial that, healthy potato at Jason’s deli.

So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, read no further…

Hey, at least it offers nearly a full day’s worth of calcium. I’m just glad I didn’t order two of them. But, as painful as it is for me to admit it, this tasted goooood. I mean, how could it not? Just look at this puppy. I can only redeem myself here by saying: at least I followed my senses and split it into two meals.

So! Who’s up for dessert?