The Baked Potato

I don't seem to be able to balance this project with my life like I used to. Maybe I'm just ignoring the last couple of months, but it seems like I'd always find some way of pulling through and whipping up something while still getting everything else done. Now we can't even get laundry done and make dinner in the same night because we have to walk six blocks to the laundromat. Sigh. Three more weeks.

Adjacent to the laundromat is a place that I always assumed was Middle Eastern but now seems to have more of a Russian flair to it. It's called The Baked Potato and they serve, of course, baked potatoes. They also have lentil soup and some salads, but for the most part the meat and potatoes of their business is just the latter half of that saying. The potatoes are huge, like the largest "super stuffer" potato I've seen, and then stuffed with an additional half a potato's filling to round it out. It's loaded with cheese and butter and then seasoned with salt and pepper. So far, so good.

You have your choice of three toppings. They don't really have the traditional toppings though — the broccoli, the bacon bits, the chives — there are a lot of pickled items; pickled beets, sauerkraut, pickled mushrooms, and tzatziki, garlic yogurt and hummus. I had green olives, chicken and garlic yogurt, just to make sure I felt that this baked potato meal was completely different from previous Stuffed Potatoes I've had as side dishes in the past.

Shannon had wanted the aforementioned broccoli, cheddar and bacon bit toppings, but instead ended up with extra cheese and green onions. I felt puke-like full before even finishing my baked potato. I have had little to no appetite lately and my stomach is probably shrinking to the size of a walnut. We both received a little piece of complimentary baklava which was delicious. Oddly, if you factor in the cost of laundry, this was the most expensive meal I've eaten all year.

I was going to apply to Guinness book of world records today. I read the guidelines and figured I had absolutely no chance of getting into the record books. Besides, countless wealthy merchants of the past have likely gone great amounts longer than I without a repetitive dish simply because they could. Of course, they probably had never stepped foot in a kitchen and never bothered to contact the world book of records, but this is my defeatist logic. Still, I thought it'd be cool to get a rejection letter that my feat is not quite Guinness material. Since there was a fee attached though, I bailed. Maybe I can get an honorary Guinness award somehow. By honorary, I mean a completely fake mention like getting your face on the cover of a Time magazine at a tourist booth.