Aflutter for Butter

I struggle to eat well on the road as it is…but when I offered to take my New Orleans team to lunch today, I let them pick the place. Which is how I ended up at Copeland’s “New Orleans” chain restaurant. Now look…I love a corn dog as much of the next guy. But a Wednesday-afternoon lunch hardly seems the time for a carbohydrate body wrap.

I knew we were in trouble when we ordered the spinach and artichoke dip (!). Which came with bow-tie pasta (!!)…that had been deep fried in some spicy [read: battered] coating. Should I worry if the veggie-named appetizer comes shaped like a stick of butter??

After the entrée’s were ordered, the unthinkable occurred. The restaurant’s deep fryer…. broke. Gasp! [We got those crunchy little bow-tie pastas in the very nick of time.] Looking around the table, I, for one, prepared for tears. Seriously, you only have ONE fryer for this whole grease-encrusted joint?? What is it – the size of a jacuzzi? Seats four? The restaurant manager tried to tell us the three menu items they could still make sans fryer and I tried to figure out what part of their Cobb Salad depended on ready access to hot oil. There was complete anarchy at table 11 until the manager promised free dessert. Peace through cheesecake.

Luckily, the broken deep fryer panic only lasted about 10 minutes before it was repaired and the order of the universe was restored. Bring on the “Seafood Platter”, which turned out to be a completely monochromatic platter of shrimp, clams, fries and catfish. Yum. My body would just like to know how much longer we are going to ricochet between Rita’s organic squash blossoms and Copeland’s House of Oleo. I kept thinking “I ran a marathon once and I didn’t eat this many carbs during the entire 18 week training season….could you please pass the Crawfish Bread.”

Well…better go - I’ve got left-over cheesecake to eat.