Weeknight fries, fully loaded

Few ingredients are as willing as the potato to become exactly what you want them to be. I’ve long taken it up on the offer. As a pre-teen, freshly sprung from an orthodontist’s chair, my idea of heaven was a Wendy’s fry — natural-cut, skins freckled along the edges, salt like tiny rhinestones clinging to grease — dunked into a chocolate Frosty. I’d sit shotgun in my mom’s car, snapping at the neon rubber bands on my braces, savoring the ache in my jaw and the interplay of hot-cold, sweet-salty, crunchy-soft.

By college, I’d graduated to McAlister’s Deli, where the pick-two combo gave me a cup of soup or chili and a baked potato. I’d collapse one into the other, building a loaded potato so ungainly it should have come with a warning sign. Aesthetically, it was an eyesore. As a meal, it wa