Look at that orange cheese! We had never seen cheese curds at Trader Joe’s before. And when I tossed them into the shopping cart, it made a certain Portland Boy very happy. We already had a seemingly bottomless supply of poutine gravy packets at home. We have used them for other dishes and they are actually quite tasty. And for the potatoes, we used a Cook’s Illustrated (subscription required) recipe for “lighter” oven fries. But be ye not mislead. There was nothing light about any of this. It is unbelievably not light at all.

First, we cut up the russet potatoes into wedges and soaked them in hot tap water for 10 minutes. When I say “we,” I actually mean “Dave.” But it’s easier to say “we.” There are two fewer letters in the word “we.”

We coated a non stick baking pan with a healthy, thick layer of oil. We drained the taters, put some oil on them, tossed with salt and pepper. Then into a very hot oven.

You might think that oven fries are healthier because you cook them in an “oven” as opposed to “deep frying.” But no. There’s still a lot of oil involved. It’s not deep frying, but it less like baking and more like “shallow frying.”

Meanwhile, let’s look at our orange cheese curds, shall we?

Or perhaps not. Sometimes we don’t need to know what we are eating. Moving along here.

Our fries have browned up nicely and we have slaved over our poutine gravy (add water, stir.)

The fries get a quick pat dry with paper towels and are plated.

Look at those beauties! Hard to believe they are homemade!

Next comes the not-fattening-at-all orange cheese curds.

Mmmm. Melty orange curds. Then gravy. It’s vegetarian gravy! Healthy!

We serve our poutine with wine in our house. Because we are classy.

Wow. What an enjoyable, delicious way to accelerate a cardiac arrest. Our one disappointment was how salty it was. Since there is so much salt in the gravy and even in the cheese curds, we won’t add salt to the fries next time.

You don’t need specific poutine gravy to make this, by the way. You can make a chicken or poultry gravy and it will work just fine. Or even veggie gravy.

It’s easy to make really delicious, horribly bad for you food at home!