Here’s an embarrassing admission: every once in a great while I get a craving for this enormous crappy salad they make at Olive Garden. Despite being called “Garden-Fresh Salad,” the iceberg lettuce was likely grown hydroponically in a warehouse, and it sure as hell ain’t fresh (or nutritious). I have no idea why I occasionally crave it and I wish I didn’t.

I do however know that I can infrequently deal with actually sitting through a meal at Olive Garden. The one closest to us is always packed with desperate diners and I don’t like anything else on the menu and really, I don’t want to have to wait for an hour for some little vibrating pager to tell me that my table is ready so that I can sit and eat my depressing-but-enormous crappy salad and bread-sticks.

I finally figured out that I could skip the whole dining-in experience by ordering these salads for pick-up. That’s when I learned that for $15, they’ll give you a huge shopping bag filled with an enormous bucket of salad and enough bread-sticks to choke an army (a dozen or more, maybe?). In addition, they give you an entire bottle of salad dressing and dozens of packets of Romano cheese and croutons. Oh and a set of robust plastic salad tongs.

The last time I sunk to the level of satisfying my nasty-salad craving was a couple months ago, and while the salad and bread-sticks only lasted for two days (still: two days of salad from a bucket!), I continue to use the dressing, Romano cheese, and croutons regularly. My brain sort of boggles. Olive Garden basically says, “Oh, you want some salad? Here, take a couple month’s worth of salad toppers and some supposedly-disposable-but-actually-not salad tongs.” It’s an iceberg lettuce and crouton study of Quintessential American Excess. Have a bucket of salad and enough bread-sticks to stuff a Mars Hill family! Need more dressing? Drench that shit! No really: just take the whole damn bottle!

That said, I’m not complaining. Thanks to American Excess, I’ve had croutons and Romano cheese and salad dressing whenever I need it. Weird?