Tuesday's Fish Fry

So, for the first time in a long time on a weekday, Tuesday morning I ate breakfast. I warmed up some of the Irish porridge and ate it watching the morning weather. Still very cold, but it's supposed to get sunny later, and then either rain or snow the next 6 days!

Trust me when I tell ya, it never did get sunny. When I got home after work, I immediately went out and put the Styrofoam cones on the roses (I had cut the roses back while on vacation). I took a picture for you in the fading light. But, once inside, the photo was too dark and somehow they looked like leftover Halloween ghosts or something. I posted it anyway, so you get the idea (but you have to click on it to enlarge it to even see them).

Before coming in, I pulled all the leeks (the only thing left in the raised bed garden). They needed a couple of frosts to sweeten up, or so I'm told. None of them look like the big, beautiful leeks I buy at Westborn Market. No, these look more like, well, maybe green onions on steroids. Be that as it may, I plan on turning all of them into Potato and Leak Soup.

But, not tonight. Tonight's menu is going to be my favorite fish dinner: Fried catfish and wild rice.

So, I changed clothes and emptied the dishwasher. I turned on the news to get the weather. I got the okay from the building manager where I work to throw the Masonite pieces I tore out into the dumpster, but I don't want to do it in the rain.

So, it was 7:00 PM and I turned my attention to dinner. I started the wild rice according to the instructions.

Then I made up my mise en place: A pan of flour, three eggs with a splash of buttermilk (just to be different) and yellow corn meal. Now, I hate to admit this, but I was totally out of cornmeal! So, I opened the bane of all Southerners, the last box of Jiffy corn meal mix (it's too sweet according to them).

I had four beautiful filets, so I patted them dry with paper towels; put them in the flour, then the egg mixture and finally the cornmeal mix. Then, when the Canola oil was bubbling around a wooden spoon handle inserted, I put in two filets.

When they were golden brown, I set them on a rack over paper towels and hit them with some salt. I fried up the next two and then waited for the wild rice to finish up.

When the wild rice was done, I plated everything up, splashed some hot sauce on the catfish and dug in, with extreme pleasure!

When they all cooled, I pout the remaining filets and leftover wild rice in the fridge. I went and watched some TV until 10:00 PM and then went to sleep.