And now, a few helpful hints for preparing delicious fried haddock.

DO buy 1 lb haddock filets. DON’T buy them with the skins on. If you DO buy them as filets with the skins, DON’T try frying them anyway.

DO oil pan and set stove to med/hi. If directions then say “Step 2, spread breadcrumbs on bottom of pan,” DON’T believe the directions. What you really want to DO is put breadcrumbs in a dish so you can dip the haddock in the breadcrumbs. What you DON’T want to do is spread breadcrumbs on the bottom of a pan full of hot oil, since that will create a burnt brown substance not unlike charcoal molasses. If this happens, DO get another pan and put oil in it.

DO whisk 2 eggs. If the directions have this as step 3 (after oiling pan and spreading breadcrumbs), go back in time and rewrite directions so you whisk the eggs before getting the oil hot. If no time machine is available, DO whisk eggs as quickly and DO rewrite directions afterwards.

DO pour eggs in oval dish. If oval dish is not available, use regular dish.

DO use fork to pick up fish, cover in egg, then dip in breadcrumbs. If you have bought haddock filets with the skins on, DO wish you had bought them unskinned since the fork will probably be unable to poke through the skin. If skin is still on fish, DO think you’re an idiot. Then get cooking tongs of some sort and flip fish in oil.

DO remove fish from oil. DO continue frying 2 more pieces of fish. When you DO cut through the middle of the first piece and see the center is still raw fish, DO realize that haddock needs to be cut to about a half inch thick so that fish cooks all the way through and comes out as flaky white substance. DO go back in time and cut filets thinner cut. If time machine is still not available, DO cut the remaining piece in half and fry that. The final piece should come out much better than either of the previous 3.

DO try frying the first 3 pieces of fish to cook all the way through. If, at this point, fire alarm goes off, DON’T run back and forth between the fire alarm, the stove, and the windows. If you DO end up running around in a comical three waywind sprint, DON’T do it more than 3 times.

When the fire alarm finally shuts off, DO assess the damage survey the results. The first 3 burnt and yet raw filets may look like this:

The slightly better final filet should look like this:

Side by side comparison:

The rest of the kitchen may look like this:

Voila! DO sit at a bar counter and enjoy your meal. If necessary, DO throw out the fish and order Combination Special #6 from a local Chinese restraurant as a replacement.

Tune in next week, as we learn how to flambe Crepes Suzette. DO bring a fire extinguisher and DO come again!

Over President’s Day weekend, I visited South Bend and got a chance to visit the Grotto on the Notre Dame campus.

It was lightly snowing, and snow covered the Grotto and the benches, even putting out the candles that had been lit on the right side of the cave.

A thick layer of snow covered every surface… except for the kneeling bench in front of the Grotto, kept clean by a steady stream of prayers. Even in the cold, people kept coming to send up prayers before the statue of Our Lady.

I created a new “favorite icon” (or “favicon”) for this site, which should appear in the address bar of most browsers.

I started with the JG icon used for Flickr:

I shrunk that to 32px x 323px, darkened the left to improve the contrast, and created the following image:

I then used the Dynamic Drive Favicon Generator at http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to create the favicon file, and uploaded it to the site.

Cool stuff! Favicons seem to be common these days, and it’s nice to have unique branding for my site.