Stuff Catholics Like: Fish On Fridays

Yum, it’s Lent!

I don’t know at what point having fish became equal to being deprived, but it’s not been during my lifetime. In fact, considering that for the past ten years, I haven’t been eating a lot of meat (too darn expensive, except the occasional hamburger), eating fish, especially seafood, is quite the luxury.

Not, of course, tuna fish. Yes, I suppose a tuna salad sandwich isn’t something I’d consider a luxury item. But when my daughter and I were recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan to see Lady Gaga, we went out to a very nice sushi restaurant, Marado Sushi. Love me some nice Yellowtail. It’s hard to believe that going out for sushi could ever be considered a penitential experience. (Well, maybe. It could just be bad sushi.)

So you’ve got your raw fish and seafood. But let’s not forget the cooked! Consider the humble fish fry. After having lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for over ten years, I’ve seen Friday night fish fries raised to something just short of a religious experience themselves. Serb Hall even installed it’s own drive thru window! The cars lined up for a block, even with their amazingly fast service. Now that we’re here in northeastern Indiana, my local parish doesn’t, unfortunately, have a weekly fish fry, even during the Fridays of Lent, our local Knights of Columbus do quite a fine job. All you can eat, even!

And this is just fish. Don’t even get me started on crab cakes, salmon patties, and shrimp scampi! Yum, yum, yum.