Our first fish fry of the year barely escaped being a disaster. We had planned to go to Holy Angels, in Hays, having heard that their fish was the best in the city, freshly breaded according to a closely guarded recipe under the supervision of an elderly gent who refuses to share his secret with the younger generation. My reasoning was that we should eat his fish while he was still around to fry it because you never know what tomorrow may bring.

Unfortunately we got caught up in rush hour traffic and by the time we got to the church we were confronted with a hand lettered sign on the door saying that they were sold out except for take out orders. Although we briefly considered going in and claiming to be the O’Briens or the McGillicuddys we were afraid of running into real families with those names. Poppy was getting hungry and cranky and I said, “Look, we’re right next to a shut-down steel mill, there have to be more Catholic churches near by!”

Then I remembered that we weren’t far from St. Therese of Lisieux, where we had eaten a great fish fry last year. Hoping they had a few scraps of food left, since it was almost 7:00 by this time, we raced over there, and were we glad we did! For $7 each we got complete meals, and everything was great. I had fried cod with fresh cut french fries, along with side dishes of halusky and big, fat pierogies, and Poppy got salmon that actually was served with wild rice and asparagus. There were two plates of home made bar cookies left on the dessert table so we snatched them up, but when we tried to pay for them a lady said that the dessert person got tired and went home so we could just have them for nothing. The same thing happened when I wanted to pay for my coffee (served with real half & half). Of course we were sitting in a Catholic school cafeteria packed with people we didn’t know, lots of boy scouts, crying babies, and kids running around, but in my opinion that’s part of the fun. I’m only sorry I forgot my camera, but I’ll definitely bring it with me next Friday.