Fried Catfish Sandwich Late-Night Snack

It was a Tavern Wench post that inspired me to post my procedure (or "recipe," as people who grew up outside of labs call them) for a fried catfish sandwich. After years of letting my late-night hunger pangs succumb to the lure of Camp Washington Chili, I needed a new direction. The pan-fried catfish sandwich helped me, and it can help you, too.

The bread I use is a whole wheat baguette from Shadeau Breads. I cut off 1/3 and slit it into a hoagie bun. I get my fish from the two places at Findlay Market that sell fish, neither of which I can remember the name of even though I've been there four score and seven times. Remember to smell fish before you buy it. If it smells fishy, buy more.

Heat up about 1 Tbsp oil in a pan (or even better, an iron skillet like the one I bought dirt-cheap at an antique store in rural Kentucky) on medium-high. Coat the fillet in equal parts flour ("all-purpose," if you want to be technical) and cornmeal. You can dip it in milk or buttermilk first, but I just sneeze on it and rub the mucus around.

Fry the fish, about 4 minutes per side. Add salt & pepper to the face-up side, and then again after you flip it. Remember, you're pan-frying, not deep-frying. The point is to be MORE healthy than a 3-way.

While that's going on, put a couple of spoons of mayo in a bowl, add some curry powder, salt & pepper, and some lemon juice. Don't add too much because it will become too soupy and lemony. Just a teaspoon, if you're the measuring type (I'm not; I just squeeze about half of a half-lemon). If you add too much lemon then just add more mayo. No rocket science here.

Mix it up, spread it on, add the fish, and eat it up.

The key thing is to make the curried mayonnaise. It makes all the difference.

In addition to being a healthy meal that you can have the satisfaction of making yourself, catfish is not one of the mercury-laden fishes that should be avoided by childbearers, future childbearers, children of childbearers, and pretty much anyone else that doesn't want their brain to turn to Bush mush.

3 Cool Things

One possibly perfect gift for the person whose birthday falls on Halloween.

Paintings that Gaudi might have made if he were a painter and from arctic Russia.

Sculptures that you'll like if you like the first two items and you wish you could be friends with Hieronymus Bosch.

How to Cut a Whole Chicken

Chicken Butchery 101 (from the Niagara Culinary Institute), one of the better videos I've found on the procedure:

Malone, Cooper, Winburn, Bates

This blog salutes WKRC's Dan Hurley for providing the only substantive program on local issues. I once saw him at the Clifton Graeter's, and if he wasn't already at a table, I might have bought him ice cream myself in gratitude for his good work. This was a few years ago when I was in my chocolate shake phase (chocolate shake w/ vanilla ice cream).

Hurley has been hosting non-incumbent candidates on Newsmakers for several weeks now. Yesterday, he had Malone, Cooper, Winburn, and Bates. If you missed it, you didn't miss much. Here's the recap:

Malone: A comment at Porkopolis called Malone's performance "borderline retarded." I don't know that I'd go that far, but it's safe to say that "Sam Malone" and "genius" have never been in the same sentence. And yet amazingly, he turned out to be the smart one on the show. As I recall, he was the only one who actually had something resembling a plan to reduce crime in hotspots.

Cooper: I don't know much about Minette Cooper except that she served on council before. I have never heard her speak before, and, based on what I heard, I find it unbelievable that she served on council. She was poorly informed, unintelligent, and appeared confused. I would not be surprised to find out she was on medication at the time.

Winburn: I can see why he has the nickname "Charlie Windbag." He said almost nothing of substance, instead serving up vague platitudes about how he will provide leadership on council and fight crime.

Bates: Bates has about zero charisma, which won't help her, but that's not a reason not to vote for her. The reason not to vote for her is because she is poorly informed about local issues and didn't have any clear ideas about crime, the Banks, or fiscal issues. She also didn't understand the streetcar issue, which she thought was just something that would look fun and nice. The host had to explain that it was about economic development.

The most generous description I can give about these four candidates is that they barely meet minimum expectations, if at all. I know I'll be looking for something more on Nov. 6.

Hospitals and Mortality Rates

From Medical News Today:

Patients have on average a 71 percent lower chance of dying at the nation's top-rated hospitals compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 18 procedures and conditions analyzed in the tenth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, issued today by HealthGrades, the healthcare ratings company. The study, which documents a wide variation in the quality of care between the highest-performing hospitals and all others...

The HealthGrades study of patient outcomes at the nation's approximately 5,000 hospitals, the most comprehensive annual study of its kind, covers more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records over the years 2004 to 2006.

The top-rated hospitals were in the upper midwest (WI, IL, IN, MI, OH). The lowest were in the lower midwest (KY, TN, AL, MS). So it will behoove you to be close to home if plagued by something on this list:

Atrial fibrillation, bowel obstruction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary bypass surgery, coronary interventional procedures (angioplasty/stent), diabetic acidosis and coma, gastrointestinal bleed, gastrointestinal surgeries and procedures, heart attack, heart failure, pancreatitis, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, resection/replacement of the abdominal aorta, respiratory failure, sepsis, stroke, and valve replacement surgery.

Why I'm Not for Peace

That's the title of an Ellen Willis piece I found via a random click. She died last year, I believe. This article is from 2002 and, in my opinion, it accurately articulates what is wrong with the American left, why it has failed in effecting substantive change, and why people like me are so unimpressed and disappointed with it.

There is no shortage of articles examining defects of the right so it's nice to read something like this for a more holistic perspective.

It expounds on ideas expressed in a Chris Hedges speech when he recalled the warnings of a teacher who had lived through Nazi Germany:

He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.


I can't post excerpts because the Acrobat file won't let me, so you'll just have to read it. The article is from Vol. 29, No.1 (top left).

I'd be interested to know what you think.

(h/t 3QuarksDaily)


(Added: These are the people we're talking about, photographed by 5chw4r7z)

Trashy Ideas for Cincinnati

From the Business Courier:

The Green Cincinnati Recycling Plan launched this week by Mayor Mark Mallory and city council members would increase recycling by 50 percent in the next four years.

Cincinnati now recycles about 9 percent of its total waste. By upping recycling to 15 percent, Cincinnati would increase the rebate it receives from the Hamilton County Solid Waste District, which would reduce the cost of the city's recycling program. The city now gets a $26 rebate for each ton of recycling. The rebate increases to $30 per ton if the city recycles to 10 percent of its trash, and to $34 per ton by recycling 15 percent.

And up in Butler County they're having a "Recycled Sculpture Contest" for grade schoolers. The kids made art out of trash. See an example here. The best of the bunch are on display at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton (no mention of the contest on their web page, though).

Could this be a good idea for the students in our beloved inner city? It certainly could. It's an out-of-the-box idea to stimulate creative thinking and it might just impress an awareness of their environs on them.

If anyone out there is a member of the Mayor's Kitchen Cabinet, think about it. It's not as if it would cost much.

How Many Ways Can You Tie a Shoelace?

Over 43,000, according to the shoelace mathematics expert (don't laugh... his article got published in Nature).

Here's a few dozen you can try yourself. I might try the "double helix" myself.

Appendix Might Actually be Useful, Say Researchers

But it still can't stand up to the spleen or gall bladder.

From Bio.com:

Drawing upon a series of observations and experiments, Duke University Medical Center investigators postulate that the beneficial bacteria in the appendix that aid digestion can ride out a bout of diarrhea that completely evacuates the intestines and emerge afterwards to repopulate the gut.

The gut is populated with different microbes that help the digestive system break down the foods we eat. In return, the gut provides nourishment and safety to the bacteria. Parker now believes that the immune system cells found in the appendix are there to protect, rather than harm, the good bacteria.

As always, the best course of action is prevention: don't get diarrhea in the first place. An erstwhile college friend worked construction one summer, building fast-food restaurants. He never ate fast-food after that and advised me to do the same, although he wouldn't tell me why. But the look of contemplative disgust on his face suggested that I was better off not knowing the specifics.

So try to avoid fast-food, no matter how attractive the value.

Peace Prize Goes to Gore

Well, it's official. Al Gore has something to put in his lockbox.

The worst part is the inevitable querulousness and logical fallacies sure to emanate from the right-wing echo chamber: the Nobel Committee has a liberal bias, the U.N. is irrelevant, the "jury is still out" on climate change, and so on.

The ostriches on the right can't win the argument on scientific grounds, so their only option is to discredit their opponents.

I suggest the ostriches establish their own award ("The Inhofe Prize", perhaps?) for advances in rejecting overwhelming scientific consensus. Let the people decide which award they want to take seriously. Let the marketplace decide. The prize can be endowed by Exxon, which shouldn't be any problem.