Well folks, it's Saturday.  And that means, I'm coming up for air.  I've been studying like a maniac for the last few days to try to make up for the 4 days I missed while in West Virginia for my grandmother's viewing and funeral.  I definitely would like to take this time to thank all of you for your incredible support and thoughtful words during this hard time for me.  As you know from a previous post, my grandmother was very dear to me and losing her is the hardest loss I have ever dealt with to date.  Unfortunately, it couldn't have come at a worse time, because as you all know from my obsessively annoying twitter updates and pictures, I am studying for the BAR.  Gross.  Anyway...on to happier things...

Here are some things that make me happy:  Top Chef, trying new things, and bacon.  So here I go trying to mix all those into one.  

I had just watched this episode of Top Chef (season 3) where the contestants in their "Quickfire Challenge" had to make "paupiettes" or potato-wrapped fish.  It seemed simple enough and so I thought I would try it.  I didn't have a mandoline but I thought it would be okay because of my superb knife skills (ok I don't have superb knife skills but I thought I would try anyway)... Well, apparently, using a mandoline is extremely important.  I ended up not being able to slice the potatoes thinly enough so that they would wrap around the fish.  FAIL.

So now here I am, stuck with a beautiful filet of halibut, gorgeous leeks just waiting to be the bed for this potato-wrapped fish, and potato slices too thick to wrap around.  Definition of a trial and error.  So here's what I did instead: