LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Friday, Feb. 16 marks the first day of Lent, a 40-day religious observance that ends on Easter. It’s also the start of the fish fry season.
Parishes like Holy Family in Louisville prepare meals for lunch and dinner on Fridays. But before anyone takes a bite, 125 volunteers are working in the kitchen preparing everything.
Mary Beth Porter grew up in the Holy Family Parish and is now in charge of the fish fry through the Lenten season.
“Lent is a time of fasting and penance. One of the things that we consider somewhat of a penance is to refrain from eating meat on Friday. And so we replace it with fish,” Porter said.
Dozens of baskets of fried fish are being plated.
There are four Catholic dioceses in Kentucky: the Archdiocese of Louisville and the Dioceses of Covington, Owensboro and Lexington. Each multiple fish fry events.
For volunteers like Don Wissel, who has been a parishioner for nearly 50 years, the work means more than serving up food.
“To help underprivileged people, homeless people, sometimes, whatever. What have we can do to help the neighborhood, the community,” he said.
The goal at Holy Family this day is to sell 900 fish meals.
Porter said the money made helps with church maintenance and repairs and is donated to organizations.
“The fact that we can pull this many people together in the parish, we even have some people that aren’t members of our parish, but they love our parish so much they help out. So I’m great. I’m just grateful for everybody we have,” Porter said.
This operation reaches beyond the kitchen.
Leeney Kaufman is a “runner” during the lunch period on the day we stopped by.
“A runner makes sure everything is prepared over there before we open: spicy fish, regular fish, macaroni and cheese, green beans… when I go over there, they say ‘We need this, we need that’ and we just go, go, go all day long,” Kaufman said.
Here are some Lenten fish fry locations across the state.