When fish turns into fish cakes

I was going to make breaded pan-fried fish for dinner. Andrew bought some fresh whiting fillets. There was skin on one side. I read up on how to skin fish in Joy of Cooking. It looked pretty easy, really; but, they also make skinning a squirrel and preparing it for a stew look easy.

My attempts to skin one side of the fish failed. I instead SCRAPED the fish off the skin, fried the flakes in a pan, and made the usual mixture for fish cakes. It was still good, but things didn't go according to plan and took longer because of it.

The moral of this story is: when life gives you fish make fish cakes. But, there's more. My grandmother said her friends used to call her Angie Ingenuity because she was always rigging something up when they went camping-- a makeshift clothesline, sunshade for the kids; a way to keep many pots warm over one fire. Can fish cakes count as an A.I. moment? Maybe not the cakes themselves, no; but, maybe the A.I. happened when I decided that I simply could not throw the fish away, that I had to do something with it. Then, something turned out to be pretty good.

Have you had your A.I. moment today? What have you done to use what you've got? Do you trust the potential of your ordinary ingredients?