Among the boy set in my house, Fried Fish Night is a popular occasion, and one they don't get to enjoy all that often. But because fried fish is also an excellent meal to serve in a small kitchen with a rotating and juvenile table population, that's what I'm dishing up to our friends and their three boys tonight.

My approach to Fried Fish Night is to buy firm-fleshed, inexpensive fillets, such as pollack, and cut them into serving portions. Then I make a batter of flour, egg, salt, pepper, and a tiny amount of baking powder: it's a Venetian frying batter I learned from Marcella Hazan, and it works well with vegetables too. When I'm ready to cook, I pour some peanut oil into the wok, enough to come about an inch and a half up the side of the pan. I let the fat get good and hot, which is easy and relatively safe with peanut oil; drop the fish into the batter and then into the pan; and voila. Fried Fish Night.

As long as the weather cooperates for harvesting, we'll also be having roasted green beans, arugula and cucumbers, watermelon, and blueberry and/or raspberry cake. And we'll be having some noise as well. I guarantee that.

In the meantime, I note that it's started to rain. Blueberries are beginning to seem less likely, aren't they?