It figures that as soon as I start to get the hang of this cooking thing, our kitchen is about to undergo a major renovation, meaning it will be out of commission for the next few months. Oh well, it was good while it lasted, and I can bask in the glow of this sort of photographic evidence that I didn’t do half-badly.

Here is a dinner made up of grilled yellowtail tuna, grilled zucchini and red peppers, and steamed rice with black sesame seeds. We’ve got some time before the kitchen work begins in earnest, so there will be a few more posts culled from our sad kitchen, but its time is coming to a close.

Andy may be the best at making an omelet, pancakes, French toast, and any number of breakfast foods (which he doesn’t usually eat), but I’m the one who knows how to poach eggs. And assemble them nicely on a toasted slice of whole wheat bread, a bed of avocados, and some arugula. Hence this simple but surprisingly fancy bit of breakfast.

I buttered the toast, and added some salt and pepper to the top, but mostly this dish relies on the freshness of the ingredients, and the golden runny egg yolk, for its flavor. My favorite part is the avocado – a few slices of nature’s butter make all the difference. (Avocado hints: rub the skin with lemon to stop it from turning brown, and if you want to save half of it for a later time, leave the inner pit intact and refrigerate.)

The prune plums are in season now, so I bought a box of them from the local farmer’s market. As a kid, I loved eating them plain, skin and all, with their sticky sweetness running over my fingers and down my chin. By some oddly-unintentional coincidence, I’d often eat them while sitting in an actual plum tree, an old, gnarled one that never produced fruit, but that bloomed in pristine white every spring. It grew on the island in the middle of our street.

Its dark foliage shaded me from the sun, and from every wound or gash it bled sticky sap that hardened into amber-hued globules that added to the texture of the tree. If you caught the sap at just the right time, you could press your fingers into it and leave a fingerprint. Bees would swarm around the sap, but never bothered me.

Up on the second main trunk, the one that leaned low to the ground after years of growth, heavy snows, and climbing kids, I sat and ate my plum, gnawing the flesh and skin around the pit then tossing the latter to the grass below. It was the end of summer. School would start soon, but for that moment there was just a plum and a boy in a tree.

A few years ago, I documented a disastrous attempt at making pancakes from scratch. I thought that would be much more authentic and good than relying on pre-made mixes like Bisquick, so I printed out a well-reviewed recipe by the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. No offense to the Contessa, and it was probably no fault of the recipe, but the results were, well, awful. Even with butter and non-stick spray, the batter stuck to the grill. When I did get the first pancake up and flipped, it ended up somehow both burnt and raw at the same time. Oh well, I thought, most people say you lose the first two to practice anyway.

Well, I managed to lose the first twelve (out of twelve) to this same scenario, and by that point the kitchen was so thick with the smoke of burnt butter, raw yet blackened batter, and one charred plastic spatula (my only real mistake), that Andy had been awakened from his slumber. At the frazzled end of my already-limited patience, and wanting nothing more than a simple freaking pancake, I begged him to take over.

Literally ten minutes later, a pile of perfect pancakes sat on a plate, awaiting butter and syrup. If I wasn’t so grateful for the sight, I’d have stormed off in a huff of shifted blame. As it were, I gratefully accepted the plate and ate them down, looking over at my dismal try with defeated eyes. I asked him how he did it and he pointed to the Bisquick.

“But that’s not from scratch,” I whined. He said he never heard of anyone making pancakes from scratch. “Umm, have you heard of the Barefoot Contessa? Do you think Martha Stewart uses Bisquick?!” He shook his head and left the room. I finished the pancakes.

Later on, I asked a few friends and it turns out the whole freaking world uses Bisquick, or a pre-made mix for pancakes. Apparently this is one of those things that everyone just knows, but that no one taught me ~ like how to pump gas, or how to tie a shoe without making bunny ears.

When I saw a container of ripe blueberries sitting on the counter a few weeks ago, and felt a hankering for pancakes, I checked to make sure that Andy was still asleep and gave it another try. This time I used the Bisquick recipe ~ and every single pancake, from the first to the last, came out perfectly edible. I was eating them by hand waiting for the next batch to start bubbling. It turns out that in matters of pancakes, Bisquick beats the Barefoot Contessa.