Fast

Eastside Road, September 27, 2011—

TODAY'S FAST INCLUDES a bit of fruit: it can't be helped. Our little Duchess d'Angoulême, hardly taller than I am, gives us every year eighty pounds or so of delicious pears; they've got to be eaten. They keep for a while, of course, but only those you pick: the ones that drop have to be eaten. I force myself. Otherwise, the regulation toast and cappuccino in the morning, tea and nuts at tea-time.

To tease the appetite, though, I made pesto in the afternoon, to have tomorrow: