Baked potato

Eastside Road, November 10, 2011—

WELL, ALMOST EVERY day; we skipped yesterday except for the coffee, toast, tea, and nuts. Maybe a little fruit: someone has to eat it.

And tonight we feasted on a baked potato. When we first started this fasting business, nearly a year ago, we ate a baked potato for dinner on the fast day: now we're happy to go without it when fasting, and feast on it the next day — especially when it's a 560-gram beauty like this one, bought Saturday at the Healdsburg Farm Market. The flesh was that perfect russet texture, not too mealy, and the flavor went deep.

I like my baked potato with just olive oil, salt, and pepper. Add beefsteak and lemon and you'd have Bistecca fiorentina with a potato on the side. Even without the beefsteak it's a meal, one of the Hundred Plates; and the green salad, with good old Eastside Zinfandel vinegar again, followed by a Bosc pear and a few figs from our trees, finished it off nicely.

Brouilly, Château Thivin, 2010 (soft, fruity, easy)