There are days, like today, I want to purée roasted chestnuts, pulverize apples and then bake a flaky, buttery pastry shell.

I don’t need, nor do I want dessert. But that’s not the point. The food on my shelves, and in my fridge, beg (not literally, obviously) to be transported into something other than their raw state. It’s the kind of day I tune the radio to public radio and then think about whether I should use my food processor or immersion blender.

This before my second cup of coffee.

And since I know myself well enough, I have to give in to the urge to bake.

Take that lovely pear tart pictured at the top of the post-the last dessert I made when this similar feeling came upon me.

I fretted and obsessed about how to best use my pears, other than poach and preserve, which I have plenty of. And if you’re now wondering if I suffer from a little ADD, don’t worry, I’m thinking the same thing, since I can’t finish a proper sentence without segueing into another thought.

Back to the tart.

I bought a can of raspberry preserves-an impulse buy if I ever had one. You know when you go to the grocery for chicken breast and garlic and find yourself in the baking aisle and then realize in your fifty-two years (or however old you are), you’ve never, once in your life, bought this product-this goopy, crimson raspberry filling you’re positive, without looking at the label, it is full of sugar, sodium, and preservatives, and yet since you adore the tart, sweet flavor of raspberries, you put the can in your shopping basket, in essence, planting the seeds of dessert-surely to blossom into a dessert idea one morning before your second cup of coffee? Yes, that is one sentence.

Then along comes pear season. And since you love fresh pears and buy them by the basket-full at the farmers market in addition to getting them in your CSA basket every Friday, you now have your ingredient pairing for your obsessive-compulsive dessert. Pear and Raspberry Tart.

And while I said my good-byes to pear’s earlier this summer, the feeling-the urge to bake remains, just under the surface. In fact, it resurfaced again this morning halfway through my first cup of coffee.

See, last night, I roasted Chinese chestnuts, for the first time in my fifty-two years.

Sense a “first’s” trend?

Yeah, me too.

Check back for my roasted chestnut dessert concoction-more than likely involving Jonathan apples and crepes.

I’m going for more coffee.