partially reproduced from hydration is our highest priority:

“i’ll have a beer and a slice of the pear tart, please.”
“so. you like the pear more than the apple?”
“the apple pie is good but the pear tart is excellent. do you run out of it every day?”
“my mother hates it when we run out of the pear tart. because then she has to bake more of it. she lives in a house in my garden and i have, i have�what is the word for this?”
[from the kitchen, the smallest one in amsterdam:] “the word is ‘enslaved.’”
“thank you. i have enslaved her. she says it is bullshit. ‘73 years old and i bake five days a week. what kind of retirement is that?’ she says. it is true. i tell her this is an active retirement.”

*******

one day someone gave us a big bag of pears from their tree and it was too much to eat. they were all going soft. so she tried this thing and that thing to use them up and then she came up with this masterpiece. […] but it is a secret, the recipe. she will not tell any of us. one time, she was in a very bad accident and had to go to the intensive care. she woke up and the first thing she said to me�i was there with my sister�was ‘you must write down the recipe or else if i die there will be no more tart.’ so we found some paper and were getting ready to write it down when the doctor comes in. ‘what are you doing?’ he asks. so we tell him we’re writing down the pear tart recipe in case mother dies and he says ‘she’s not dying, you idiots.’”