A word about pears

      I can't eat pears... or apples... or peaches.  Okay, well, I could, but my mouth and throat break out in hives and my ears itch really, really bad and I don't like it one bit.  I have developed an oral allergy to the pollen that gets absorbed through the fruit's skin.  So for the last two and a half years I have abstained from all of these fruits.  Occasionally I tempt fate by taking a big bite out of a Winesap apple or losing control over a super fresh peach, but the results are always the same.  My mouth, throat, head and ears go all angry on me and I spend the rest of the day in a grumpy, frowny mood.  Hence, abstinence.

      The one shining moment in all this is that I can eat these fruits once they have gone through some kind of heat processing.  I am assuming that the heat denatures the proteins in the the pollen and blah, blah, blah.  End result, happy Rebecca (and healthier too!).  So when Dustin and I had the opportunity to glean a neglected pear tree, I was totally on board.  (It's hard wandering around an apple orchard while your family wipes Ida Red apple juices of their faces.)  We gleaned this tree on Labor Day in a misty wind of water.  We picked about four bushels of pears and brought them home to ripen.  Pears rarely ripen on the tree.

      I spent the next week sorting out the wormy, yucky pears, while cutting up the quickly ripened ones for the babies.  Since most of my canning supplies are tucked somewhere, hidden in the garage, I decided to dehydrate most of our harvest.  After two weeks of pear preservation here is what I learned.

1.  Don't dehydrate pears.  Well, do it you love them, the flavor is intense and the texture amazing, but the yield is disappointing.  In the picture you can see the jar of dehydrated pears... that is about one and a half bushels of pears worth.  I have two of these sized jars full.  The pears shrink big time.  Very small.  I would say that apples shrink to about half their size, pears shrink to about one fourth to one fifth their size.  They are very good, but I think that I would have preferred to can them.

2.  Making pear sauce is also more labour intensive than apple sauce.  It took the pears alot longer to sauce down than it did apples.  My sister-in-law makes the sauce with the crock pot, which is brilliant, but mine is MIA.  I ended freezing the almost sauce and hope to combine it with some apple in the coming weeks.

3.  Water-bathed preserved pears are so dang pretty.   I was able to can about one bushel of pears, which makes me very, very happy.  While cost is generally not a huge factor in why I preserve fruit, I will say that doing this for the price of new canning lids, a little power and one cup of sugar is a really good win.

4.  I never make a syrup ahead of time.  I learned a long time ago that one quart jar of water to one scant tablespoon of sugar makes a light and not sugary tasting syrup.  So I toss the pears in, 3/4's of the jar full, add the sugar and cover with warm water from the tap.  Process the pears in the water bath, and viola, one less step and one less item on my stove top.


5.  Just a shout out of awesomeness to my sweet husband who peeled 95% of all these lovely pears.  You have knife skills.  Love you.