my husband Wayne makes it his personal challenge to use the pears before the birds begin pecking on them. "Time to make pear preserves," he announces.
I try to persuade him to wait until the pears ripen, but he swears that his mother, who always produced delicious pear preserves, swore that hard pears make the best preserves. Here is an account of Wayne's preserve making efforts this year - and it was an effort!
First he peeled about 24 cups of pears.
Then he chopped the pears into smaller pieces.
The next step was to add eight or nine cups of sugar to the pears and let them sit for about an hour. The pears went on the stove with a teaspoon of nutmeg, a teaspoon of allspice, and the juice and rind of one lemon to simmer for about four hours. (You can see that pear preserve making is not a quick project!)
At first the cooking pears looked like this.
In the later stages, the pears began looking more preserve-like. And they smelled great!
Has the fruit cooked long enough? That is always the big question. Too little cooking produces runny preserves. Too much cooking produces preserves with a hard candy-like quality. We have examples of both in our pantry!
This year Wayne tried a new technique to answer the big question. He put a small amount of preserves in a bowl in the freezer to cool. When he checked the pears, he pronounced that the consistency was good. It was time to can the preserves.
The jars and lids have to be sterilized, of course, to prevent development of bacteria.
To say that the pear preserve project took up the whole kitchen is not an overstatement.
But Wayne valiantly carried on.
Project complete!
I asked Wayne if he was going to give away any jars of pear preserves to friends or relatives. I received a quick "no way" in response. But at least he beat those pesky birds to the pear harvest!
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