Pears, Pears, Pears

So here is what I have been up to for the past two days...well 3 days since today was cleanup day! A friend of ours has a neighbor with a pear tree that just went crazy with pears this year. Monday night we went over and picked at least 50 pounds of pears. We didn't plan on getting that many but the owners of the tree came out and helped us pick. They are obviously getting tired of pears and the tree is still loaded with ripe pears ready to be picked. Needless to say, they were happy to get rid of them.



Here is our beginning product, lots of pears!


I found some recipes online for Spiced Pear Jam, Canned Pears, and Pears Conserve. I have never made jam or canned before but I thought I would give it a try. With free pears and only a couple of other ingredients and canning jars (that are reusable), I figured if it didn't turn out, I wasn't out a bunch of money. So, Tuesday after Madi went down for nap I started peeling pears for Spiced Pear Jam. It sure takes a lot of pears, once you remove the peel and core, to make 8 cups of pears. I peeled pears from 12:00 to 6:00 and only had enough to make one batch of jam and one batch of just canned pears.


The smell in the house from the Spiced Jam was awesome. It smelled like fall and reminded me of Christmas, it was great. I thought about just making some and using it for potpourri in a small crock pot. Yummy!! I was able to get both of them canned before Chris came home and I left one of the jars of jam open for us to try. Those two batches yielded 3 jelly jars of jam, 5 small jelly jars of jam, and four pints of canned pears. Not a lot to show for all my work. So Chris comes home and says "that's all you got done?" Like I had should have had all 50 pounds of pears peeled already. He looked at the pile of pears still left and immediately called his parents to come out and help peel, he is so goofy! He decided he didn't like the chunky jam that I made and wanted to puree the pears and make jam like you would buy from the store.


First of all, if you don't know Chris, he doesn't do anything in small scale and he doesn't follow recipes. He is also a very, very messy cook. I don't know if that is a Chris thing or a guy thing. But he managed to dirty up four different machines trying to get the pears pureed. And he doesn't cleanup while he is cooking, he just brings out the next thing and slides the mess over. I have quite a bit of counter space now and he managed to have all of it dirty and full of everything in the kitchen. Drives me NUTS!!



This is my first batch, on the stove top in a large pot.





This is Chris' batch. Tripled and in our huge roaster oven. At this point it is 9:30 at night and this stuff is supposed to simmer for two hours and then can it right away. We decided to cover it with foil and I would finish cooking it the next day. There was no way I was going to stay up all night to make jam. It's a good thing we didn't wait either. I started it back up the next day at 8:00 in the morning and it cooked until 12:00 and then I canned it. Triple the recipe, double the time! It still turned out great, but next time, I will try and have it done before he gets home from work!




Here is my final product. A huge success for my first time. All my jars sealed. The jam turned out great, the canned pears look great, my conserve didn't turn out very well, but I found a better recipe and will try it next time.


Now, we are trying to find an apple tree!! And next year we will be planting our own fruit trees!