Pears Galore!

When we bought this house we were delighted to find that there were two young pear trees on the north side.  What we have learned in the intervening six years is that they produce every other year!

Not having any idea what type of pear trees were planted, we just say that one has what we refer to as cooking pears, and the other eating pears.  When the cooking pear tree produces it's usually pretty good - but this year it's insane, despite the grass hoppers doing their level best to eat every leaf on the poor tree.

On the eating pear tree, the grasshoppers have devastated all but a few of this years crop of pears, but left the leaves largely intact.  It's extremely bizarre!

In the past, we have cooked down the pears from the first tree and used them in baking, much like you can use applesauce in cakes to replace the oil.  This works really well, slowly stewing them down then pureeing in the food processor and freezing the output for use at some future date.   The only problem with doing that this year is that we still have some in the freezers from previous years!  If I can't get a peach tree to grow in the heart of peach land, at least the pears are rampant!

In doing a little bit of research, we have learned that these hard cooking pears should make excellent pear butter.  We're going to try this out, and the process (or trial batch one as I'm calling it in my head) has begun.  After all, I've lost two branches to the weight of the fruit and it's just now coming ripe - I have to divest that poor tree of its burden, or we could lose the tree.

Since it will be at least the end of the coming week when I can get a food mill, I'm trying first a recipe that calls for stewing down the pears and then running them through a food processor, then sieving that resultant mush into a crock pot.  There it will be sugared and cooked down to the appropriate sticky consistency then canned.  I'm anxious to see how this comes out so I can post and share either the success or failure. 

Cross your fingers!