Our Relief Society President had a contact to buy pears from Oregon this year. They were $19 for 42 pounds. I don't know if that is a good price or a bad one, but I bought a box, figuring that it was high time I tried my hand at bottling fruit again.
Well, the pears came...from Marysville CA about 40 miles to the North of us. Apparently the Oregon grower ran into rain or cold problems, so the pear crop was not a bumper one. No problem! They'll still be delicious, right?
I had to wait for them to ripen. After a week, I decided I'd better get them preserved. Dehydrated pears sounded really good, so I went looking for a dehydrator. My friend has one, but had loaned it to someone else. No one else that I asked had one, so plan 'B' was to dehydrate them on cookie sheets at 120 degrees in my oven. Okay, I can do that!
The cookie sheets only held two pears per sheet. They stuck to the pans, but they sure were delicious! I finally went looking to buy a dehydrator for myself, but nothing I saw was what I wanted. Kohl's let me order one in the store and will ship it to me, but I won't get it until next Wednesday. All the pears would be rotten by then...
On to plan 'C': bottling them! This plan was fabulous except for a small problem; I couldn't find either my cold pack canner or my pressure cooker. Ho-boy! Now I'm on the phone looking for a dehydrator and a canner. Bingo on both counts.
The dehydrator works so much easier than the oven! The first batch of pears in the steamer I over-cooked, and broke two bottles. (What a waste!) The second batch I actually pulled off. Overall, 11 bottles sealed. A couple of them look like they leaked quite a bit before they sealed, but hey, who's being picky at this point?
I also made some fabulous pear butter with orange peel and nutmeg flavoring, and some fruit leather. I'm not sure how the leather is going to turn out yet. It's in the dehydrator as I type this.
I feel accomplished with my little pear bottles sitting on the island. Now the question is, will anyone eat them?!?
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