And A Milk Cow In a Pear Tree

Tuesday afternoon it cooled off after a very hot day.  We milked the cows, moved the temporary electric fence into the yard and moved Rosie and Clarabelle into the yard to mow down the grass.  Belle ran around, and it was generally a happy day.  Until, Belle didn't listen to Tricia emphatically saying, "NO!" and grabbed the electric fence with her mouth.  The pulse of electricity popped her in the mouth and Belle ran away yelping faster than I've ever seen her run.  I'm guessing she won't do that again.  Poor girl.  Sometimes they don't listen and have to touch the stove for themselves to see if it's hot...

Rosie was meandering with her head down like a machine, reaching her tongue out to grab swaths of Bahia grass and tugging it loose with a mighty crunch.  All of a sudden she discovered the pear tree.  She used that same tongue to reach up with amazing dexterity to pluck a pear leaf from the branch.

Then, like any cow would do, she used the trunk of the little tree to get a good neck rub.  Scratch, Scratch, Scratch...

But she wasn't done, no sir.  She eyeballed a pear and before we could stop her, she pulled it off the branch.  Now these pears are 'baking pears.'  They are hard - not tender and soft.  For us to eat them, we cut them up with a paring knife (pardon the pun).  Once she had the pear in her mouth, she didn't quite know what to do with it.

Rosie is a persistent and determined old girl.  She was not going to let that pear defeat her.

We watched her roll it around in her mouth and gum it and chew it until we finally heard the load crunch, crunch, crunch of the pear.  Fortunately, the other pears in the tree were out of reach.  Well, if she could stand up on her hind legs, she could reach them.  But she's not like us.  You might say she is impaired.  Bad puns, today, I know.

Pucker Up!

Several years ago my lovely wife introduced me to a new spice blend.  I love spice!  I'm always adding peppers, our homemade tabasco sauce, and salsa to everything.  This spice blend was new to me.  As the colors on the label might suggest, it is from Mexico.

It is called "Tajin," pronounced "ta HEEN"  As the color might suggest, it has pepper in it, but I don't think you can really call it HOT.  Tangy is the better adjective as the lime in it steals the show.  It makes you pucker up, kind of like a big juicy dill pickle does.  This stuff is delicious.  Something a little different is what this spice is used on.  The label calls it "fruit seasoning." The only seasoning I've ever eaten on fruit was to put salt on my watermelon.  You have to trust me on this.  Tajin is great on apples, pears, watermelon, mango, and citrus.  It is also great on non-fruit items like cucumbers.

The other day I was having a craving for it and so we decided to just make some ourselves.  The label ingredients are: salt, chili powder, dehydrated lime juice and silicon dioxide.  Easy enough.  We assembled our ingredients:

I cut up some pears and then got some kosher salt, lime and chili powder.  There are numerous types of chili powders and the label doesn't specify which one, so Tricia mixed it up and used half regular chili powder and half Ancho chili powder.  To make it simply use equal parts of salt and chili powder.  In our case, we used 1 Tablespoon of each.

Then, simply sprinkle on top of the fruit and cut your lime into quarters and squeeze one of the lime quarters over the top of the sprinkled fruit.

Now, we're ready to snack!  Here is the money shot before Tricia and I make them disappear!

I'm not embarrassed to say I licked the plate clean.

A Delicious, Healthy, Simple Snack

Tricia ordered a case of organic pears from Azure Standard Co-op.  It is the craziest thing because she doesn't like apples.  I think pears and apples are similar.  We made quick work of the first case and then she ordered a second one.  Just the other day IN THIS POST we made some homemade cream cheese.  It was very simple to make.

We use cream cheese to make cheesecake, dips and lo and behold, Tricia found another recipe for a simple, yet healthy and delicious snack.  For starters, take a pear and cut out the seeds and stem.

Then in the blender, she combined mostly homemade cream cheese with a dash or three of goat kefir to make it a thick, liquid consistency.  Then she dunks the cut up pears into the cream cheese/goat kefir concoction to coat the pear.

In a separate container, she has run some of our 2015 pecan crop through a blender to chop the pecans into semi-fine crumbles.  She drags the cream cheese/kefir coated pears through the pecans and the pecans stick nicely to the pear.

And she does likewise for the remaining pieces of the pear, arranging them on a plate for viewing and then snacking.

This simple recipe came from Southern Living Magazine, but Tricia changed it up a little bit.

The sweetness of the pears contrasted against the tanginess of the kefir and smooth cream cheese and flavorful pecans.  Yeah, this recipe is a keeper!

Making Pear Sauce - 2015 Edition

Last week we talked about making a pear tart in THIS POST.  We have a whole case of pears and there are so many things to do with them.  Tricia doesn't really like apples or pears, but these are delicious.  These pears are good just eating plain, and although there is no chance of them going bad, we wanted to put some away so that we can enjoy them later.  So we grabbed a 6 pounds of pears from the fridge to make some Pear Sauce.  Actually is is more like Pear Butter, only without putting in the amount of sugar that called for.  Instead we used some local honey.  We used THIS RECIPE from Last Year's Pear Butter post.

Organic Bartlett Pears

We washed and chopped the pears up into chunks.  We didn't even peel them or core them. They went into a pot with about an inch of water in it and added the chopped pears as the water got heated up.  Once boiling, we turned the heat to medium and allowed them to cook until soft through and through.

We don't have a food mill.  This is on the wish list and we've been comparison shopping for one. Short of having a food mill, we just did like we always did and apply a little "elbow grease" to the pears, putting the cooked pears into a fine sieve over a bowl and pressed them through the sieve with a spatula.  The pear sauce is squeezed out into the bowl and the skins, seeds, stems and hard pieces of pear stay in the sieve.  We scoop this out after each batch where the refuse goes into a bowl for the chickens to devour later.

We put the pear sauce into a pot and added 6 Tablespoons of honey, 2 Tablespoons lemon juice, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a dash of nutmeg a little bit of ground cloves.and kept it warm.  Once we had our pint jars, lids, and rings sterilized, Tricia used a canning funnel and big ladle to add the warm pear sauce to the jars.  It smells nice and "fall-like".

Ladling it into the jars for canning

She filled them until they were 1/4 inch from the top and then put the Tattler lids and rings on and put them in a water bath, got the water boiling, began the timer and processed them for 15 minutes.

Processing in the Water Bath

Once the 15 minutes had passed, the jars were removed from the water bath with some canning tongs and allowed to cool.  Here are five pints of pear sauce (similar to apple sauce, but with a little more spice and sweetness.)

Ready for the pantry

Can't wait to enjoy this cross between pear sauce & pear butter!  A good fall snack...

Making a Pear Tart

We have two small pear trees.  One does not produce any fruit and the other produces only a handful.  To supplement the pear production from our trees, Tricia purchased a 20 pound case of organic pears from a Co-op we're members of called Azure Standard.  The Bartlett pears came packaged in a box, chilled and in good shape.  The pears that grow on our little tree are hard.  I call them baking pears, because really, in order to enjoy them, you must bake them in a pie. Not these.  They are soft, sweet and delicious just eating them plain.  After eating a few, Tricia decided to make a pear tart.

Here are a few of the pears in the fridge waiting for their chance to become dessert...

Bartlett Pears in the Fridge

The recipe came from Nourishing Traditions Cookbook by Sally Fallon.  The recipe is actually for an Apple Tart, but Tricia substituted pears for apples.  We selected 10 nice pears.  They were heavy to hold, full of sweetness.  We pulled the stems off and got potato peelers out and peeled and cored them.  Working together we had this done in no time, saving the cores, seeds and peelings to feed our chickens.  A win-win situation for all involved at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

10 Pears about to be peeled and cored

Then we cut the pears up into chunks.  My wife placed a stick of butter in a skillet and melted it and then sauteed the pear chunks in the butter until they turned a nice golden brown color.  She added 1/2 cup of sugar, stirred, and sauteed a few minutes more.

Saute the pear chunks

Now earlier during the day, Tricia had made up a homemade crust and baked it.  It was waiting in a shallow pie pan and the sugared, buttery sauteed pears were spooned into the prepared crust.

Into the crust the pears go...

The pear mixture perfectly filled the crust.  It was warm and beckoned hungry eaters to the kitchen!

Homemade Pear Tart

We put some whipped cream on top and watched it start to melt into the warm tart.

Ain't that a pretty sight!

It is a simple recipe that is simply delicious!

And A Cartridge in a Pear Tree

I can be a weird dude sometime, I'm not gonna lie.  When I get home from my office job, I visit with Tricia and Benjamin and then change into my 'work clothes' and start doing my afternoon chores and I have great fun doing them!  The chores can be classified into two categories:  routine things that must get done every day and items on my prioritized "knock-out" list.

Once I get that done, sometimes I'll just walk around and observe things.  In our fast-paced lives, we often overlook things if we don't make time to enjoy things - even mundane, unremarkable things. As I walked by the pear tree, I noticed one of the branches bending over due to weight of the ripening pears.  There were a couple of half-eaten pears laying on the ground beneath the tree.  I think the culprits were the numerous squirrels that inhabit our property.  Just to be silly, I hung a .12 gauge shell from the bending branch.

A cartridge in a pear tree

I began to think about This Post from last week about trying to grow some of your own food - vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, etc.  Birds and squirrels are two predators that you do need a firearm with which to protect your food, if you decide to grow it versus purchase it at the grocery store. Instead of having a partridge in a pear tree, you'd better be ready to have a cartridge in a pear tree or at least be ready to shoot one into your tree.  You can hang shiny objects like aluminum pie pans or rubber snakes or plastic owls to repel predators, but at some point, you'll need to go on the offensive to protect your crops.

The .12 gauge shell isn't the only thing of note hanging from the branch

But if you really want to protect your crops, you need to pull out the 'big guns' and by that, I mean what I was reminded of by the critter hanging on the bottom of one of the pears..  A Praying Mantis!

A praying mantis

If you really want a successful crop, you need to pray. Agrarian societies of old recognized the importance of humbling themselves before God and asking for His Blessings on their crops - and we should too!

A few pears for snacking on

I shook the pears to the ground and took them inside.  Pears will continue to ripen in the bowl in the kitchen.  Normally we'll cut up the pears and make a nice pear pie, but Russ ate a couple of them right out of the bowl and said they were crisp and delicious.

Making Pear Sauce

One night earlier this week, we made delicious Pear Butter with some of the overripe pears that remained from the case of pears we bought.  The more firm ones that were left, we decided to make Pear Sauce, similar to Applesauce.  

The last remaining pears in the case we bought

We took the pears which amounted to exactly 6 pounds, removed the stems, and peeled and cored them.  Then we cut them up into pieces. We added added the following:

• 3 Tablespoons of honey
• 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• dash of ground nutmeg
• a dash of ground cloves

and we cooked the pears for 20 minutes and let them cool over night.

Once this was done, we just poured the entire batch into the food processor.

Ready to process

We pureed the sliced pears and in no time at all we had pear sauce!

Pear Sauce

It made exactly 8 cups of pear sauce.  We tasted a few spoonfuls.  Just looking at it sort of reminded me of Baby Food, but after tasting, I was sold.  It is better than applesauce.

Ready for Canning

We funneled it into pint sized canning jars, put on lids and rings and processed the pear sauce in a water bath for 15 minutes.

Processing for 15 minutes

Then we pulled them out, where they will cool on cooling racks overnight.

They will be labeled and will go in the pantry until they're ready to enjoy.

Making Pear Butter

Tricia purchased a case of organic pears from Azure Standard, a co-op that we belong to, since our little pear trees did not produce any pears this year.  We were going to get a case of apples, but they were a little pricey.  I don't know what happened to our pear trees. They just weren't happy this year. Tricia peeled the best looking pears from the box and sliced them up and froze them in freezer bags so that we'll have pear pies and pear cobbler over the winter.

At the bottom of the box there were some pears that were bruised up and soft and didn't look very appetizing, but you know what?  They are going to make something that makes my taste buds get happy just thinking about it - Pear Butter!  Just like apple butter, but made from pears.  We found the recipe at a website called www.gimmesomeoven.com.  You can make some good stuff from things that don't look so appetizing anymore.  I used to work in our family grocery store and every day we'd go through the produce on the display and remove the produce that wasn't very pretty and thus wouldn't sell.

Lots of people might throw things away when they don't look nice, but some of that stuff is the best. I can still remember Bumby's (my grandmother's) banana bread and banana pudding with vanilla wafers in it that she made from the bananas that were totally brown and soft.  Not much went to waste at the Kinder Supermarket.

The bottom of the barrel

I picked out the most over-ripe pears and weighed out 3 pounds.

3 Pounds of ugly pears

Then I peeled them with a potato peeler and pulled out the stems.  They were very soft in my hands and it made a mess!  I cut them in half and carefully cut out the seeds and any of the core that was hard.

Peeled Pears

Once that was done I laid them out on the cutting board and diced them up into little cubes.

Slice 'em and dice 'em

Tricia spooned all that into a pot and added 3 Tablespoons of honey that was robbed from my buddy's bees, 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice that we juiced and froze from some lemons given to us last winter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon salt, a dash of ground nutmeg, and a smidgen of ground cloves, making sure that we measured the dash and smidgen accurately (ha ha). 

All the ingredients added to the pot

We stirred it all up and brought it to a boil and then turned the heat down to medium and let it simmer for about an hour with the lid cracked open.  Every once in a while, we'd peek in and stir it.  It will gradually thicken and the smell will attract everyone to the kitchen.  The concoction will bubble to the top with a big "blub" and you just can't wait to taste it!

Bubbling Pear Butter

After about an hour, your pear butter is done.  You can pour all this into a food processor and puree it into a finer consistency or you could leave it chunky.  It was a "school night" and was late and we really didn't feel like washing the food processor and blade, so our pear butter is going to be the chunky variety.  I think it will 'eat' just fine.

The finished product ready to spoon into jars

We used a canning funnel to transfer the pear butter into canning jars.  Once it cooled, we moved it to the refrigerator.  The recipe that we found online Here says that it will keep for a week in the fridge. We'll eat some and will freeze the rest to be able to enjoy the sweet-spicy goodness on a winter morning atop homemade biscuits.

Pear Butter all canned up

This almost just isn't fair to show you this next 'spoon shot' of the warm pear butter. Doesn't that look good?

A spoonful of delicious pear butter

Can't wait to have some of that slathered over some hot biscuits!