Everything's coming up pears

I wrote earlier about having apples, pears, and peaches in abundance. I am slowly getting everything off the dining room table and the refrigerator. I am happy to report that there is no more fruit on the floor around the table.

The apples are good keepers and good eaters. The apples that are not being stored are dried and kept in preserving jars. I enjoy drying them because it's easy to slip them into the oven after dinner is done baking. I feel a little medieval when I "stretch" the heat like this. I can get roughly 6 apples dried at a time. (For more on drying produce, see the August/September issue of Mother Earth News.)

I was making fruit leather with the apples and pears (really do not like "leather" and food in the same category), but the time for labor compared to the time to total consumption caused me to give up the cause. It will be moved to special treat status.

We gave away some of the apples today -- the kind that "I" of GAIN found by the railroad tracks. They were yellow and ripe when we picked them. There is nothing like the instant gratification of eating freshly picked produce. The fire station apples had to ripen for a couple weeks before they were tasty, so I really appreciated this batch of apples. Of course, we had to pick at the fire station when we did, or else they would have been picked by all the other taxpayers (and they didn't ask permission like we did!).

Some peaches were converted to peach butter. I'll probably make more since the peaches do not keep well. And I've got more than a few being kept. With only two ingredients (sugar and peaches) the butter is very easy to make (and yummy, too). I always remember _The Grapes of Wrath_ when I pick peaches. My peach jam that I made earlier has less chunks than the Target brand peach jam, so my kids are pretty happy with it.

Our pears are being stored. Probably half of them went into Ginger Pear Jam this morning. It's a lovely taste. I made my own recipe based on ingredients I had and research that I performed a while ago -- 4 c. cut up pears + 1/3 c. ginger root + 5 c. sugar + pectin = Three pints jam.

Last night, I bought a Blue Book for $1.48. I've read through most of it, but I'm not being inspired to make anything in it at the moment. Maybe I'll get crazy at the next farmer's market, or make it up to Turtle Farm's farm stand and buy things to can, but most likely I'll just hang out at home.