250 lbs. of Pears: Canned and Conquered!

15 October 2010 1,165 views 9 Comments

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t been around much lately. See, I’ve been kinda busy canning pears.

OH MY GOODNESS, I can’t even express how tired I am. Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast getting in touch with my pioneer woman roots, but I am so pooped!

Every spare moment for the past week has been spent canning pear pieces, pear sauce, pear juice, pear honey and pear jam. YUM! Oh my!!

So, what does 250 lbs. of pears look like?

And they were HUGE!

I didn’t know this, but pears are picked before they are ripe because they ship better when they are firm (obviously, right?). Then, they take about a week to ripen. By the time mine were ripe, they were a little more golden than this. I have no idea what variety this is, by the way, but they are SO good!

My friend knows a local farmer who sold these to us for an amazing price!! My 250 lbs cost me $30. THIRTY dollars, people. Woot!!

I wasn’t able to use my apple peeler on these pears because the core gets too soft, so I ended up hand peeling each one with my paring knife. I ended up getting this down to a science! In the end, I would cut the ends off, then peel them from the top to the bottom and from left to right. Then, I cut the pear in half and scooped out the seeds with a spoon. I also used the spoon to scrape the yellowish “core” line out (since it turns the pears darker brown when left on).

This is what I ended up with:

I don’t have exact numbers, and we have eaten a couple of jars of pear sauce, but I would guestimate:

45 quarts of pear pieces
28 quarts of pear sauce
6 quarts of pear juice (plus about 2 that we already drank)
5 pints and 6 half-pints of pear sauce (plus a half-pint in the refrigerator)
1 quart of pear honey, which I’m excited to use as syrup on pancakes!!

Having this many jars of pears forced me to clean up my pantry!

Look at those empty shelves!! Wonder what I’m going to be filling them with!

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9 Comments »

Heather T. said:

Hoooooly mackeroli, you are amazingly industrious! What’s pear honey? Is that like apple butter or something?

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# 15 October 2010 at 7:39 pm

Krisi said:

Amazing job! I love home canned pears… so envious, I will have to put a buzz out for a deal that good on pears - and I would be canning pears too! The best we see around here is like $0.30lb.

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# 15 October 2010 at 8:37 pm

Krista S. said:

So impressed! And I love your nice clean pantry now full of yummy fruit : ) I get excited when I clean out my pantry and think of all the things I can fill the empty shelves with (hopefully baking supplies in the next couple months and I am just dieing for the granola bar deals in Jan!).

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# 15 October 2010 at 10:22 pm

Pam said:

Wow, that’s amazing!
I have the opportunity to score some apples at a local farm and I’m thinking of doing the same thing, but it’s such a big job I don’t know if I want to tackle it! I’m sure you’re glad you did now that you’re done .

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# 15 October 2010 at 10:28 pm

Jeanne said:

I’m SO impressed, Kelleigh! What an accomplishment. You must really like pears (me, not so much)! They look so good in their jars ready to be eaten, almost like apples. You’ve got a great sized (and good looking) pantry there, too! Lucky, lucky you!

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# 16 October 2010 at 3:50 am

Tami said:

Good job Kelleigh! Yes, that looks like tons of work, but you will be so proud of yourself everytime you open a jar!!

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# 16 October 2010 at 7:15 am

Mellisa said:

What a great project this has been! Thank you for taking the adventure on with me! It’s been fun sharing notes

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# 16 October 2010 at 2:51 pm

KimberlyRae said:

Wow!! I’m so impressed!! One talented pioneer chic for sure!! Yum!

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# 16 October 2010 at 11:19 pm

Saving at Safeway and Rite Aid! | Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs said:

[...] has been a LONG time since I have posted any grocery shopping trips. My excuses: I’ve been canning pears and the envelope ran out of money. I had to just STOP shopping until it could be refilled [...]

# 21 October 2010 at 12:16 pm