The Mess

For about a week and a half, every time we walked into the kitchen we saw this:

And, if we turned our head slightly to the right, we saw this:
All to make this:
Seventeen (+ five my sister-in-law kept) jars of oh so yummy pear butter. A lovely lady at my church was giving away nine bags of pears. They weren't very ripe when I got them and she told me they weren't eating pears. I didn't know what to do with them at first, but I have a steam canner so I couldn't let the bags pass me by.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

Once I had the bags, I went to my trusty recipe website, allrecipes.com, and explored the world of pears. Turns out there aren't too many options. This particular recipe caught my attention because it had hundreds of good reviews and called for orange and nutmeg. Supposedly, it is good on both toast and meat, although I have yet to test the latter. The recipe was relatively straight forward, but I didn't really have the equipment to make this quickly. First I peeled and cored and quartered the pears. Then cooked them with a little bit of water until they were soft. After that, I ran them through the blender and then strained them with a sieve. You can see why our kitchen was such a mess. Some days I used about every bowl and every pan we had. The poor blender may be ready for retirement soon. In any case, at this point I poured the strained pears into the crockpot and added sugar, orange juice, grated orange peel and nutmeg and let them mix cook on low overnight. The smell was intoxicating. I am very pleased with the results. I love it on pancakes, toast and French toast.

But, I might scream if I have to peel one more pear this year.

Up next: applesauce!