pears and blueberries

it's been a good year for pears and blueberries. the apple blossoms all got hit by a hard frost, but the pear blossoms survived and our pear tree produced an abundance of beautiful pears this year. our blueberries down by the lake are very happy as well and produced more than ever before.
 

so after freezing some and making jam, i decided to cook them up together and try my hand at making fruit leather. the recipe is from my favorite river cottage preserves cookbook. it's the book i turn to again and again. 

once they were cooked down, i strained everything out and got this beautiful puree. it was such a gorgeous color. i put in some honey and spread it out on a baking sheet and put it in the oven to dry. i had enough for two pans. 

it was in the oven on a low temperature (50°c) for about 12 hours to get dry enough. and then i rolled it up, just like the fruit leathers we would get at REI as a kid. only so much more flavorful!

i cut them up into smaller pieces and put them in a jar in the fridge. now husband can take a couple along on his long bike rides for quick energy and i can eat some as a snack. i should really see if i can pick one more batch of blueberries (i've still got a basket of pears) and make one more batch before the season is over.

on pears and waste and doing what you can

windy and rainy weather have not been kind to the pears. many have blown to the ground and are now bruised and unusable. it makes me rather sad. i've canned some and made pear-ginger jam, but still, it's an incredible waste lying there on the ground, rotting. i have this feeling i should have done more. i should have made pear cider. i should have canned more. i should have made more jam. should have, should have, should have... i have an almost overwhelming sense of guilt at the waste.

my jam is delicious - plenty of ginger, organic sugar and vanilla with the pears. but i'm not really that good at jam other than achieving good flavor. i have trouble with it setting properly, so this is really quite runny and more of an ice cream topping than a jam per se. and i don't know why that is. i do the test on a cold plate and that always appears to set up, but once i put it in jars, i almost never get a proper set. i used jam sugar, which has pectin in it for this batch, as pears have almost no pectin themselves. i followed the instructions on the package and in pam corbin's wonderful river cottage preserves book, but still, it's a thin syrup. but it tastes great, especially with a bit of blue cheese on a nice cracker, so we're using it anyway.

i guess i'll just have to try harder next year.