Last week, my fiance forwarded this message to me from his former landlord:

Subject: Pears

We have a pear tree in our backyard. It is absolutely loaded with pears this year. Unfortunately the rain has been very hard on the tree and leaves are dropping like crazy and pears are rotting on the tree before they ripen. There are still a ton of pears on the tree, some good and a lot of them not so good. If you want any please come and help yourself. I will leave the fruit picking stick/basket laying nearby on the bench next to the barn.

Which obviously meant I was hot on the trail of free fruit. We went, braved the bees feasting on the fallen fruit, and took home a very heavy bag of fruit with the intention to turn it into pear butter. My family has spent a lot of time in Central PA, where apple butter is a popular commodity, so the chance to have homemade pear butter to eat with cheddar cheese in a sandwich was all the enticement I needed.

After letting the pears soften up for a few days (and swatting more than a few fruit flies that came home from the tree with them) and tossing the ones that looked questionable into the compost bin, I got to work. After reading a number of pear butter recipes that all called for a food mill, a tool that I do not have, I decided to wing it.

-I cut up all of the pears and boiled them with a bit of water in a large pot (I filled the pot so that the water came about 3 inches below the top of the pears).

-I let them simmer for about an hour, then I used my trusy immersion blender to puree them and added a few dashes of ground cinnamon.

-When I realized that it was nearly impossible to keep the puree from scorching from the natural sugars in the fruit, even with the flame down on low, I poured the puree into a 9x13 baking dish and let it cook in the oven at 300F for an hour until it got to the thickness I liked. I set the timer for 15 minute intervals and stirred the mixture to prevent scorching.

I was convinced that the fruit would be sweet enough without an additional sugar and I'm glad I followed my instincts. I wound up with about 3 jars (I ate some of the half full one before I took the picture) of pear butter that is extremely flavorful and just sweet enough. I had it stirred into vanilla yogurt and granola this morning for breakfast, and plan to bring it to a potluck with vanilla ice cream tomorrow. The rest I will happily eat on toast (or maybe in a quick bread?!).

This is further proof that I definitely need to invest in my own fruit trees, stat!

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