Cooking, cooking, cooking :)

We have been home almost exactly a week now.  We have been very busy de-cluttering, cooking and cleaning around here.  Blair checked out of his old job and starts his new one on tomorrow.  Here are some of my cooking projects that were completed this week:

The first was “pear”sauce (like applesauce) from pears off our neighbors tree.  They are very, very hard pears that supposedly never ripen enough to eat by hand.  My MIL has experience with these and said to “stew” them with a little water, cinnamon and sugar.  They were a lot of work, but the end result was fabulous and FREE :). 

Here is the basket of pears Blair/Bailey and Taylor picked.

First, I peeled, cored and cubed the pears.  This took f-o-r-e-v-e-r and was a great workout for my arms :)

Next, I put all the pears in the pot on Med-low (i think?)  with a heavy sprinkling of cinnamon, a 1/2 inch of water and a tablespoon of turbinado (organic sugar).   I let it cook until the pears were soft (maybe 1 hr-1hr30min)

Once done cooking, I set them aside and let them cool for a couple hours.  I think I ran some errands to the library/post office and when I came back they were cool enough to finish up.  Throw them into the food processor and pulse until smooth.

Put in jars and ta-da.  Homemade pearsauce.  We ate one jar within 24 hours and froze the other.  We are going pear-picking again today! 

Another recipe we tried was these granola bars.  I made them with pecans and while it tastes great, they were pretty crumbly.  I think we’ll finish off the rest of the pan left like "granola cereal” with some milk :).