Have you ever washed 7 potholders in one wash load?

 

(Google image)

              

            Working up pears is a messy job—at least the way I do it. A messy, sticky job. But, oh, come winter, it’ll be worth every elbow-bend all the way from picking them off the ground … to cutting the rot/bruise/knots out …  to cutting them into bite-sized pieces/skin on …  to peeling those that are large enough to make slices/halves—all dropped into lemon-juice-laced water to cover …  to cooking … to cleaning up after cooking.

 To prepare for cooking: Drain water off the prepared pears. Lift enough fruit to fill a Pyrex casserole dish or a Pampered Chef glass measuring bowl. Shake two dashes of salt and 6-8 dashes of ground cinnamon on top. Then eye-measure and add some white sugar, then some brown sugar—however much suits your taste. Cover. Put in microwave for 5 minutes. (Mine is a Magic Chef and rotates.)

After 5 minutes, take out and –this was tricky—holding the lid with a potholder, lift it up just enough to slide a large slotted spoon in and stir four times. Cover and cook 5 more minutes. During this time, bring a small bowl over to your workstation.

After this second interval, take a potholder in both hands, move the lid so there’s  a tiny gap between lid and bowl. Pour most of the liquid that has cooked out into the bowl. (This is IMPORTANT unless you want to clean the microwave glass plate after it boils over on the next round.) Stir as before.

Return to the oven for a third 5-minute stint. Afterwards, stir again. By now, the aroma of cinnamon and sugar and pears wafts through the room.

Fourth and last cooking of 5 more minutes. When that’s over, uncover and pour the saved liquid back into the bowl. At this point, you can either cover for a little more internal cooking, or uncover for the cooling to begin. Set the bowl out of the way on a trivet or range burner cover. USE POT HOLDERS.

NOW, instead of doing the next batch immediately, let the microwave rest for 30 minutes. I didn’t do this the first time and cooked 4 batches, one after the other, which equaled 80 minutes. During the last stint of the last batch, the oven heaved a sigh and died. It cooled and came alive again.

When the bowl of your current cooked batch is cool, cover it, wash off any stickiness, especially on the bottom, and let it finish cooling in the fridge. If the intention—as mine is—is to freeze the fruit, the next day, pull the bowl out and spoon the pears into a freezer container. Wipe off the rim before affixing the lid. Slip the containers into your fridge freezer or your chest freezer. If not, leave them in the bowl and spoon on cereal, on ice cream, or eat as a side dish.

Before leaving the kitchen, take a dishrag and a bottle of surface cleaner (I found a Windex vinegar spray) and wipe down everything that is sticky or has stray sugar grains. Then dry off with kitchen towels. You don’t want bugs to ferret out the gooey stuff they enjoy so much.

Then drop all the potholders and cloths into the washer. Rinse off all utensils and either soak them in a dishpan or put them in the dishwasher.

If I were OCD, I’d count the elbow-bends between beginning and end. But counting potholders is easier.

c lovepat press, 2013