Re: [gardeners] pear butter, a funny story

Bargyla Rateaver (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sat, 04 Aug 2001 11:00:28 +0100 

yes but if you cook fruit you lose the value of the enzymes,--one of the best advantages of eating
fruit raw.All reactions are made to go, via enzymes, so they are so very important.
   I am now cooking some tomatoes, and feel guilty, because I should have eaten them before they got to
the point they need cooking.
   I wrote an article on enzymes, for ACRES USA monthly journal on farming, and it brought me responses
from readers.  Apparently most people don't even know what enzymes are---so how could they understand,
realize and remember that as much food as possible should be eaten raw.
=========


George Shirley wrote:

> These are Kieffers but a newer variety than the old "big as a softball, hard as a rock" ones. These
> do ripen sweet and soft so are a delight to eat raw. I even used to like the old ones, peel, cut
> into chunks and chew 'em up.
>
> I put my pears, cooked until soft, hide hair and all, through a food mill. I get pear puree and
> juice out of one port and skins, seeds, and long fibers out the other. Drain the juice out of the
> pulp and then cook. Basically you just bring it up to canning temperature rather than cooking it
> down.
>
> I used to feed the stock all the old-style Kieffers that fell off my folks two trees, one of which
> is still standing and still producing since it was planted in 1949.
>
> George
>
> flylo@txcyber.com wrote:
> >
> > A friend of mine and myself (years ago) decided to can up all those
> > Kieffer pears her trees had produced. (yeah, right). we settled on
> > pear butter since it's a cooked recipe and Kieffers are like rocks
> > unless you process the dickens out of them. We peeled, sliced,
> > diced, did everything known but we still had pear chunk, not butter.
> > Finally after cooking down a ways we hit on the idea of putting
> > them through the blender. She had a big wooden spoon she'd use
> > to 'mash down' the pears and occasionally, left the blender running
> > and the spoon would 'oops' disappear a little into the pear pulp.
> > It was fun because we did it together but hard work to do anything
> > with Kieffers. However, I've since made pear butter several times
> > and never did get the rave reviews we got with her 'spoon secret'!!
> > martha

--

Bargyla Rateaver
http://home.earthlink.net/~brateaver