Warm and spicy…let’s add a pear—Or— once again, Cooking with Cookie

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

(a beautiful Bosc pear / Julie Cook / 2015)

AAAAGGGGHHHHHH
Bam, bam bam. . .
Did you hear that?
That is the sound of my head clunking against the wall.
Looking outside, for as far as the eye can behold, which by the way they’re telling us is less than half a mile, is nothing but grey, fog, mist, damp, drizzle, cold, wet, blah, yuck, monotone of what has become our Winters. . .
Day after day of grey onto more and more grey. . .

HELP!!
A diversion!
That’s it, a diversion. . .
We need a diversion!!!!
Actually we really need to hop on a plane, flying “down under” to our friends in the Southern Hemisphere for a quick visit as I hear they’re in the midst of a heat wave.
Really.
But since we must follow practicalities, we need a more readily available diversion.

Consider the pear.
What?
Yes, the pear.

When I was a little girl, I can remember my grandparents, always this time of year, receiving a box of crisp fresh pears. . .from some exotic far away land like, say, Florida or California. Why they couldn’t go the grocery store like my mother would, in order to purchase the mealy overly ripe heavily bruised variety, was beyond my young comprehension. And if the truth be told, the pears my mom bought actually came in cans.
What??
You’ve never seen the canned pear tree!!??
Libby, DelMonte. . .it didn’t matter.
Pear halves packed in heavy syrup.
Those being the heady days before “health”. . .

Mother would serve them, as most folks during those dark days of canned, store bought, prepackaged, processed, readily available foods, drained and perched on a bed of iceberg lettuce (the only lettuce my dad believes in) accented with a dollop of the real deal, nothing low-fat about it, mayonnaise topped with a smattering of grated cheddar cheese.
Voila the ubiquitous Pear Salad of the 1960’s.

Of course there was that exotic French Liqueur, found when I tagged along with my Dad, as a little girl, to the local liquor store for his weekly run for beer, Poire Williams— the one with a real full sized pear floating in a bottle of clear liquid —the mystery I never could figure out. . .as in how they got the actual pear inside the bottle. . .and not understanding why dad wouldn’t buy me the bottle so I could investigate further.

Yep.
That pretty much sums up what was my full knowledge of pears. . .until I finally grew up.

There’s nothing better than a perfectly cool, crisp, juicy pear.
You know, the one whose juices dribble down your chin as you take each tenderly sweet bite after bite. . .but as Mr Emerson so blatantly reminds us at the start of the post, that time of perfection is but a very narrow window.

In my quest and need of and for diversion from the constant grey outside my window, I opted to poke around for a new recipe—something fun to cook in order to take my mind off of the cold grey outside and the fact that I threw all gluten out the window over a week ago. . .just to see if it could help an ailing GI tract and shed this weight that seems to have hunkered down for the duration (more on that later).

Not looking for anything to do with pears, or fruit for that matter, a recipe jumped out at me concerning the poaching of pears in a delicious sounding concoction of sugar, spices and water.
Hummm.
Never being one to poach my fruit nor believing in any sort of dessert other than that of chocolate and cream, I was a bit intrigued. I figured I could poach a couple of pears and have them as part of a salad.

Heading to the store, I purchased 4 organic (of course) Bosc pears. You know, the pretty pears which are beautifully shaped, well, like a pear.

The recipe called for 8 pears but in a household of two, I opted on 4 pears, yet I still used the full recipe of poaching liquid which worked out perfectly.

Interested yet?
I thought you’d never ask. . .

You’ll need 4 to 8 Bosc pears (they hold their shape the best)
2 cups sugar ( I know it sounds excessive but it’s just a part of the “bath”)
8 cups water—however I used 2 cups of leftover champagne I had sitting in the fridge since New Year’s Eve along with 6 cups of water. You could use some white wine if you’d like. . .
1 Vanilla bean split
1/2 a lemon –I used a Meyer lemon
a small handful of whole cloves about 8 or so
1 cinnamon stick or 2 if you’re feeling adventuresome
1 star anise— since I didn’t have that, I used about 1/4 teaspoon of anise seed– oh so judiciously as I’m not into licorice.
And wishing I had thought to throw in a cardamon pod or three

Put all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil, immediately dropping down to a low simmer—
mmmmmmm can’t you smell that warm spicy aroma now just filling your kitchen??

In the meanwhile, peel your pears.

Slice them in half and using a teaspoon, gently scoop out the seeds.
Once the sugar has dissolved, put the pears gently in the “bath”–cover and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the pears are soft (test by gently poking with the tip of a knife)

Once the pears are soft and your house smells heavenly, remove the pot from the heat and allow the pears to cool in their bath.
At this point you can put the whole pot in the fridge, allowing the pears to rest in the “broth” chilling nicely. Sampling with a small spoon of the “bath water” I decided I could drink the whole pot.

What I did with my pears was to make a salad.
I tore up some romaine lettuce (the kind Dad does not consider real lettuce), placing it on a salad plate.
I next sprinkled some blue cheese crumbles (you can use Gorgonzola) over the lettuce and drizzled blue cheese dressing over the salad in training. I then placed a single pear half on the bed of lettuce. You can certainly slice it in half if you prefer.
I put a small dollop of mascarpone cheese in the center of the pear (you could use cream cheese or blue cheese), sprinkled a few sugared walnuts around, finally drizzling the remainder of the apple cider sugar glaze I used for the walnuts, over the pear and lettuce.
Voila—the new 21st century pear salad

Oh here’s what I did to the walnuts. . .
In a small sauce pan I put in about a 1/2 cup of sugar. I turned the heat up to med-high, watching it like a hawk so it wouldn’t burn, get away from me and set the house on fire.
As the sugar began to melt, turning to a liquid, I used a small wooden spoon to stir it.
Just as soon as the sugar melted, I slowly poured about a 1/4 cup of apple cider in the pan, continually stirring as the sugar now wanted to clump and harden back up. I continued stirring allowing my mixture to boil, adding about a TBL or two of Maple syrup. I allowed this to boil down, reducing into a thick syrup, at which point I dropped in a handful of walnuts ( 3/4 to 1 cup)—allowing them to get a good coating of the syrup.
Next I poured the syrupy nuts onto a dry plate allowing them to cool.
I then placed them willy nilly on the salad, drizzling the pear and salad with the remaining syrup. . .
Absolutely divine–light, refreshing and oh so tasty

Oh–and by the way—does anyone know how they got those pears in those liqueur bottles???

The Twilight Zone or the life of a woman over 50

“This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you’re on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable…Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . .Next stop The Twilight Zone.”
― Rod Serling

Que the music. . .
As I was patiently sitting, on a hot and humid late August Sunday afternoon, in our local ER, I found my mind wandering in and out of what constitutes this so called life of mine. Isn’t that title already being used. . . “my so called life?”
I think I rather like the sound of that.

And not to fret, I’m fine.
My husband however. . .well, lets just say that his pants have seen better days. . .but I’ll get to that in a minute.

So now back to the ER and the theme music from the Twilight Zone which is now playing in our heads. . .

Back when I was preparing to retire, about two years ago, from what seemed to be a perpetual life of being stuck in High School mode, I thought there were two things I’d like to do with my life and time. Not so much bucket list material mind you, just a new hobby or two.

One thing that I thought I’d like to do was to raise bees. I love honey, and as I fancy myself as bit of a honey aficionado, it seemed to make perfect sense that I should have a hive or two—you know, to call my own, as in I could gather my own honey.

(image of just some of my kitchen’s honey collection)

Local honey as local as it can get, as in my back yard local. We’ve got plenty of clover, I’ve got a garden, I’ve got some random flowers placed around the yard. . .everything seemed to be in place except for the bees.

Yet the more I read about it, it all sounded rather complicated.
And there are so many bees.
Really lots and lots of bees.
Plus ever since I first heard about those africanized bees. . .you know, those hyper aggressive honey bee cousins that don’t exactly like people or anything else for that matter that isn’t another african evil bee?
I, in turn, developed a bit of a fear that those crazy bees could somehow invade the hives of my sweet honey bees, running them off, or sinisterly killing them off, then they’d all simply lie in wait for me to happen happily along, all ready to gather my honey, when BAM, they’d swarm me dead in one fell swoop.

Yeah, I’m rethinking that whole bee hobby. . .

My second thought was and remains chickens.
Layers mind you, as in for fresh eggs only.
I can handle, say, 3 to 5 chickens can’t I?
For Christmas, my sweet husband (remember his feelings are really hurt as to how I painted him in such a bad light the other day when on our anniversary last week he allowed me to be attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets—reason 2 as to why I’m not too keen of my own hives. . .digressing) had a coop built. The coop building man just finished everything Saturday.

Now all that remains is for me to find “my girls”. . .

These girls are my Dad’s neighbors in the city—if city folks can raise some girls, so can I, can’t I?

I’m thinking that my chicken adventures shall all be for another post another day.
Today we’re all about the Twilight Zone of being a woman over 50.

It is sadly true—when a woman reaches the magic number of 50 she enters the Twilight Zone—que the music again.
I have proof.. .

The other evening I prepared the best steak tacos ever. I grilled delightfully seasoned New York strip steaks, slicing thinly. I nestled the slices snugly into a warm small soft flour tortilla which was given a nice spread of Jalapeño Ranch and salsa, some wonderful Mexican cheese topped with my oh so tasty Jalapeño cole slaw. . .yummy!

My husband had actually gotten some of the deliciousness on his nice dress shirt so right after we finished eating I told him to go change, bring me the shirt, so I could quickly pre-treat the stain hoping the stain wouldn’t have time to set into the fabric.

As I was clearing the table he brought me the shirt. I left what I was doing to go pre-treat the stain, only to let the shirt sit a bit while I returned to do the dishes. Just as I was finishing up the dishes, I remembered the shirt. Knowing I didn’t want clorox to sit too long on a white shirt, as not to damage the fabric, I quickly headed to the laundry with the covered bowl of slaw in hand. As soon as I popped the shirt in the wash, I’d head to put the slaw in the fridge.

Fast forward to the following day.
As I made my way to do a load of laundry that next morning, what did I see sitting on top of the washing machine?
My bowl of slaw.
Exactly where I had left it the evening before as I had put it down to throw the shirt in the washing machine. And since it was now well past the acceptable 2 hours of sitting at room temp for mayonnaise, I had no choice but to throw out a seemingly perfect and delicious bowl of slaw.

The Twilight Zone. . .

Oh, you’re not convinced?
Ok, here’s more proof.

This has happened on more than one occasion.
As I’m in the process of getting dressed, fixing my hair, putting on make-up, donning earrings and watch, for some reason there is always an interruption—the phone rings, the cat throws up, I suddenly remember to go immediately to take my hormone pill, when in mid dressing I’m called away.
I do remember to go back to put my clothes on, but that seems to be where my memory ends.

How many times have I been some place when a person such as a sales person, student or friend notices that I seem to have lost an earring.
OH DEAR GOD THAT WAS MY GRANDMOTHER’S EARRING!!!!
I can be heard wailing throughout the store, classroom or wherever I may be at the time.
I go into panic mode.
I fret as to how I can tell my jeweler husband that I’ve lost a nice earring.
I fret that my Grandmother is shaking her head from the great beyond.

There is an all out search.
People are alerted.
Others are now on hands and knees.
I’m promised to be called if it is found.
I tear the car apart.
Dejected and sad I eventually end my day by heading to the shower, when low and behold, guess what’s sitting on the bathroom counter, just where I had left it earlier that morning. . .
BINGO, an earring.

Twilight Zone!

For you see, when a woman hits 50 all those hormones, which make bodies run smoothly, fall out of said woman. Hormones all gone equal hot flashes, no sleep, dry skin, thinning hair, ill temperament, a brain now operating in constant fog mode. . .

Have you ever thought you were asleep, say around 2 AM, when suddenly you’re wide awake and your brain is wired, like wide awake wired and ready to go? If only you felt this alert at say 2PM when it would actually help to be alert–but since you were wired and alert at 2AM until, say, your alarm is ready to go off, you feel like crap the rest of the day–all because the hormones that help you sleep with some semblance of normalcy have long fallen out of your body.

Which reminds me suddenly of where I am and of what I’m doing as it is now the magic time of 2PM on a Sunday afternoon and I am feeling rather sluggish. . .that is until I remember seeing all that blood which leaves me woozy again.
Seems my husband and his chainsaw did not see eye to eye on clearing out brush and small trees on said deer property. Would someone remind me why we spend more time on deer property, working like dogs and almost always getting killed by first a swarm of angry yellow jackets and now a chainsaw gone mad rather then say, our house and yard???!!!
The answer will be for another day. . .

Two harrowing hours, a nice set of stitches and a tetanus shot later we walk out of the ER when it suddenly dawns on me, where did I leave the car. . .