Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

This past week, I've been thinking about ordinary and extraordinary. What is it about ordinary that we seek to avoid? Take a look at the photo of pears to the right. They look pretty ordinary, don't they? Perhaps a bit ugly? I avoided these pears for over a week. Okay, maybe two weeks.

Anjou pears were a generous gift from my mother's small orchard. Like me, my mom is not in favor of using pesticides, and uses a natural oil to deter pests. The end result is fruit, that is unlike those that we see in the grocery store. It's a bit ugly at times. So, about two weeks ago, the pears were ready. The tree was heavy with fruit and I easily picked a bushel. I carted them home and placed the fruit in the potting room to ripen further. The next week I visited my mother, she encouraged me to take another bushel because they were just going to go bad.

Now, I had two overflowing bushels of somewhat hard, misshapen dull greenish-yellow fruit sitting in the corner of the room. The bright red and green apples in the local orchards were definitely more inviting, and I already had tons of plans for them. But those pears.....I needed to do something with them. The variety of sizes and the fact that pears are not my favorite fruit, and the imperfections that led me to believe that there may be more waste than usable fruit contributed to my delaying processing. As with any food that I have grown or harvested, I am determined to make the most out of it and do so with little or no waste. So, letting the fruit rot away was no option! Poached? Nah. Canned pears? No, I really don't like pears enough to eat them in syrup. In the end, I decided on dehydrating some for granola, an intensely flavored pear chutney, pear juice to be combined with our ginger bug to make ginger pear soda, pear butter and finally a rustic pear tart that my family is still raving about. 

I'm finished with pears for the season, but have warmed to them more now than I did when I first toted the mounds of fruit home. These pears, though ugly, with a bit of extra effort, went from ordinary to deliciously extraordinary.