Gingered Pear Crisp

This was a fabulous dessert that I made the other week. You all know that I have a surplus of pears this fall. And many were blown off of the tree last month in some terrific windstorms we had. So, to use them up, even the ones which were a bit bruised, has been my mission.

I offer this recipe to you, as an alternative use for pears in your menus. It was very delicious, and warming on an early autumn day.

Fruit filling
4 cups of chopped, firm pears (save those very ripe pears for pear butter or sauce)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch ground cloves
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons flour

Crisp topping
6 tablespoons soft, butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger (just how ginger-y do you like your gingerbread/cake?)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup oats
2/3 cup flour

Bake at 375 degrees F, for 40-45 minutes in a buttered 9 X 9 baking dish, until the topping is a deep, golden brown.

Combine all of the fruit filling ingredients in a large bowl. Dump into the buttered baking dish. Use the very same bowl/spoon (don't bother rinsing or washing it out), and combine the crisp topping ingredients. Spread the topping evenly over the fruit filling. (If your butter is refrigerator hard, soften it in the bowl, in the microwave for 10 seconds.)

I like to use real butter in the topping mix. It really does add flavor that margarine or oil just wouldn't have. Baking or cooking butter caramelizes the solids (small amounts of protein and sugar from the milk/cream used to make the butter). This caramelization produces an almost nutty flavor in the butter.

Pears have a lot of natural sugar to them, and little acidity. So I find I don't need to add much extra sugar to the fruit portion of this dessert, but do like a little tartness from the lemon juice.  You could also use a drizzle of honey, in place of the brown sugar, if desired. (And as it only calls for 1/4 cup of brown sugar in the fruit part, it would not be costly to sub in honey.) No brown sugar? I don't keep any at home either, but just use a scant amount of white sugar, along with a spoonful of molasses.

If you have a couple of apples that need baking (I had 2 apples that looked a bit "rough", and wanted to use them up), go ahead and add them, chopped, to the pears.

After mixing up the topping, taste it, to see if you need a bit more spice. And as I like to think, "tasting" doesn't really have any calories -- the act of mixing burns them clean off. Ha! Like eating celery, right? Chewing burns off the calories.

My husband really loves the crisp topping on this. And I have to admit, it is very yummy! Like crispy oatmeal cookies baked on top of the fruit.


I'm curious -- I like pears with ginger, are there any fruits that, in your mind, go well with ginger?

Really good food costs either time or money

There's no doubt about it, really good food (organic, freshly cooked, scratch-baked) will cost substantially, either in our time or our money. We could feed ourselves on junky cheap stuff. I could open packets of ramen, or blue box mac and cheese, night after night. But I want better. I want delicious, fresh-tasting vegetables and fruit. I want well-seasoned, but not overly salty meals and snacks. I want cheese, not cheez. But the good food I want comes with a cost.

To feed my family well, I choose to spend more time than money in making that happen.

• I choose to bake and cook almost exclusively from scratch
• I choose to hunt down bargains

• I choose to work with less-convenient packaging

• I choose to keep a garden and orchard
• I choose to preserve whatever I can each summer and fall
• I choose to forage wild foods when possible

• I choose to repackage institutional-size containers into more home-kitchen friendly sizes when I come home from the wholesaler
• I choose to shop at multiple stores

And so, I choose to spend a lot of time procuring and preparing food each day.

When you see my grocery totals for each month, they're made possible by the hours of work I put in each day. Your choices may be different. You may be in the position to spend more money and less time in meal management for your household. Or you may be choosing a blend of time invested and money spent.

This came up with me, personally, after church a couple of weeks ago. A gentleman friend of ours asked me what I do. I replied that I'm a homemaker. He countered with, "yes, but what DO you do?" (Emphasis on the first DO.) I could just be insulted and saunter off to my own corner. But instead, I chose to "educate" him on how some of us manage meals for our families, through labor in place of dollars. As I delved into the details of baking all of our bread, keeping a garden and orchard, canning and freezing for winter meals, and cooking almost everything from scratch each day, he began to have a look of incredulity in his eyes. I didn't even go into how and where I grocery shop. This was such a novel idea to him, that a modern-day homemaker might do many of the things that his grandmother had done.

I think our family DOES eat very well, almost every single day. Because we enjoy really good food. That is a priority for us. And I've found the way to make that happen, with an investment of my time, in place of our money.

Gotta go. I've got to get that golden brown, with fruit bubbling up over the edges, cobbler out of the oven!