
Poached Pears with Frozen Custard and Orange Slice Garnish Picture by Connie Cockrell
Lots has happened to me since my last post in June. July held the Payson Book Festival for which I am the director, then August is prep for the Northern Gila County Fair which is the weekend after Labor Day. Then, well, I was just tired.
But, news! In August I began eating the Paleo Diet. I love it! I lost 15 pounds in August alone. If you don’t know what the Paleo Diet is, a quick explanation is that you stop eating grains and dairy. You can Google it for a more complete explanation. I have Celiac Disease which is closely related to Hashimoto’s disease. With that, you should also stop eating sugar (well, we all should anyway), caffeine (which I gave up years ago), and raw cruciferous veg (cooked is ok). So that’s what I’ve done.
I don’t feel deprived at all, despite my strong love of anything pasta. But it was making me feel bad so, while I may make the very seldom choice to go gluten-free pasta, it’s gone! Now I eat as clean as possible (meaning organic, grass-fed meat, organic veg, organic fruit. It helps that I have my own pear, apple, and peach trees, and grow a lot of veg in my small garden.
The pears are where this blog comes in. My Bartlett pears became ripe the end of September. They’re not a soft pear. I was having my brother-in-law and his girl for supper and was thinking about dessert. At first, I thought about an avocado-chocolate mousse, (more on that next month), but then I was looking at all of my lovely ripe pears and decided poached pears would be a better choice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really missing anything on my new diet, but a girl does like the occasional sweet, am I right?
Serves 4 – 6.

Hardware and Ingredients Photo by Connie Cockrell
Hardware
Cutting board
Knife
Saucepan

Juicing the Oranges Photo by Connie Cockrell
Ingredients
4 pears, peeled, cored, cut into quarters or sixths
3 navel oranges, 2 juiced (1/2 cup or more if extra juicy), 1 sliced into rounds
5 – 6 whole cloves
1 tsp vanilla (Pictured is a bottle of homemade vanilla my friend Dee gave me for Christmas. It’s almost gone. ☹)

Cutting up the pears Photo by Connie Cockrell
Directions:
Put the pears, vanilla, orange juice, orange slices, and cloves in the saucepan. The recipe I was using didn’t call for any other liquid and I saw that the pears were not fully submerged. Thinking that if they were going to poach they needed more liquid, I added water to just cover the pears.

Everything in the pot, heating up Photo by Connie Cockrell
Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 20 minutes.
Check to see if the pears are completely tender. If not add another 5 to 10 minutes or more until they are.
I made my pears early in the day and after the mixture cooled, refrigerated it until time for dessert. However, you can plate this warm as well.
I served it with Culver’s vanilla custard (broke my diet a little there) and the pears.
For the picture, I did decorate with an orange slice but when I served it to my guests, I left the orange off. I thought it looked a little mushy and not nice to eat. The orange gives the pears a nice floral note and the cloves a little warm spicy flavor. Yum.
Enjoy.
Notes: Culver’s vanilla custard, as of this writing, is gluten-free. I figured the 1/4 cup I ate wouldn’t break the Paleo diet too much.
Thanks for stopping by Chicklets in the Kitchen. Do you have a favorite dessert to serve guests? Please tell us about it in the comments box below if you feel so inclined.
My name is Connie Cockrell and I write SciFi, Fantasy, Mysteries, and a lot of other things and you can find links to all of my books at www.ConniesRandomThoughts.com.