Poached Pears

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.

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Mint-Watermelon Pops

You might have seen me post this recipe on The Chicklets Facebook page late last week.

I promised to put my new popsicle mold to good use by testing it out and reporting back. Well, here’s my report.

Turns out, watermelon-mint is not my favorite flavor combination.

I’m a little surprised. You see so many folks online raving about the watermelon-mint-feta cheese combo that I figured it’d be a natural winner.

Not for me.

The recipe itself couldn’t have been much easier. I halved it right from the start, because it seemed to me that 4 cups of watermelon would make way too much puree for my mold. (I won’t keep y’all in suspense: I was vindicated when it came time to fill the molds.)

I diced the watermelon and mint leaves. Figuring the blender would chop the mint into even smaller pieces, I didn’t chop it too finely. (That may have been a mistake. There were some too-large chunks of mint in my finished popsicles.)

I subbed Splenda for the sugar the recipe calls for. I think should have left it out altogether — the end result was way too sweet for me.

After several hours in the freezer, they were ready to enjoy.

I’ve already eaten two of the four popsicles. They’re OK, but not OMG delicious.

The semi-failure of watermelon-mint pops hasn’t stopped me from dreaming up other fruit-pop combinations, though. I picked up bags of frozen blueberries and cherries during my biweekly shopping trip — and I still have peaches, pineapple and mango in the freezer.

I bet flat-out pureed mangoes would be excellent in popsicle form. Oooh — how about Banana Ice Cream, flavored with cocoa powder and maybe peanut butter?

And in the non-fruit arena, how about root beer mixed with a little milk or cream? Black Cow, anyone? (Those used to be my favorite milkshake at Arby’s.)

I also have my eye on these Red, White and Blueberry Popsicles (using strawberries, not raspberries, because I don’t like raspberry seeds). They’re beautiful to look at … although with my rocket pop mold, they’d look more like an AstroPop than the American flag.