Pears

So when we bought our house, one of the reasons we picked it is because it had five fruit trees. An apricot tree, an apple tree, a plum tree, a cherry tree, and a pear tree. The pear tree is the smallest of the lot, and looks a lot newer than the others. We weren't expecting a big crop. But when we picked them, we ended up with about 25 lbs of pears.

Now something you may not know about pears is that you can't wait for them to get ripe on the tree. They ripen from the inside out, and if you wait, they will be all yucky inside by the time the outside is ripe. So instead, you pick them when they are green, and them put them in a dark, cool place for a few weeks and they will ripen the right way.

Well the Saturday before Labor Day we picked out pears. We put them in a box, and then deposited them in the corner of one of our storage rooms. I then promptly forgot about them.

Fast forward about 2 weeks. My brother-in-law and his wife came and visited for the weekend, and stayed in the room down near the storage room. Then about a week later, I started smelling ripe fruit down there. I couldn't imagine what it could be. I wondered if our guests had left some food down there.
So I looked and looked, and couldn't find anything. Well then on Wednesday I went down to the storage room to get something, and when I opened the door, the smell just bowled me over. I still didn't remember the pears however. I thought, "what could smell so much in here? There isn't any food in here." Then I saw the pumpkin. But it didn't smell like pumpkin. Then I saw the box, and remembered the pairs.

I was almost certain that when I opened the box I would find a ton of rotting pears. But nope. I only had about 10 that needed to be tossed. The rest were ripe to perfection.

Aren't they pretty pears? I'm not sure what kind they are, but they are yummy and look really nice too.

So then I spent pretty much all day on Thursday canning pears so they wouldn't go bad. It was a lot of work. I am thinking that for canning you really aught to have at least 2 people working together. With just one it takes way too long.

But now I have 7 bottles of pairs from our tree that we can enjoy this winter. Canning does have it's benefits.

An idea

Imagine something happened that hampered your ability to leave your home, or buy food. Loss of job, natural disaster, health issues, etc. What do you do? How do you make sure your family has enough to eat?
The leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints have given the council to the members of that church to have a rotating 3 month supply of food, plus a non-rotating 1 year supply.

My family has been working to build up our storage, but one of the complication I have been having is variety. We have some meals we eat regularly that we could make completely or almost completely out of non-perishable food, but I'd like to have more. And I'm guessing I'm not alone.

So I had an idea. What if we start a blog. A team blog. Anyone can contribute that is interested. Those who contribute can list recipes for meals, deserts, etc. that are made mostly or completely out of non-perishable items, or items that you include in your food storage. Or you could even contribute recipes you use when building your food storage, IE a salsa recipe you make every year and can. You can contribute one time with one recipe, or many times with many recipes what ever floats your boat.

So I need to know who would be interested in doing a blog like this. Or if anyone knows of a blog that already does this, that is accepting new contributors that would work to. I can create a blog if everyone wants and then you can contribute at your leisure. So what do you think?