Pears

Are you looking at a mountain of pears, dreading peeling them before you can get on your way to canning them? I have a solution! Several months ago I was surfing the internet, looking for canning recipes. I came across a neat trick for removing the pear skins--dunking them into boiling water, then into cold/cool water, and then the skin practically falls off! Last night there were five of us canning pears together. Before I got there, they were peeling pears like you would peel potatoes; it was a long, slow process. Then they heated up some water, I dunked the pears in for 25 seconds (these pears were pretty ripe, greener pears might need a few seconds more), dumped them into cold water, and then smoshed the pears around with my hands (using "rubber" dish washing gloves help, too, if you want). It really helps to have a bowl of water to work in. This method reduced the pear-peeling time to mear seconds for each pear, and really improved production time. Lest you think we were doing a few jars of pears, we had 10 cases (at 36 pounds each!) of pears. There were about 240 quarts of pears canned that night!

[Note: I don't remember where I found this peeling trick; I tried to find it again to give the person credit, but was unable to locate it].