Much ado about ... little, tiny pears.

Yesterday was a day off.  Sort of.  I drove my parents into the city for my mother's annual eye maintenance (that's what we call it).  It is always a pleasant day - I get to spend time with them, we get to stop at their favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch, I take them on a different route each year just to get my dad all excited about new sights.  Yesterday was a perfect fall day - the violent storm on Monday led to clear, blue skies, cool temps and the vistas along the route from Vermont into New York were beautiful.  That being said, it's a lot of driving.

And since I did get home earlier than my usual evening arrival, I thought I would tackle the half-bushel of Seckel pears that had been sitting on my counter since Sunday.  I had gotten a bee in my bonnet about transforming the beautiful little pears into glistening jars of candied brandy pears.  I am constantly amazed at the disconnect between my vivid and wildly romanticized imagination and the reality of what I actually end up with.  There must be Pollyanna in my genes.  In my overheated imagination, I saw perfect, tiny Seckel pears glimmering in a heady brew of brandy-laden, cinnamon-scented syrup.  Are you still with me?  Lots of eye-rolling going on out there?

The Seckel Pears of my dreams...not of my reality.

After four hours of sorting, peeling, cursing, dropping, more cursing, I ended up with a rather puny mound of wounded pear shapes that left me with a mere four pints of pale, weird forms floating in their aromatic, boozy brew.   I mean, really.  Did I actually think about how unlikely it was to find eight pounds of PERFECT pears in a half-bushel of falls that were jumbled in a big plastic bag?  Did I actually consider that these pears were grown organically, with little oversight and just may be less than perfectly shaped?  Did I actually imagine peeling ten pounds of teeny, tiny little lumpy, misshapen pears would be a snap?  Obviously, I must have been under the influence of the boozy content of the syrup.

Next year - same recipe, different pears.