on the side: Pear-Nana-Nut Bread and Pear Pomegranate Butter...How Peary!

Pear-Nana-Nut Bread

You ever have one of those days where you thought you knew exactly how the day was going to turn out, and then it abruptly gets switched around?? Well, today was one of those days for me. Not that that's a bad thing though! However, it all started sometime during the middle of last night. I went to bed completely confident that I was going to get a good night's rest, due to the awesomely relaxing cup of chamomile tea I had. I dozed off completely relaxed and had a good but short visit to mimi-land. Then it started. The noise. And more noise. The noise won't stop. But it's not quite loud enough to completely wake me up. So I am half asleep, half awake. Knowing that there is some noise that is disturbing me, but I am not quite awake enough to realize what it is. I lay half asleep for who knows how long, all the while becoming more and more irritated. Finally, maybe around 1am, I wake enough to realize that it's the wind. There is crazy wind outside, and my windows are old. I'm talking made in the 1920's old. And they are rattling. I also have silly paper blinds that serve as black-out blinds because I can't stand the light when I am trying to sleep. And they are being pushed back and forth. So it's the rattling of the window, boom, boom, boom. And the blinds. The swishing and swooshing of the paper blinds, back, and forth, back, and forth. Ok, who can I strangle? I must have gotten up, like, 17 times to adjust the windows and the blinds. Would someone please give me a kit kat, cause I need a break!!

Ok, so my night didn't go as planned, but that's cool. I still woke to a decently happy medium mood. I knew I wanted to do some baking this morning, as there have been some pears ripening on the counter all week. So I got right to work on that. I knew I had an important meeting with a potential new client today, so I wanted to get an early start. I put some coffee on, and pressed play on my Lilly Allen station on Pandora.

The baking actually went perfectly as planned. I followed this simple recipe found here ...funny how as I revisited that blog, I see that they too, were having an "Expect the Unexpected" kind of day! Maybe it's the curse of baking Banana Pear Bread. Uh-oh! Don't let that stop you from making this delicious bread. I liked this recipe because it is a much healthier version, compared to most others. And I did make some adjustments. I used whole wheat flour, and added about 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract, and 1 tsp of all spice. And hellllo, what is that smelll.....

I wish I could make this a scratch-n-sniff pic for you, because the smell coming out of this big white thing is intoxicating. The aroma of the banana, the pear, the vanilla, and the all spice. Wowee!

Ding! My Pear-Nana-Nut Bread is finally done. Thank Goody!!

Yum...

Ok, that was fun. Now it's time to get getting ready for my meeting. But wait, curveball, it's been postponed. Ah well. I am actually kinda glad because I got such crappy sleep last night that I was already getting a bit, well, let's just say, not right.

So what to do with the rest of this absolutely gorgeous day?? Well, cook more of course. Duh. I decide to make a pear butter. Because I have yet more pears to deal with and send off to their peary heaven in the sky.

I search online to find an oh-my-gosh-amazing pear butter recipe. But they are all the same. Well, except for a few. But I don't have those rare ingredients on hand. So I decide to keep it simple, and use what I have on hand. I know I have pears. Check. I have sugar. Good. I have water. Yay! I have one lemon. Cool. And what else can I throw into this thing called pear butter??? Oh! Yes! I have pomegranate seeds! Fantastic. I throw the chopped pears into some water...

And I pull out these beauties...

I get them on the stove and bring all to a boil. Let it simmer together until they all just want to fall apart and become one. And here is where it got a little tricky for me. I do not have a food mill, I just have a handy little dandy ricer. So I use this to puree the pears and pomegranate seeds down to a pulp, (working in batches of course)...

Now that the skins and seeds are all out of the pool, I wanted to smooth it out as I felt it was too grainy. So I got out my immersion blender and did this...

Ok, now we are ready to get back into the pot and onto the stove again. We need to cook this all down so that it becomes what it is destined to become. Pear Pomegranate Butter. I added a nice long drizzle of honey, and about a cup of sugar. Oh, and the juice from my lonely lemon. I cooked it all down on a low simmer until it became this...