Tasty but tedious: steam canning pears!

Hello, this is Lori Fiechter in the kitchen again--this time, I'm canning pears. Pears are tedious! Why? Because you can't slip the skins off pears like you can with peaches or tomatoes. And you can't use a rotary apple peeler, either--pears aren't round and the bottoms are mushy. So pears are time-consuming! But canned pears are delicious--much better than any store-bought pears. Much! I have the time now, so I used five hours this morning to can 20 quarts of pears. I did 8 quarts last week and I have more to do in a few days. Hoping for a total of 40+ quarts.

The process is a bit different from peaches as well. And I learned a trick since making my pear jam that I'll use from now on. Anyway, except for a couple of jars not sealing (I had to re-process) they look beautiful!