Care for a Pear?

Nurse A returned from his trip today and the first thing we did (after work and half-price sushi, of course) was pick pears from our tree! You see, the tree is right on the sidewalk and people tend to pick them as they stroll by (and pull up in their cars) so between that and the pear-loving deer, the bottom half of the tree is pretty bare now. We decided we better not wait any longer to bring in our pears. So Andrew got out the ladder and away we went.


Even Sawyer got in on the pear pickin' action.


The pears were so high up that Nurse A had to shake the tree. Sawyer and I ran around underneath collecting them in our crate.


One busted during the fall and Sawyer claimed it as his own. (On a side note, the pupster appears to be growing jowls!)


And then we had a crate full of pears!


It was much more exciting than it probably should have been and everyone was merry.


We stacked them in our windowsill for now.

Please note the tiny Sawyer-shaped wine stopper to the right of this picture, courtesy of Mrs. S of Poor is the New Black.

So now we have lots of pears and a weekend at home coming up. What should we do with them? My mom makes pears and goat cheese over lettuce with toasted walnuts (which is insanely good, but I'm not sure if these hard pears would work well for that). Or maybe we'll make a pear and apple slaw. I've heard that pie made with hard pears is good as well and tastes like an apple pie, but hubs doesn't really like pies that much. If you have any delicious pear recipes, please let us know!