Stolen Pears and the Death of a Teapot

So yesterday in my cleaning fervor, the Japanese teapot my dad gave me for my birthday 5 or 6 years ago crashed to the floor from the highest shelf in my room. The wooden box that held it disassembled its sides as if waiting to be put together for the first time. Upon lifting the top from the wreckage I found shards of what used to be a beautiful teacup, the pot's handle was a good 5 inches from where it should be, and the lid was chipped - and one cup, somehow, was completely unharmed as if to tell me not all hope is lost. The pot is fixable - just need heat resistant ceramic glue, but its still sad to see one of my birthday presents that I really loved meet such a fate.... alas.


Pears

Last night my roommate Chris and I walked up the street to get Chinese food at 1 in the morning and on the way attempted to raid this plum tree I had spotted a while ago and had been waiting to ripen... unfortunately all the plums were gone or dried up. I was pretty pissed off. I'd been thinking about those plums for months: ever since I had spotted the tree, and even more so recently. I thought they would be a nice addition to the cheese plate I had conceived to precede the fantastic meal I plan to make for my date... (if it ever happens).... and had I somehow missed the ripening window by a matter of a week or two.

As we continued on, we discovered a pear tree beaming with fruit. I acquired a bag from the Chinese food "restaurant" and on our way back we climbed up the wall and filled it up... Sure it was in someone's yard but you know what? I don't care. I've discovered that my town is riddled with fruit trees of all sorts and the ones in peoples' yards almost all go to waste. And so I have decided I'm not going to stand for that. The answer is apparently thievery - though I like to think of it as more of a Robin Hood sort of "Take from the negligent and give to the unwasteful". Admittedly my wealth dispersion system is a bit different and possibly broken.

Anyway - through a combination of diligent research and then giving up after finding an answer that seemed acceptable I have determined that these are Brough Bergamot pears.

They're pretty hard, so I thought they might be unripe, but they are delicious and so now all I can think of is what I want to do with them. My first thought was roast chicken and pears ala Christopher Walken. (see video)




Later (today) I thought to do another infusion and did a quick poling on Facebook to see what booze people thought I should use. While most have suggested vodka, I'm going to go with a white rum - I'm hoping the sweetnesses will play off of each other. This will get it's own post later.

And then I'm planning slicing some of these and serving them on my cheese plate... (which I will hopefully get to serve)

But acquiring the pears was certainly half the fun... perhaps there is more to come...

-B Out.