Pear Pecan Bread

Ain’t nobody eating the pears I bought and I don’t know what I was thinking buying them. They are really disgusting looking.

The color is scary. They’re muddy yellow with brown streaks in them and you’re thinking, “Those are called rotten pears,” except you’re wrong. These are fresh pears. Fresh pears that nobody will eat because we’re afraid. Even Jesse, who is the most liberal of the eaters in this family. He eats everything. He finds uses for all the foods in the house. “Why’d you throw this half of a radish away,” he might say, “I could’ve made pickles!” Here’s what Jesse said about the pears, and I quote, “I’m not really a pear person.” Which is such a lie. He is totally a pear person, it’s just that THESE pears are scary.

I’m really annoyed with an essay I’m writing. I kind of hate it. It’s like the pears in our fridge, ugly and disgusting looking and it’s the equivalent of muddy yellow with brown streaks. I was supposed to be done with it on Wednesday. (My deadline, nobody else’s, but I’m the worst boss to work for. Don’t ever work for me.) I’m not ready to toss it, though. I think it could be good if I found the right way to present it, but I don’t know what that is, and I thought of those nasty pears in the fridge and I remembered that in the Joy of Cooking there’s a recipe for Pear Pecan Bread. This same situation happened with pears a couple of years ago. Nobody wanted to eat them, and so I made this bread. (Parents of picky eaters – put it in bread and they’ll eat it. Always. No kid turns down bread, and don’t talk to me if you’re all in the back row with your hand raised saying, “My kid does! My kid doesn’t like bread. Or crackers, or chocolate, or Fun Dip. My kid only eats legumes and broccoli.” Your kid will outlive all of us with our Fun Dipped sugar stained cheeks.)

Get out two bowls and a wooden spoon. Have I told you my love for wooden spoons? I love them. They make me feel like I’m a minimalist or hipster or someone who’d write for Kinfolk, you know? Like, of course I use a wooden spoon because that’s the only way you do life. I also use it to shower, comb and style my hair as well as turn pages in the David Copperfield book I’m reading. In Greek.

Get out two bowls and a wooden spoon. In one bowl, you’re going to dump in flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir that up real nice and set it aside.

In the next bowl what you need to do is crack an egg. Don’t talk to me if you can crack an egg with one hand. I can’t, OK? I can’t finish this essay and I have never in my life been able to crack an egg with one hand. Hadley can do it. Show off. I have to use both hands and rarely do I not get shell in the bowl, but here’s a little trick my mother-in-law showed me: what you do is you take a larger piece of shell, place it under the piece that broke off, and scoop that bad boy up. Works every time. I think it’s good to take care of the pieces that break off and fall. All is not lost. Just be careful with those fallen, broken pieces.

Alright, so you’ve cracked the egg. Good job. What you do next is pour some veggie oil in the bowl along with vanilla. I used my sister-in-law Mallory’s homemade vanilla that she made me for Christmas. That girl can do anything. She’s another quiet but mighty one, like Harper. Look out for the quiet and mighty folk. They play a good, “Who me? Nah, I’m no good,” game, and then BOOM they knock your socks off with they’re drop the mic talent.

Toss in a teaspoon of lemon zest. Who in the H-E double hockey sticks figures out what a teaspoon of grated lemon zest is?  Just go ahead and grate the hole damn lemon peel. You know why? Because nobody’s going to open the fridge for a snack and see patches of grated lemon peel and think, “Oh! Lemon! That’s exactly what I want!” Nobody, that’s who. (I know, I know, you, in the back row. You aren’t afraid of grated lemons. You make a multi-purpose cleaner, and an exfoliant, chutney, and chicken gumbo with it. Good job.)

After you’ve grated your lemon, slice it in half and squeeze one half of it into the bowl. That should be about a tablespoon. If you want to measure it and be all perfect, go ahead but look who has less dishes to wash?

Next, you are supposed to grate a peeled pear. I started doing that and got bored and disgusted, so I chopped it up teeny tiny like so it was sort of grated except it was chopped.

Isn’t my teapot the cutest? I love that teapot. It almost makes me want to drink tea.

I took this picture because there’s Jesse helping Hadley with a piano piece she’s having trouble with. She has to play two different melodies with two different beats. They make sense when they’re put together, but she’s having a hard time getting it so her hands do different things at different times. It’s not like harmony. It’s like two people telling a different version of a story but they’re sort of talking over each other and she has to figure out how to help them stay true to their version of the story while at the same time combining their melodies so everyone can dance. Hadley has to understand both stories well in order to pull this kind of piece off. When she does, and she will (the girl can crack an egg with one hand – she can do anything), the song will play and we will tap our toes and bop our heads and think, “How’d she blend all those layers together so smoothly?”

I chopped the pears nobody wanted to eat and dumped them into the bowl with the egg and the vanilla while Hadley practiced. I stirred that up and poured it into the bowl of dry ingredients when Hadley asked, “How come I can’t get this, Mama?” I stirred the wet and dry ingredients together gently and responded, “You’re getting it, Hadley. Be patient. This is the toughest piece you’ve been given yet.” I folded in a cup of roughly chopped (if I’m being honest that word should be “barely” in place of “roughly”) pecans when she asked, “Can you help me?” I poured the mixture into a 9 by 5 loaf pan and brought it over to the oven when I said, “I don’t think I can. I think you need to do this yourself. How about I set the timer for twenty minutes and you practice until the timer goes off? You don’t have to play. You can just sit there, but you can’t get up. It’s been my experience that something will happen in twenty minutes.”

She played. I put the bread in the oven. It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to bake. Hadley practiced for half of that. Stumbling, and grunting, and making mistakes, but she kept playing and the house warmed with the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg, roasting pecans and pears. It was a nice combination, the new melody and the fresh bread.

The bread should come out crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It’ll be quite moist, and I don’t think you should slather it with butter, but go ahead and do what you want. It’s your world. I prefer it plane or perhaps with some cherry-raspberry preserves.

It’s a good recipe. I’m glad I didn’t throw the pears away simply because I was afraid.  They’re delicious.

I guess it’s a matter of figuring out what to do with the ingredients you have.