Excited for the Book Event, and Pears.

 

     My book event is ten days away, and I'm beyond excited. Just to remind you, it's at Bailey's Books in St. Albert. That's 29-B Rowland Crescent in St. Albert. It's in an odd placement, but worth the trip. That is easily the coolest bookstore I've ever experienced, and I'm thrilled they asked me to be there. 

     I've rolled over so many ideas in my mind, but I can tell you what I'm planning. 

     As I mentioned, there will be a Door Prize, but I'm not telling you what's in it. That's an 'after ' blog. As I mentioned before, I'm bringing a copy of  "Elaina's Fate" for guests to sign. Not my idea, but I think it's a good one. I've also decided that for mementos sake, I'm going to highlight the part I'm going to read, so I can also remember what I read to guests. Why not? I think it would be a cool thing to remember, especially if I do this again. 

     Here's a little treat...I'm bringing my pear loaf to share. Why not? I have tons of the stuff! I'm not even finished yet, and my freezer is full. 

     For those of you who don't know me well, I live next door to a pear tree. It actually belongs to my friend Ashley, but neither she or her renters have the time or energy to deal with it. She basically let me have it. 

     Over the years, I have experimented with all kinds of recipes and a few canning methods and just anything and everything to do with pears. Here's a funny fact: I hate pears. 

     But I don't hate these pears. Ashley believes them to be a hybrid of apples and pears, so maybe that's why they taste better. I sometimes think I like them because pretty much anything you grow yourself tastes better than anything you buy. 

     I have two go-to favorites: The Pear Loaf and a Pear Custard Pie. This year, I experimented with Pear Cookies, Pear Cobbler, and two different kinds of Pear Muffins. All of these recipes are available on Pinterest, on my 'Successful Board'. That's where I keep all my recipes that worked out well. 

     My favorite is still the pear loaf. I have that one down to almost a one-woman assembly line and can pump out at least six loaves a day, plus my experiments. 

     I have tried to share them on my Facebook page, but it didn't work for some reason. I suspect that I can't because they're not mine. So if you're interested, please check them out on my Successful Board on Pinterest.

     Oh, and I'm playing with the idea of bringing a couple of excepts from unpublished work, like Bad Clown, for example. Is that a thing? 

Hurray for Fall!

 

I love September. I love summer and fall, but September is the best of both worlds.

It's still warm, but not too much so. There's more yardwork to do, but because it's cooler, it's easier to do. Don't get me wrong, I love yardwork, but those plus 30 Celsius temperatures can really sap a person's energy. It's time to harvest and reap the rewards of all that spring and summer work. 

I've stopped raking my yard in the fall. Or at least I don't rake too much of them. Someone pointed out how a yard full of leaves is bad for your grass and attracts pests and snow mold. It's true, but I'm not talking about that kind of thing. Mine never gets that bad. 

My neighbor across the street gets the carpet of leaves. They're the people who clear my sidewalks and driveway in the winter. So I rake their tiny lawn clean and put the leaves in my compost. Win/win, and it's the least we can do for them.  

I do my fall cleaning. Like I said, it's a lot cooler outside, but I can still keep my windows open to air things out. Perfect.

Then there's the harvesting and canning. I've already done a batch of canned tomatos and a batch of freezer pickles. The pears are plump this year, and that means I'll spend my evenings making pear bread. It's also a lot of work, but the results are so rewarding. When last I visited my friend Tracey, his mom gave me QUALITY vanilla--the kind you get from Mexico--and I'm excited to try it out. 

Melaida's new business is off to a good start. She'd given me a stack of flyers to put out when she started the business, and today I got them all out. She's got new ones coming soon, and I've already figured out new neighborhoods to hand them out. There's entire blocks in my own region I haven't even been to, not even in my garage sale days. I'm finding that those long walks around the neighborhoods are a lot more pleasant this month.

I'm excited and proud of her, but I just realized I haven't done anything to promote my own work lately. I was thinking I should publish an excerpt of Chasing Monsters for Halloween. Then later, one for Elaina's Fate. maybe a contest. With all the aggravation that went into publishing Elaina's Fate, and the length of time it took to finish it, I stepped back from it, and never really came back. I didn't even hold a contest for it. 

I intend to fix that...soon. There's still a lot going on. I finished the first draft for HER TRUE NAME: VOLUME THREE, but I'm taking a short break on that before I edit. I'll start in October. There's also the anthology that has new stories to add, and truthfully, I need to get all of it organized. At least get all the stories on a single USB key. ( Yeep!) I finished a short story named 'Bad Clown'but it needs work. 

I've got a new short called 'Darkness Encroaches' but I don't like the title. Yet another piece that needs a lot of work.  

I've started work on a eulogy for a friend that has signed up for the MAID program, but that's the only new thing right now, and as you can imagine, it's not fun. 

So, yeah...I'm still hard at work. You can probably expect something new from me next year. Hopefully. We'll see. At least two new books are on their way. 

Pears are Great

I LOVE Fall. I love the cloudy skies and cool temperatures. I love the colors of the leaves and the CRUNCH they make under my feet. I even love the yard work and the wall washing, because those are nice little workouts with the instant result of tidiness and cleanliness. I love harvesting and canning my own home grown foods the most, and a big part of that is canning and processing pears.

It's not really my pear tree....It actually sits in my neighbor's yard. My sweet, easy to get along with and very busy neighbor Ashley. Ashley doesn't have time for canning and is NOT a fan of picking fruit off her lawn. So she gave me her pear tree.

This year's harvest was good, but not even a quarter of what it was last year, so I have to be very choosy about which recipes I use. I've decided to share them here...And I'm including a picture of my new book cover and a link to my page, so sharing this blog will be counted as an entry to my month long contest as well. Advertising...

Donna Milward Books


There. That's done. (Note: Current copies are oversized. Do not purchase if you are looking to buy Paperback size.)

My first recipe that I tried is definitely a favorite--not just to me but to my friends and family. It's a pear liqueur, and I like to put it in pretty little bottles and give it as gifts. DIY Pear Liqueur Last year I ran out of vanilla beans, so I used cinnamon sticks instead. That was delicious as well.

This one is my husband's favorite. That man loves ginger. I hate it. More for him. A few years back, my former boss Nevin Fiske from Drift Food Truck fame showed me how to peel real ginger with the edge of a spoon, thus making my canning life a little easier. Dan has been getting double ginger in these preserves ever since. This recipe is found on page 69 of the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving, but I've typed it up for you.

Ginger Pear Preserves (Makes about seven 250-ml jars.)

5 ½ cups finely chopped cored peeled pears
Grated zest and juice of 3 limes
2 1/3 cups of sugar
1 Tblsp. grated gingerroot

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids.
2. In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine pears, lime zest and juice, sugar and gingerroot. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Boil, stirring frequently, until mixture thickens—about fifteen minutes. Remove from heat and test gel. If gel stage has been reached, skim off foam.
3. Ladle hot preserves into hot jars, leaving 0.5 cm headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot preserves. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to finger-tight.
4. Place jars in canner, ensuring that they are completely covered in water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.
          

Last year I got buried in pears. I was literally giving boxes of them away, and I STILL had to plow through six weeks of canning every single day. This is the recipe that saved my sanity as well as HOURS of work. Easy Canned Pears (no sugar) I especially liked the fact that no sugar was involved, because my diabetic mother loves canned pears. And I love Pinterest, which is where this recipe came from.

And finally, MY favorite. Pear Bread <3 This is a perfect snack or maybe for breakfast. It's not too sweet, and pretty easy to make.Favorite Pear Bread

Anyway, hope you enjoy. Officially speaking, I have two more blogs to go before the contest is over, but I wanted to switch it up. Next blog is tomorrow, where I will share an excerpt from Her True Name: Volume Two.

For the Love of Pears!

It was a cold and rainy summer. Somehow, the pear tree that grows next to me--the one my neighbor has almost decided is mine produced a scary abundance this year. It's good that I wasn't working.
I have no idea how many I picked. I gave away seven bags to friends. I canned, and gave away countless more.

Pinterest was my precious tool...until the end of pear season when I discovered EVEN MORE pear recipes I really could have used. At least I'm fully armed for next year. And I'll be calling Fruit by Sherbrooke as soon as they start dropping.

That's less than half of it.

I got off easier when I found this canning recipe: The Easy Way to Can pears  But I also made my famous Pear Liqueur:http://DIY Pear Liqueur But do you think I could find real vanilla bean anywhere? I used cinnamon sticks until that ran out. Then I went to my local Halal store and purchased real cinnamon, which I can't find now. The universe is telling me to 'Stahp!'.

Not all of it. Just the cool bottles.

I made four of these: Pear Custard Pie and my husband was addicted, until he wasn't anymore. STAHP. And I literally made ten loaves of this: Pear Loaf and a few Pear Dump Cakes, which is a layer of pears with a pre-boxed cake batter and some cinnamon thrown in.

And There's still a third of them lying on the ground, too abused to use because it was also windy this year and they hit the sidewalk and other various concrete garden fixtures with ferocious velocity.

I'm glad it's over before I started dreaming about them. It's true that the last few days have seemed strange because I have not done any pear related chores. Now I can go back to editing.

Oh RIGHT!!   I almost forgot! I can now go back to writing and writing related things that don't involve pears! Enjoy the recipes. I for one don't want to see another pear until next year.