Although, a card comes with them explaining how they are best enjoyed, I really think we each have to walk our own lonely path on what we do once we are behind a closed door.
I write this as I ride the crest of prime time for my gift pears. The small box of eight pears was a Christmas gift and I have been enjoying them as a solitary consumer. Each one is a separate answer to questions that we who receive gift pears must address.
Since someone has gone to great expense to order gift pears, there is an underlying responsibility to recognize them as being superior and worth special attention. They are not mere food, but the manifestation of someone’s feelings toward you. Plus, having given gift pears to others, I understand the fragile premise with which they come. Appreciation of them is important.
The perennial questions that we all face about gift pears.
One When do you commence eating? When they presented, they are admittedly slightly unripe–crunchy and not fully sweet. If you start eating too early, then the first are less than optimal. But if you wait too long to start, then you risk not completing the box before the last are past their prime. The good news is that, either way, you will be enjoying the middle period of prime and succulent flesh.
Two Do you bite into the whole pear or do you serve it halved and cored with a special spoon? A third option is to halve and clean them and then serve them cut into strips. I suspect this question is answered differently by each of us according to a complex matrix of factors. Ones that come to mind include age, whether one eats with heirloom silver or plastic utensils out of a bag, whether the gift pears are yours or someone else’s, and whether you are standing in the kitchen at 1:00 or preparing a plate with some choice Stilton.
Three Related to Two is the matter of eating or not eating the skin of a gift pear, marked, as it is, with brown flecks and blemishes. There is no question that there are nutrients there and that the skin has served nobly as a protector of the sweetness of the flesh and also those seeds. But it is not as sweet, for sure.
Four Faced with the limited number that come in the box, each wrapped in tissue except for the one that is foil wrapped, do you share them or, like a miser, do you enjoy each one alone?
Brilliant reflection. You should send this to the Gift Pear People and have them pay you to include this with every box.
I didn’t get any gift pears this year and now feel overlooked.
Pears are so wonderfully voluptuous with their sweet buttery bellies.
There is a particular window of ripeness that is most appealing to me with pears when they are still firm but imagining the possibility of softness, just cresting into sweetness.
[...] 6. Some days, the taste of a ripe pear is your poem. (Thank you, Mr. Goodfoot). [...]
I love when a pear is juicy myself. It’s always good to share a juicy pear.
Um, thanks for telling me you’d “moved.”