As a boy, growing up on the Wally Smith fruit orchard, I ate all varieties of produce both in season and out of season. The out of season fruit I ate the most was apples. This was before the days of CA storage when all that was available was cold storage or cool storage in the basement of a house.

I have mentioned in a previous article that Wally did not allow oranges in our house because he said the only difference between an apple and an orange was that the American orange growers had a better marketing program. Wally did allow Japanese Mandarin oranges to enter his house around  the third of December each year to celebrate  the birthday of his only son. With Christmas just around the corner, the Mandarins were a special treat too.

Today, with CA storage, we have pears as well as apples to feast upon. I have found that I prefer pears to apples. I enjoy Packhams from Australia, Bartletts from Chile and Anjous from the US. One thing I have noticed about Bartletts from the US is that there are bagged pears which come green, then  yellow up and are soft to eat, then there are unbagged yellow Bartletts which come yellow but are hard and remain hard making them impossible to enjoy with out cooking them.

I know that green tomatoes are exposed to a gas which turns them red before they come to market. Is this the same process for the yellow Bartletts? The limited on line searching I’ve done, hasn’t answered my question. Regardless, I do avoid the hard yellow Bartletts because I enjoy consuming the fresh fruit when it is soft.

We all know how pleasant it is to eat a tree ripened peach, where the juice runs down your chin and you almost have to drink the fruit. I have had a similar experience with Anjou and Packham pears. Neither of these varieties turns yellow to indicate ripeness, although the greeness of the Anjou does lessen while taking on a lighter tinge. I have enjoyed the juicyness of these varieties so much, that when I’d finished the pear I found its plastic sticker caught between my teeth.

Pears seem to be the best of both worlds. They start out as a hard fruit and wind up a soft fruit so timing is everything. Thank goodness for CA storage.