The Day We Learned About Rainbow Pears

I still remember going to college and learning that you could buy canned pears from the grocery store.  I was amazed and disgusted all at the same time.  They were awful and I knew that as soon as I could I would can pears (and peaches) just like my mom and grandma always did.  So we’ve been canning for years and the girls love it.

They love to color the pears and look forward to making “rainbow pears” every year.  This year they worked hard on mixing dye colors to try and create some unique new colors.

My favorites that they attempted were “teal, sunset orange, perfect purple and shocking pink.”  They were so serious about their dye formulas and kept talking about how cool it was to make rainbow pears.  That’s when Katelyn had an idea to make a bottle of pears that were rainbow colored.  They were both so excited about the idea that I didn’t have the heart to point out the flaw in their plan.  They immediately started adding their colors in perfect rainbow order, leaving just enough space in between each one just like they do with snow cone flavors.  Unlike their snow cone creations however, this didn’t quite work out.  Brooke was still completely on board with the idea but as she was adding her lost drop of color, Katelyn realized there was a significant problem.  She looked at the pool of brown liquid forming in the bottom of the jar and said, “Ohhhhhhhhh ya, this is NOT going to work.”  Brooke was so sad and I could tell she secretly hoped that a rainbow striped bottle of pears would emerge from the canner.  Instead, this is what they created:

They made lemonade out of lemons though and immediately decided that these were “root beer pears.”