I made Pear Pie. I've fallen onto a bonanza of pears, free for the picking, so I've been canning them for winter. However, my shelves were stocked with last year's canned pears, ones I had prepared before they were well ripened. They were hard and just not yummy, so had spent a year unused. (I've learned a lot about pears between this year and last!) I decided yesterday to just dump out that bunch so I could reuse the canning jars, but the "Scotch" in me couldn't stand the waste. On the spur of the moment, I decided to take several jars of the "hard" year old pears, chop them up like apples and make a mock apple pie of the pears. I used tapioca for thickening, juice from the canning, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and dabs of butter, all tucked inbetween two pie crusts. I washed the top crust with fresh (!) egg wash, sprinkled it with sugar, and baked it. It turned out golden and delicious, a marvelous use of those "useless" canned pears. My DH raved about it. No, I didn't dump the rest; I'm saving them for pear pie all winter long. ~G