Adventures in Produce: Pears

 I have encountered pears in multiple forms of media: TV, social media, and even on the radio. I have been avoiding them for my entire life, and unfortunately this assignment has made me fold under pressure (it’s a good thing, I need to get out of my comfort zone). One of my friends (my roommate actually) has some land out in Sealy, Texas where his family has a bunch of fruit trees. He visits them fairly often, and will bring back a couple baskets of random fruit every time he comes back; this time it was pears, and I knew it was time to accept my fate. 

I shared a pear with my roommate, making sure to get the smallest slice I could. A funny-looking green apple is the best way I could describe the appearance of this new fruit. It had the feel of an apple but was just a little squishier; they were “nice and ripe” as my roommate said. When we sliced into it, the inside of the pear shocked me a little bit. I was fully prepared for this thing to look almost exactly like an apple when we opened it up, but it was full of juice and was squishy and a little transparent on the edges. I decided on eating my pear plain and dry- no seasoning and no heat. I assume that’s how most people eat them anyway? I don’t know, I've only just tried this thing today. 

Luckily when I bit into it there were no hidden seeds or weird alien creatures to surprise me, though I doubt I wouldn’t have seen them because of how ripe and clear the inside was. My first reaction was immediately scrunching my face up and questioning why I had done this. The first few seconds felt creamy and almost slimy, and then the texture mellowed out to a more apple-like texture when I bit through the first layer of skin. To be honest… it was not that bad. The best way I could sum up the texture would be “squishy”. The taste was a little refreshing, it had a little sweetness to it and the juice was not horrible. Although all of these are good things, I am pretty sure my mind has put a placebo effect on itself, because I still would rather not eat pears. The aftertaste is a little weird in my opinion, but everything else was alright. Overall, I would rate pears a 6/10.