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My name is Marge Braker and I am with Preserve. Today we're going to can some pears. Fruits are easy to can, they are wonderful to have in a winter. And I've already started some of the steps so you can see that, but basically, you want a nice fresh Bartlett ripe, but not overly ripe, ready to be peeled and then after I peel it, take the stem out.

I am going to cut it in a half right down in the middle, and then it has this little bit of stem here and the seeds are in the middle and I find a melon baller is very handy at this stage. I am going to just take out that piece and then if you can, you can just pull the rest of the stem membrane, that's a little bit leathery and of course, there is a little stem in here and then that's ready.

Put in your ascorbic acid and that's just a solution that you can use with Vitamin C pills or powdered ascorbic acid. What it does is prevent some fruit from darkening and it will stay nice and bright and very pearlike in the jar they look very beautiful. All you need is a clean jar and a hot jar, since this is going to be process in boiling water for 25 minutes, we don't need to sterilize our jars anymore. Dump that out.

So first of all, I am going to put the fruit in and with pears you want them to be arranged so that you can get as many as possible in the jar, and this is a hands on, so we clean hands of course. These pears are so big, it looks like I am going to have one whole pear and may be a quarter, I am going to fit those right in there. What I want to do is, be sure it have an half-a-inch of head space which is necessary for processing.

So then you are wide mouth funnel fits right in that, and here on the stove I have, on simmer sugar and water and you can make the syrup with any amount of sugar and water you want because it's not the preservative. It is -- sugar helps the fruit, maintain it shape. So this is about six and three-fourths cups of water and three-fourths cups of sugar. And then with a ladle, you're just going to take that over to your pears and it doesn't take much syrup if your jar is full of pears. Okay, and that's about a half-inch.

When you first get started, sometimes you might even need a ruler and then with a some sort of measuring -- this is actually an official bubble remover but I have been only used chopsticks or anything. What you want to avoid is a sharp knife that -- at the bottom of the jar you don't want to be hitting metal because you could crack your jar and then it loose all your fruit in the processing.

So what this does is remove any bubbles that when you pored in that syrup, traps air at the bottom and then during processing, the air comes up and it might force the fruit out of the jar and under the lid and then you have to see how it feels, and then after you've moved the bubbles, you just take a cloth, wipe the rim, just in case any fruit or sugar up there. And then I have my lids in hot water, put on your lid, put on your rim and you twist it down till you just hit resistance and then just a little bit further.

Another piece of essential equipment is the jar-lifter and what this has is a nice rubber, secure coating on the gadget and it grabs that jar very securely and then you just put it in your can of boiling water, sometimes we call it the cauldron. There is always a rack on the bottom and the key thing with the canner is we only use pine jars as well. Let me show you the -- what you want is when the jar is sitting in the canner or a big soup pot whatever big tall pot you have, that the water is at least an inch boiling over the top and so sometimes you want to say, okay my jar plus two inches.

Put some water in because you want it totally be able to boil with at least two inch of water over the top of the jar. So our jars of pears are in the canner, the water is come to a boil, so it's time to put on the lid and then set the timer for 25 minutes. Okay, our time is up. It's time to take our jars out of the canner.

Now always be sure that you take your lid off, facing away from you and with your very handy jar lifter. Your jars are then put on a towel and you let them sit for 12 to 24 hours until they completely cooled without touching them. And that's our pears.