I have the same problem but my pairs are not in Bags. I left them to ripen on the Kitchen counter. We are eating them fresh but only so much you can eat. A friend gave me a suggestion to store them in jars with either water or sugary syrup. Make sue to lock the gars and boil them in large boiling pot where the water covering the entire jar. Boil for 3-5 minutes to seal the the jars air tight. That is what I am doing for not only pairs but also for Figs and apricots. I had some good Crops this year.

Foolishpleasure,

Sometimes you want to be careful when canning stuff using a friends recipe. Not trying to scare anybody, but safe canning requires a little more know how than safe cooking. The link below is to the USDA canning guide. Click on guide 2 for canning of pears. It indicates pears (in jars) should be boiled for 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts.

I'm not saying boiling them just 3-5 minutes is unsafe (fruits generally have enough acidity, they're pretty forgiving regardless of the canning technique. Vegetables are NOT forgiving.) Either way, if you follow the established guidelines you'll likely get a better quality canned product that will also store longer.

The guide also talks about things like - headspace, altitude adjustments, making sure the boiling water covers the jars, etc. Lots of good info in there if you are going to start canning.

Here is a link that might be useful: Complete guide to home canning

Foolishpleasure,

I just remembered (and looked it up to make sure) that figs are one of those rare exceptions (tomatoes are another one) that they are a low acid fruit. Therefore, if you canned them in the manner you outlined, they may NOT be safe to eat. They need an added acidifier (i.e. lemon juice) to make them safe to can in a boiling water bath.

So, I recommend you don't eat the canned figs. They could contain botulinum, which is pretty toxic stuff.

How did my thread about fruit storage get so quickly hijacked to a thread about canning?!?!?! ;-)

Leaving the fruit in the bag traps the ethylene produced by ripening fruit, which accelerates the ripening. If you want fruit to ripen quickly, put it in a paper bag to capture ethylene gas, but take fruit out of the bag when you put in the frig to slow down ripening. Keeping fruit in plastic bags will make it rot quicker because the trapped moisture encourages mold.

The reason everyone started talking about canning so quickly, was they thought that they might have a chance to prevent you poisoning yourself and others with improperly canned fruit. Botulism has no taste or odor, but will kill you. Other organisms can make you wish we were dead for a few days of uncontrolled diarrhea and bowel cramps.

Properly preserved fruits grown at home are great and often taste better than commercially grown fresh fruit, but you must do it properly. The reason fruit preservers are called fruit preservers is that before modern canning equipment and procedures were available, that was the safest and easiest way to preserve fresh fruits. Adding sugar to the fruit and boiling it to reduce off part of the water in the fruit was the best way to raise the boiling point of water above 212F/100C, which killed most microbes. This allowed people to have fruits during long winter months when sources of vitamin C were scarce.

I would suggest that you take the fruit out of the grow bags and store them in those 'Debby Meyer Green Bags' that you might have seen hawked on late-night informercials a few years back. While I tend to be a real skeptic about those types of products, these dumb things really do work, and they work really well. I was able to keep Korean Giant pears in my fridge the last two years for an entire YEAR, from October until the next October when the new crop came in. And, they stayed in perfect, crisp and juicy condition. Same results with many apples and other pears -- it makes them last a lot, lot longer and in better condition.

Obviously, summer apples and pears won't keep that long, but these bags about triple or quadruple the storage life of most produce. And, they have been copied by a lot of other companies, I think Hefty and Glad both have versions now, and I have even found cheap knockoffs at the dollar store, five bags in a package, and those work as well.

Botulism is not 100% death. I may or may not kill you. It's a 60% chance if left untreated.
The thread didn't quickly get hijacked into a canning thread. There was a post recommending potentially fatal canning advice and a post correcting that with an update post.

I don't leave my apples in the bag, I use my crisper bin and keep the humidity high. I think Jellyman is the one who leaves them in the bag.
The Upick I go to recommends cold storage in a bag around the bag they use to pick into because theirs has holes. You want extremely high humidity.

I have had my best results storing apples when I filled a polethelene bag (bread bag- I use a 19", 1.5 mil bag, IRRC) with apples just as they came off the tree and tied the bag tight with a twist tie, and then refrigerated at 33 F or so- as close to freezing as possible without actually causing the fruit to freeze.

I'm confused as to who here directed me to this approach, but he was right as rain and I thank him again. (I do this with names sometimes, and I apologize.)

There are details in controlling the temperature, keeping the fruit away from cooling coils and such, but it's a simple process and works surprisingly well.

:-)M

Botulism may not cause death, it's true. One may simply be blinded or suffer severe liver damage.

Fortunately it's pretty rare, but it does happen and it is worth avoiding. And as mentioned earlier there are plenty of other ill effects to torture the careless and unlucky. If one does can or otherwise "preserve" food it's imperative that he knows what he's doing and is scrupulous about his sources.

M

Thanks for getting back on track folks! (and then off again) ;-)

As luck would have it, my mother gave me some of those Debbie Meyer bags last Christmas. I've never tried them for some reason, but I will now.

Thanks again,
Bart

I use the Debbie Meyer green bags just because I have them; I really don't have a good sense of whether or not they retard spoilage.

These people apparently tested the bags against a control, which was the original packaging and didn't find any benefit to using them, but they didn't give much in the way of specifics about their methods, so I consider the value of their findings little better than that of anecdotal observations. Here's the link:
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/overview.asp?docid=25570

Because earwigs get into the bags and make a mess, I take my apples out and wash them, then pack them into the turkey sized ziplock bags for storage. Works great.