Like a sucker, I bought the 5-pear box thinking it was H&D's SPECIAL pears. Once upon a time I had received a gift box of the "special pears" and then bought them twice for myself. The pear is large and its name is Royal Riviera.
These, however, are not those. At TJ's, I was blinded by the gold wrapper, the H&D name and the seemingly low price ($7.99/ 5 pears) when compared to H&D site which sells 9 of "the pears" for $14.99 plus shipping. I completely missed the fact that it said, right up front, in very pretty font, COMICE PEARS.
Still on the slow side, I noticed the pear was a lot smaller than I remembered but figured that was just Mother Nature and marketing. I had already bought 3 Anjou pears to bake for almond frangipane tart and decided to double the pan size and add these.
BIG MISTAKE. Thankfully, I pre-baked the pears and while the Anjou baked beautifully, the interior of the Comice pears (aka H&D wannabe's) turned brown. And not a nicely golden, baked brown...it's a brown that looks like something has gone horribly wrong in the genetics. So now I have a large tart with a sparse number of pear halves. But at least they are pretty halves, not something that looks like it rotted half-way to the table.
Full disclosure: one pear--eaten fresh--was tasty, one was bitter and the other three are going into the garbage. So, in retrospect, $7.99 wasn't that great a deal.
http://foodilistic.com/food-facts/harry-and-david-pears-at-trader-joes/
These, however, are not those. At TJ's, I was blinded by the gold wrapper, the H&D name and the seemingly low price ($7.99/ 5 pears) when compared to H&D site which sells 9 of "the pears" for $14.99 plus shipping. I completely missed the fact that it said, right up front, in very pretty font, COMICE PEARS.
Still on the slow side, I noticed the pear was a lot smaller than I remembered but figured that was just Mother Nature and marketing. I had already bought 3 Anjou pears to bake for almond frangipane tart and decided to double the pan size and add these.
BIG MISTAKE. Thankfully, I pre-baked the pears and while the Anjou baked beautifully, the interior of the Comice pears (aka H&D wannabe's) turned brown. And not a nicely golden, baked brown...it's a brown that looks like something has gone horribly wrong in the genetics. So now I have a large tart with a sparse number of pear halves. But at least they are pretty halves, not something that looks like it rotted half-way to the table.
Full disclosure: one pear--eaten fresh--was tasty, one was bitter and the other three are going into the garbage. So, in retrospect, $7.99 wasn't that great a deal.
http://foodilistic.com/food-facts/harry-and-david-pears-at-trader-joes/