Brown Sugar By Hand

Gleaned fruit from people's yards on the East Side all day with my friend Kate Savkovich, we picked tons of blueberries and found grapes and kiwi berries and apples and pears.

In some alleyway we found a bunch of asian pears fallen on the ground, and we figured we'd bake them with ginger and allspice and cloves brown sugar. It rained a lot and we were outside all day so this sounded especially warm and comforting. Back at my house, though, we discovered I'd used all my brown sugar for ketchup earlier in the week. 

Kate said if we had sugar and molasses we could make our own.

We just poured some blackstrap molasses into a jar of cane sugar.

And mixed it around with a whisk, added some more till it tasted and looked as strong as we wanted it.

It smelled delicious and fresh. We baked it with the pears, and they were great, although I didn't have my camera.