Orchard Pear Pie — The Pear Tree That Teaches Us to Bloom

October. The teaching is different this year — sharper, more intentional, the way you clean a house more thoroughly when you know you're leaving. I am teaching everything harder, reading everything closer, giving more of myself to each class because each class is one of the last, and the last of anything demands more attention than the middle of it. My seniors are reading "Their Eyes Were Watching God" — I insisted on Hurston again, because Hurston is the writer who best understands what it means to find your own voice, and my students, at seventeen, are finding their voices, and Janie Crawford is the companion they didn't know they needed.

A boy named Marcus — the same Marcus whose mother I taught in 1998 — wrote a paper about Janie that was so good I read it twice. He wrote about the pear tree, about the idea that watching something bloom is different from blooming yourself, and he connected it to his own experience of watching his mother, and I thought: this is the chain in a different form. Not food. Words. Stories. The student becomes the teacher becomes the mother becomes the son who writes about her. Marcus Rivera, age seventeen, carrying his mother's experience of Mrs. Feldman's classroom into his own. The loop. The beautiful, recursive, unbreakable loop.

I made a pumpkin soup — roasted, as always, not canned — and brought a thermos to the faculty lounge, as has become my custom. The thermos was labeled "RF" and the soup was consumed by eleven o'clock and three colleagues sent me texts and one left a note in my mailbox that said, "Ruth Feldman's soup is the only good thing about October." I framed the note. Not literally. But I'm keeping it.

Marcus’s paper stayed with me all week — the pear tree, the blooming, the watching. When I got home that Friday and found three pears going soft on the counter, it felt less like coincidence and more like instruction. I couldn’t make the pumpkin soup do double duty forever, and something about the pear — its quiet sweetness, the way it asks you to pay attention before it’s gone — felt right for a season that is itself asking me to pay attention. This is the pie I made that weekend, and I’m giving it to you the same way I give everything now: all of it, while I still can.

Orchard Pear Pie

Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 package (14.1 oz) refrigerated pie crusts, or 1 batch homemade double-crust pastry
• 6 cups peeled, cored, and thinly sliced ripe pears (about 5–6 medium pears)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• 1 teaspoon coarse sugar, for topping (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Preheat oven to 400°F. Fit one pie crust into a 9-inch pie plate and refrigerate while you prepare the filling.
2. Make the filling. In a large bowl, toss the sliced pears with lemon juice. In a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Pour the sugar mixture over the pears and toss until evenly coated.
3. Fill the shell. Pour the pear filling into the chilled crust, mounding it slightly in the center. Dot the top of the filling evenly with the butter pieces.
4. Top the pie. Lay the second crust over the filling. Trim any overhang to about 1/2 inch beyond the rim, then fold the edges under and crimp to seal. Cut 4–5 small slits in the top crust to vent steam.
5. Egg wash and sugar. Whisk together the beaten egg and milk. Brush the top crust evenly with the egg wash, then sprinkle with coarse sugar if using.
6. Bake. Place the pie on a rimmed baking sheet (to catch any drips) and bake at 400°F for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°F and continue baking for 28–32 minutes, until the crust is deep golden and the filling is bubbling through the vents.
7. Cool before slicing. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for at least 2 hours before slicing. The filling will set as it cools.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 325 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 53g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 210mg