The World Food Editor, Ron Jackimowicz

I get the funny feeling that I’m going to be getting some applesauce cakes and cookies in upcoming weeks.

It might have something to do with the fact that friends Sandy and Robert came up for the day on Sunday, and Autumn and Sandy spent the afternoon putting up 30 jars of applesauce.

They had quite an assembly line going: Autumn used the corer to get things going; Sandy did many of hers by hand, then cut the wedges into smaller pieces. Then all the apples went into her big “crab” pan to soften before getting mashed and then run through a food mill.

A little seasoning and the applesauce was ready to go into the jars and then a hot water bath to seal the lids.

My job on Sunday was to look up from the Seahawks’ game, put my nose up in the air, sniff, and then tell them how wonderful the smells were coming out of the kitchen. Oh, yeah, and to take the pan full of cores, seeds and leftovers down the hill for the deer or the bear.

Yep, the bear made its first ‘appearance’ at the house over the weekend.

We’ve had evidence that he’s been around since some time in September. You can tell he had mainly a berry diet soon after showing up, but the more recent ‘evidence’ was mostly apples. Up until now though he seemed to be keeping to the trees furthest from the house.

The heavy winds and rain recently brought down a large number of fruit from our pair of pear trees.

Obviously, the smell of fermenting pears was enough to bring the bear within about 75 feet of our front door. About midnight, I was getting ready to take the dog out for a break before going to bed. But, the porcupines have been around and I decided to go out first to make sure the coast was clear.

After scuffing my feet on the porch, I heard a rustling up between the apple and pear trees, so I directed my spotlight up the driveway, and there at the top of the drive, looking back at me was a good-sized black bear. He ran off toward the state property that backs up to our place.

So to try to keep the bear away from the house, Autumn and I went and picked about 30 pounds of pears on Saturday and I took the rest of the fallen pears down to the bottom of the property.

I’m kind of hoping that the rest of the pears at the top of the tree will get a little bigger before I ‘have’ to pick them all.

I wonder if you can make pear applesauce?

We both knew that kitchen was going to be occupied territory for the better part of Sunday, so we decided on Saturday that we were going to make a slow-cooker stew for dinner. The idea was to have a nice dinner, but not have to try to make anything that would have interfered with the applesauce process. Because, believe me, if you interrupt the applesauce in the middle it can quickly begin to look like an episode of ‘I Love Lucy.’

Anyway, we were at Safeway on Saturday, and saw the cute little individual sourdough bread rolls they have near the soup display and figured that they would give dinner just the right touch.

McCormick's makes some wonderful slow cooker packets to help out. We’ve tried both the pulled pork and now the stew recipe. It calls for 2 pounds of stew meat (we used buffalo), 5 cups of vegetables (carrots, celery and potatoes) and a little water to mix with the packet.

Before company arrived, we tossed everything in the crock pot, put it on high for three hours and then turned it down to low until we were ready for dinner.

It was so easy, and so perfect for a day when the kitchen was going to be in use so much for other things.

Somehow I managed to allow Autumn to take some pictures of the stew before diving in.

I’m still not used to people recognizing me from my picture that goes along with this column. While at Fred Meyer in Florence on Saturday, the man in front of us in line in the electronics department turned around and say, “Hey, aren’t you the food guy.”

He told me he was a World subscriber and read the column as well as the golf stuff I did with sports editor John Gunther this summer. Then he turned to Autumn, and said, “And, you must be the infamous Amber.”

She gets that so often that she actually has a coffee mug with the name ‘Amber’ on it.

That’s OK, I didn’t get your name during our exchange, but thank you for reading. I do appreciate it.