Possibly my shortest post ever! I bought these 'fun-sized pears' over a month ago in Lidl. While not quite 'as green as grass', they were damn close, but I figured, that I could wait a week or two, for them to mature.
And wait, and wait... As can be seen, at least one month on, ripe they aint! There was 7 in the bag originally, and yesterday, selecting the most succulent, I took a bite. The verdict, medium sweet, but still way too hard, and by no means 'succulent'.
My question, why are completely inedible fruit like these for sale, and most importantly, what are they doing to these pears to slow their maturation? It's unnatural to see a bag of pears, placed in an open window (therefore, plenty of sunshine), for this amount of time, to remain green like this.
It might be interesting to track the above pear's ripening, so I'll try and resist the urge to go chomping on them, till they begin to resemble something edible - the pear, top-right, is likely to be the first contender. Time will tell.
26 Days Later.
The above pic is all that is left of the bag of pears in question, 26 days on from when the 1st photo was taken. One has ripened somewhat, but as of about 5 days ago, it was still too hard to bite into - and in truth, it has become more wizened than ripe. I'm just after cutting it into chunks in the hope that the birds will find a use for it.
In actuality, since the first post, I have already scoffed another bag of these pears, same brand/seller, while waiting for these to metamorphise (seems like a new word, that - think I'll claim it!) into something edible. They rapidly ripened in to genuinely succulent pears, whereas, as can be seen, the Frankenstein pear that's left, is still bordering on rock-hard, and almost as green as it was over 2 months ago - makes me wonder/worry about what kind of alchemy/chemistry they use to extend shelf life.
Eleven days on, and some more observations on another bag of frankenstein fruit that is misbehaving. On the face of it, these pears look promising, for something that's been allowed to ripen for about 3 weeks, going by their colour anyway! Unfortunately, they appear to have decided to rot rather than ripen. Two pears from the bag had developed huge blemishes, well on their way to spoiling, so were chopped up and fed to the numerous crows around here. But despite all of the pears now being a healthy ripe colour, they are all still rock-hard, way too hard for my poor old teeth to attempt gnawing at.
Lidl seems to have gotten the message as well, or at least, they no longer had them for sale when I visited them today.
