Very Good Breakfast Pear Crumble

[For Lent, I'm trying a fast from Facebook, which always gets addictive and unhealthy when I'm further from friends. That said, Facebook is one main way that people visit the blog- so if you usually look out for my posts on your newsfeed, please consider stopping by even though you don't see them in your newsfeed, or even consider sharing posts.] 

My weekly menu has become a lot more flexible, because I never know what will be good at Fruit and Veg City. Also, I wasn't sure the menu was detailed enough to give people ideas. So instead, I'll try sharing food I made for the first time in the past week. This week, pear crumble!

Pears are in season and cheap- R5/kg (that's about US$.20/lb) but they were being sold in a pretty hard state, so they're not exactly ready to be eaten. Impatient as I am, we've been eating them in Pear Crumble for breakfast, where they're soft (but not squishy) and delicious. I justify them as breakfast food because there's fruit and oats involved. [In other news, I've found that the avocados at Fruit and Veg City are still pretty bad. It's a little early in the season- who knew there were seasons for these things! My gut reaction was to give the avocados to the worms, then I realized my hair could use them.]

This is the recipe I've been tweaking, though I'd recommend substituting honey for some of the butter and brown sugar:

5-6 small pears
Juice from about 1/2 medium lemon
about 1 cup oats
2 tbs brown sugar
a little nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon
enough water and butter to make the topping moist but not completely wet.

1. Peel and cut the pears and lay them on a baking pan- you can use a large baking pan and just spread the pears across half the pan, or use a smaller dish. To keep cooking time short, layering them slightly thinly is better, but you don't want the pieces so tiny that they dry up when you cook them.

2. Squeeze the lemon juice directly onto the pears.

3. in a separate bowl, mix the spices, brown sugar and oats, and gradually add a little water and cut in some butter. I usually add 2-3 tbs butter, because I think butter is great. You can substitute honey for the butter and water and sugar. You're basically trying to get a topping that is a bit like wettish granola.

4. Cook in oven at about 180C/375F for about 30 minutes, or until the topping looks a bit brown.

Enjoy! This is enough for Eug and Noah and I to have a full breakfast. If you have it for dessert, it could probably go further, to serve 5 or 6 people. And if you had some ice-cream with it....

Other highlights from the week:

• Sourdough pancakes! I love that this recipe uses up quite a bit of starter (none gets thrown away in our household), and that you don't need to add any additional flour.
• Steak and potato chips night: I can't speak highly enough about having an evening to look forward to almost no cooking and a little really good steak. The potato chips are from a bag. Yes.