One day while wandering about an oriental shop I discovered a little jar of preserved ginger stem which I took home to try. It proved to be most delicious and my family clamored for more, but the price was prohibitive. Nevertheless, the taste lingered until fall when I was canning some rather tasteless pears and the idea of gingered pears possessed me. In the woods I dug wild ginger root, washed and scraped it and cut it into quarter-inch pieces. These I cooked in the regular preserving syrup until it was thoroly flavored, then poured in the pears which had been cut in eighths, cooking and canning in the usual way.