fresh from mt shasta : pears and blackberries

i just returned from a visit to mom's house in mt. shasta where blackberries are finishing off the summer season in flourish. the bushes line the roadsides and people who live there must be sick of blackberries by now because the branches are loaded with overripe berries drying out in the sun. we picked our fill just a few steps down the road from mom's house and i returned with a tupperware full of them in the cooler of my rental car. they were really ripe, so i ziplocked most of them and stuck them in the freezer for future appearances in smoothies and ice cream treats. i kept fresh a select handful for marty's return from a staff retreat, and they found a place on the morning's cereal: which is indeed kashi brand. i figured i might as well give into the pressure since i hear about that damn cereal company every time i introduce myself to someone new - "kasha. yes, like the cereal. sort of"
mom made a lovely custard pie with blackberries on top. the custard was delicious and she said remarkably easy to make. the texture of the seeds was a little incongruent with the smoothness of the custard and flakeyness of the crust, so next time maybe cooking the blackberries into a sauce and blending them for the topping would be worth a try.
i also made out with a box full of pears from the tree in mom's yard. i'm planning to can them, but the ripe ones are going on a pear-hazelnut pizza for tonight's dinner. this is a pizza i've made once before in an attempt to recreate a really tasty pizza i had in honolulu - at, get this: california pizza kitchen. it was a pear, hazelnut, gorgonzola pizza and the flavors went so well together. i'm still a little squemish about blue cheeses, so i decided to forgo the use of gorgonzola in my re-creation. this morning i put together the pizza dough - since i always think about how i want to make pizza right at the moment when i actually want to eat pizza, not two hours ahead of time when i could be letting the dough rise. i used this recipe from bon apetite for the crust - very simple - and i used half whole wheat, half white flour. also, for those of you who, like me, often think of eating pizza when your stomach is growling (and you're not going to order it for delivery), here is a decent recipe for no-rise pizza crust.
the pizza turned out mighty fine, and i ended up adding some caramelized onions and garlic chicken in addition to the pears. i even got adventurous and tried a few tosses of the dough into the air while shaping the crust. no fatalities to speak of. although i've been tempted to invest in a pizza stone recently, the crust came out nice and crisp just baking it on my cookie sheet, and it made for great leftover lunch reheated in the toaster oven. toaster ovens are so superior to microwaves for that reason.