The Mighty Pecan

     There is something mighty special about pecans.  These meaty nuts are not my favorite nut but they run a close second.  Squirrels would probably disagree and would rather make their home in a pecan tree than any other tree.
     Growing up in Central Texas, the landscape seemed to be filled  with pecan trees.  As a young child I never knew there were planned planted pecan orchards.  I assumed they all grew wild like the ones in my yard.  The pecan trees at my house gave our family an almost endless supply of the meaty morsels.  Mom could never use all the pecans my sisters, brother and myself picked so we sold a lot of them.  If I remember correctly we were paid 27-30 cents a pound.  Today, if you go to a commercial pecan area to pick you own pecans you are charged $2 a pound but there are so many pecan trees in public areas it's easy to gather all the pecans you need to make a pecan pie or a few pecan pralines.
     Mom would mix sugar with pecans to make cookies, pies and pralines.  Her pralines were my favorite and apparently everyone else's also because they use to disappear faster than she could make them.  Sometime she would cover them with chocolate and sometimes she didn't, it made no matter to me I ate everyone I could get m,y hands on.  I guess she had recipes for all those sweet pecan confections but I never saw anything written down.  Always seeming to know how many eggs to add and what kind of sweetener was called for was natural for Mom.  Chopped or whole, if her pecan treats had some kind of sweetener you can rest assured they would not last long in our house.
     It's hard to walk through parts of Texas without coming upon a pecan tree.  You may call them pecan, pee-can or pee-kun, it really does not matter.  The next time you walk under a pecan tree look down and pick up a few of the meaty nuts, I know I will.