Pecans Everywhere

The last few days I have been stopping by the Island in our kitchen and using a hammer to open up pecans and make them into either pecan pieces or halves to be used in a pecan pie or cookies at a later date.  My knowledge of pecans is minimal.  Growing up my family had a very large pecan tree beside my house in Allen, Kentucky.  I do remember picking some of them up and cracking them and eating them from time to time.  But I don’t remember picking up buckets full and trying to use them for a desert or recipe that called for pecans.

When we built our house in Texas in 2001.  The next step was to get some landscaping. Mike went to pick out some trees at a local tree farm.  I must have been flying because I don’t remember going to the farm to help with the actual picking them out.  In previous lifetimes our yard was some old farmland with nothing on it.  Being from Kentucky we believed that everyone needs some trees to make the yard look nice. So we bought some pretty large trees to make it look a little more developed.  Mike is at the tree farm and the tree guy sells him some red oak trees, one live oak, a Bradford pear and this pecan tree that didn't look like much.

Most of the past ten plus years I didn't even think the tree was going to make it.  It was totally lopsided and scrawny.  You can picture the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  Every now and then we would find a pecan or five lying under the tree.  I guess you could say I had given up on the tree as being a productive tree. 

Both of our Dad’s would routinely ask if there were any pecans.  Sadly, we would tell them that we only had a few or maybe the ones we had were not very good for eating.  Mike’s Father was especially excited about the pecan tree.  Mike was always going to check them out and see if they were good enough to make his Dad a pecan pie.  His Father was diabetic and Mike never let me have sweets in the house when his dad was here.  But for some reason Mike wanted to make his dad a pecan pie.

At the end of December we noticed that there were some pecans on the ground.  And if you looked up in the tree they were all over the tops of the tree.  Mike was excited for a moment and then he looked a little depressed.  I was confused by his reaction to the pecans he had been waiting for all these years.  He said that he wanted to share his first crop with his dad.  Unfortunately, his dad died in July.  He would never get to eat the pecans from our tree.  And to beat it all, according to my friends who live at pecan plantation, it has been a bumper crop this year.  My friend Glenda says that it is not common to have so many pecans per tree.  My first thought was that his dad had a little talk with God about the pecans in our area of Texas. 

My biggest dilemma now is what to do with all these pecans.  They are very time consuming and difficult to deal with.  I will never again complain about the cost of pecan pieces or halves.  I do feel like I don’t want even one of them to go to waste.  Maybe it is his dad or the fact we waited all these years for that tree to die or produce. 

One of my favorite memories of the Holiday’s this year is when my Mother and I were cracking pecans for days on end.  Finally, we ended up with what we thought was enough pecans to make a pie.  I called my friend Becky who made a pecan pie for a little get together around Christmas and invited us over to eat with them.  I loved it and we decided to copy her recipe.  My parents were here and we have this beautiful ceramic pie dish to make it beautiful.  We were very excited because it turned out beautiful and it was delicious too!