On the SEVENTH Day of Christmas, Wednesday, December 17, 2014

It’s NUTS Today!  Getting one of those bowls filled with nuts that had the nut cracker and picks in the middle was really a NEAT gift at my house.  Mother cooked with nuts and Daddy loved to crack them and pick them out.  

Our gifted NUT BOWL would sit on our coffee table that was a wooden wash tub that had a round piece of routed wood on top of it.  Mother had painted the wash tub black and the handles and metal rings Gold.  She and her best friend from her childhood UP-CYCLED things BEFORE it was COOL…and yes, WE were giving animals FOREVER HOMES long before it was POLITICALLY CORRECT, because if a stray animal meandered to our house, it was fed and usually stuck around until the end of its life…

When people would come for supper, and THAT was VERY often, the men would sit around the little coffee table and crack the nuts and eat them!  Practical gifts like that were not wasted at my house.  Each Christmas, Daddy would buy several packages of nuts to place in that bowl…it was fun to try to crack them while we were sitting around talking or watching TV.

Daddy LOVED to pick out pecans, so IF the pecan trees were producing, then WE HAD PECANS.  We had several pecan trees in our ORCHARD.  Several years ago when our tobacco barn burned, Daddy wasn’t so much lamenting the fact that the barn FULL of tobacco was gone, but that the GOOD pecan tree was going to BURN!!  He even asked the fireman if they could do a little bit more to save it because once a barn catches on fire, there really is nothing that can be done.

When the pecans would start to fall off, I would see him park his truck and walk to the trees and fill his pockets full of all the pecans he could find.  He would look like a chicken pecking for food as he would take his foot and scoot the leaves and branches out of his way.  When he got all he could find, he came to the house, we had supper and he got in the rocking chair by the heater and picked the pecans he had gathered.  He LOVED doing that and we LOVED having the pecans!  

We put Pecans in lots of foods…as I shared yesterday, Chex Mix is NOT the same without pecans!  I don’t care for peanuts, but I LOVE Pecans, and it is NOT pronounced PEE-CANS…sigh…

I wish I could count the number of pictures of Squirrels that have been placed on my FB Wall and the number of jokes I have heard about NUTS…I just think it will get WORSE when my friends read THIS POST…ROFL!

I hope that you have something that you love doing like my Daddy loved picking out pecans, and well, any kind of nut, really!  When you enjoy something, it is NOT work…Enjoy WHAT you do cause being miserable makes life no fun at all for YOU and those around YOU…LOOK for the JOY in all that you do…Blessings to YOU…~charlotte♥

One of my favorite recipes to make is Candied Pecans.

¾ c firmly packed brown sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 tsp. grated orange rind

2 Tablespoons Orange Juice

1 Pound Pecan Halves.

1.     Preheat oven to 325

2.    Combine all the ingredient in a large bowl.  Add the pecans and toss to coat.  Line a large jelly roll pan with foil and coat with vegetable oil cooking spray.  Spread the pecans evenly in the pan.

3.    Bake 20-25 minutes until dark brown, stirring halfway through.

4.    Remove nuts from oven.  Immediately spread on foil sprayed with cooking spray, separating nuts with 2 forks.

5.    Cool completely.  Store in airtight containers.  This will keep at room temperature up to 3 weeks.

6.    This makes 4 ½ cups.