Bumper Crop

I moved to Baytown in 2000. The house sits on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the area. The noise from the traffic can be obnoxious at times – fire engines are a constant, and the motorcyclists seem to think it is their personal raceway. On top of that, we are only a couple of miles from Houston’s Raceway Park – monster trucks and race cars can be heard in the living room of the house.

However, there is a flip side to the cons on the pro and con list. I have one full acre of land divided in half. My house sits on the western half of the lot, one of Ramon’s sons has a trailer parked on the other half. The house has a privacy fenced back lot that is shaded with some wonderful trees. The trees are the topic of today’s entry.

At the back of the lot we have two pecan trees. Directly in front of the house we have a couple of oaks and a pecan tree. For almost twelve years I did not see pecans falling from any of our trees

I have often heard that a pecan tree will never produce fruit in the lifetime of the person who planted it. They are finicky plants that prefer a certain type of soil, weather and water. We knew the previous owners planted some of the trees. No fruit was seen by the original planters, nor by us. That all changed this year.

We have been picking up pecans for over two weeks. We gave away about 20 pounds straight off the ground in the shells. Then Ramon and I thought we would cash in on something that costs an absolute fortune at the grocery store – shelled pecans. I have never worked so damned hard for so little results. Hours upon hours of cracking and shelling. We put a price on a pound of shelled pecans that was competitive with the grocery stores – no one stopped to buy our product. On top of that, I caught Ramon eating our profit margin. He said he was checking them for quality of taste. I said, “Don’t give me that. You were never with Quality Control in the construction business. You ran the crane department!”

It wasn’t long before my kitchen became a pecan factory. Ramon cracked and shelled while I cleaned. I bought a scale to accurately weight them and started bagging. I decided that, if no one wanted to pay for them, I would give them away to friends. Best friend, Sue, said pecans were going for the price of diamonds in Arizona. I am bagging up several pounds of shelled and several pounds in the shell. If I had purchased them at the store – geeze – my gift value just went through the roof!

So I put myself through Pecan School 101. I learned that we have three different types: the small, slender pecans are known as Giles, the medium round pecans are Majors, and the big mama-jamas are known as Stewarts. And they all taste fantastic. The Stewarts are the biggest I have ever seen. They come from the tree in the front of the house.

Needless to say, my manicure is shot. Picking up pecans in our black, sandy dirt is tough on the nails. Some pecans have the outer shuck still clinging to them – try prying those off. It’s work. I have washed sink after sink full of pecans. I have stood for hours cleaning them. But the end result was worth it. I have fabulous gifts for my friends, and I took three pounds to my daughter. I spent a day baking with her last week. I haven't had that much time puttering around in a kitchen with my daughter in many years, and I have had more fun working on this project than anything else in a long time.

Please refer to my glazed pecan recipe in a blog below this. I know the store-bought pecans you find on the shelves can often taste like cardboard. I know Tina’s purchased pecans didn’t taste like anything compared to the fruit falling like manna from heaven in my yard.

Storing Pecans:
In the Shell (uncracked) at room temperature in a cool, dry place - 12-16 months
In the Shell (uncracked) in the refrigerator - 18-19 months
Shelled or Cracked in the refrigerator - 9 months
Shelled or Cracked in the freezer - 2-2 1/2 years (in airtight freezer bags or containers)
They can be thawed and re-frozen repeatedly during the freezing time period.
Shelled pecans are good for almost 2 months after removal from cold storage.
Pecans are known to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol.

Glazed Pecans

More than thirty years ago, I was noodling around with a candied pecan recipe. The original was too 'hard candy' shelled for my taste. I wanted something a little less hard on the teeth. Since this was long before the internet, I called someone in my church and asked about candy cooking and how temperature affected the outcome. After enough practice sessions, which my family didn't mind at all, I had what I thought was a great recipe. Everyone who tried my glazed pecans agreed that they should almost require a prescription because they were so addictive.

Years later, my daughter asked for the recipe. I couldn't find it. Plus, I am at this point in life where everything is packed. I knew I put everything that needed to be climate controlled [which includes all papers]  into the house, not the storage building. I was certain the box was in this house - somewhere. However, I took great care in this packing and moving process and sorted, cleaned, matched up items that had mates and labeled every single box with a list of the contents and placed a label on the top and one end of every box. I made sure the boxes were placed such that I could read the label. Mind you, towers of boxes have to be moved in every search process. And why, oh why, did I load the boxes of music and books in the room last? Oh, that might be the answer to the twelve pounds of weight I have lost. I might be a size three if I keep searching for stuff. I made one last valiant effort today to locate the box labeled My Handwritten Recipes.

FOUND IT. Yes, I was shouting.

So, for everyone's holiday pleasure, here is the recipe.

Glazed Pecans

3 cups shelled pecans [halves are preferred]
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Pre-grease a cookie sheet with butter.
Mix all ingredients except pecans and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Boil to a soft ball stage - or 235° F using a candy thermometer. The "soft-ball” stage means that the "syrup" will form into a soft ball when you drop a bit of it into cold water to cool it down. You can get an accurate "feel" by rolling it around in the bottom of a cup of cold water - cold from the tap, not iced water. It will actually go from being kind of a string to sticking together in a soft little ball. Once you hit this stage, add the vanilla. The mixture will kind of foam up - that's my best description of the chemical reaction.
Stir in the pecans and stir to coat as evenly as possible and spread out as flat as possible on the buttered cookie sheet.
Allow to cool, then break them apart.
Put the separated pecans in a fairly large plastic container with a lid on it and shake the container for a few minutes to "dust" them so they are not sticky on your hands.

From my kitchen to yours.

Chuck Wagon Cooking

Well, I have added another skill to my belt. Not because I set out to accomplish this goal, but because of necessity.

 As most of you have read, I am currently sharing a house with ex-husband number three. All my possessions are in boxes. I don’t know where anything is. Undergarments and nightwear are in a plastic storage bin in the living room, and I am sleeping on the couch. There isn’t even room to open the sleeper sofa. This also means real cookware is packed away gosh knows where.

So what did I decide to do Saturday? Bake my No Brainer Cookies for my granddaughter’s birthday barbeque. I bought supplies at the grocery store, but I didn’t want to invest in real cookie sheets when I have expensive ones – somewhere. Instead, I opted for aluminum cooking pans that you can throw away. Here is where my lack of thinking this through took me south – once again. Oh, and let’s veer to the other issue I battled. Both of my cooking timers are hiding with the cooking utensils, so I bought a cheap timer at a local dollar store.

First order of the day was to locate a pan of some sort to use as a mixing bowl. Then I had to wash everything that I hadn’t already washed before. (I am nowhere near finished cleaning this kitchen.) Once I had everything lined up, I was ready to cook. I mixed the dough, lined the aluminum pans with parchment paper, dropped dough in the appropriate size blobs, popped the tray in the oven and with a swollen head full of “I got this” set the timer.

I am pretty sure the oven at this house works perfectly, because I used to make wedding and birthday cakes in it. I know the temp control is correct. However, I didn’t account for the thinness of the aluminum pans. My first clue was the smell of burning parchment paper. Uh Oh. My cooking instructions on the recipe, which I created, are “bake at 350 degrees for 13-14 minutes.” I was at nine minutes and charring chocolate was not a pleasant smell. I lowered the heat by 25 degrees and tried again. Wait, what was that? The timer went off four minutes early. I handed it to Ramon and told him to run it back to the dollar store and swap it for another one. Now I was left to paying attention to my watch, which meant I couldn’t get caught up loading pans. I paced the floor. I kept opening the door to check cooking status. Second pan fared better than the first, but the cookies were still cooked past that perfect fudge line in the center. Drat. I decided to try to trim the time just as Ramon walked in with a new timer. I turned the knob to 10 minutes and turned my back to load more pans before my dough could dry. Wait, what was that smell? AGAIN? Surely not. YUP. The second timer was a total failure.

By this time I was muttering to myself about the situation I had myself in. Camping in my own house, and I HATE camping of any kind – in a cabin, in a tent in the woods, on the beach – nothing. My idea of camping is in a hotel that does not have a restaurant. It dawned on me that I was literally cooking with pots most people use outdoors. You know - the ones that aren’t in good enough condition to even give to the charity stores? People hang on to them for camp-outs with the guys. Dented. No Handles – there’s that one that has to be moved around with barbeque tongs. Two ragged oven mitts. Knives with split wooden handles. Two big stirring spoons that gladiators probably used in fighting matches. And lots of plastic spoons and forks that came with take-out dinners. All I wasn’t doing was starting a fire in the back yard.

Yet, I have been turning out fabulous meals in spite of the quality of cooking equipment at my disposal. Just goes to show you how hardships can be overcome. I think I will enter myself in a chuck wagon cook off contest. Anyone turning out roasts that melt in your mouth, fabulous pastas, bacon wrapped asparagus and garlic stuffed Cornish game hens using whacked out pans and utensils ought to win some sort of contest.

And my cookies were a roaring success with all the attendees of the birthday bash.

But there is still a bathroom in this house I haven’t ventured into. I have ordered a NOMEX jumpsuit and steel toed boots for that project.