Thursday, July 17, 2014

Where To Find Pecans For Sale

By Coleen Torres


Nuts in general are packed with nutrients. This includes pecans for sale. Native mainly to the southern United States, pecans are a type of hickory nut. They contain plant sterols, omega-6 fatty acids and antioxidants. A small handful eaten every day has been shown to lower cholesterol levels to the same standard as conventional pharmaceutical drugs. This sounds like a great excuse to eat pecan pie topped with butter pecan ice cream.

Biologically speaking, the pecan is a drupe and not a nut. A drupe is a type of fruit that has a seed surrounded by a hard shell, a fleshy medium layer and a skin. Unlike other drupes like the peach, apricot, cherry, plum, damson and nectarine, pecan "seeds" may be eaten.

The seeds of the pecan drupe have a sweet, buttery taste. They may be eaten fresh or cooked into pies and other sweet desserts. Pecan is an Algonquin word meaning a "nut that you need to crack with a rock". Burned, the wood is used to flavor barbecued meat. Pecan tree wood is good for furniture-making and for making into hardwood flooring.

Albany, in the southwest of Georgia, is the center of this state's production of this delightful nut. Other Georgian delicacies include peaches, peanuts, cotton, rye, timber (especially pine), tobacco, hogs and poultry. Atlanta, Georgia, is the home of one of America's (and the world's) favorite cola drinks. Georgia also gave us President Jimmy Carter, the novel, "Gone With the Wind, " and "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Alabama, the Heart of Dixie and the yellowhammer state, is also a prolific nut producer. Alabama, the "cotton state, " also produces peaches, sorghum, soybeans and peanuts. Alabama gets roughly 20 million visitors each year, about 100,000 of whom are from other countries including Canada, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. The first rocket that brought astronauts to the moon was built by workers in Alabama.

Iowa is probably the northernmost of the pecan-producing states. This is America's heartland. The largest producer of corn and ethanol, Iowa's other main products include hogs, soybeans, oats and cattle. Other healthy economic sectors are finance and insurance. Iowa is the only state bordered on two sides by rivers.

Louisiana gives us the New Orleans Saints, Mardi Gras, the Superdome and the praline, a gooey delicacy made from the blessed pecan. It also has a complex and fascinating geological history. With a strong French heritage, Louisiana models its electoral practices after those in France.

Two months out of each year, October and November, are spent preparing for the annual Pecan Festival. First, in October, the Louisiana Pecan Festival Beauty and Beau pageant is held to name a king and queen to rein over November's Pecan Festival. Between sixty and seventy thousand people attend every year. The amount of tourist dollars they bring in could hardly be described as peanuts.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment